M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link By Robert Asprin

“Like I said, it’s my contract. There are clauses in there I didn’t even know about until the council hit me with them.”

“What kind of clauses?” I frowned.

“Well, that the employer has the right to set my pay scale is the biggest one I remember. ‘. . . According to the need of the community,’ and they pointed out that with no feud, my workload, and therefore my pay, should be reduced accordingly. Then there’s the ‘No Quit’ clause …”

“The what?”

“The ‘No Quit’ clause. In short, it says that they can fire me, but I can’t quit for the duration of my contract. If I leave, I have to pay my replacement, ‘sub-contractor’ I think they call it, myself . . . even if they pay him more than they were paying me. That’s why I’m stuck here. I can’t afford to quit. By the time I got done deducting someone else’s wages out of whatever I was earning on my new job, I’d be making even less than I am now. I can’t believe I could land a position making more than double what I’m currently earning. Not with my track record.”

For a moment I thought Skeeve was going to offer him a position with our company, but instead he groaned and hid his face in his hands.

“Quigley! How could you sign a contract with those kind of terms in it? Heck, how could you sign any contract without knowing for sure what was in it?”

“Frankly, I was so happy to find work at all I didn’t think to ask many questions.”

“… There’s also the minor fact,” I put in, “that when he was getting started in this game, he was all alone. He didn’t have a teacher or a bunch of friends to look over his contracts or warn him off bad deals.”