I'm so proud of you!
I was the de facto contracts officer in two of the companies I worked for because I had been hired as program manager and the first thing you do when you parachute into a new situation like that is READ THE CONTRACT and find out what the idiots who came before you signed up to and don't take anyone else's word for it. (Brian and Clemens, you know who you are!). In the first company, they had signed up to a design escrow agreement meaning that if we couldn't produce the product in time, they would be able to take the design and have it built by another manufacturer of their choice. Brian (CEO and president) asked me to read the 30-page escrow agreement and use post-it notes to flag anything that was going to be a showstopper. I used up half a pad of post-its on that agreement. Brian thought I was being excessively concerned and called in the company lawyer to read it. He went apes*it at the same things i did. I asked why they signed it and the CEO said, "We had to sign. Our backs were against the wall."
The next case was one where I went in years after the contract had been signed. I found three items in the 121 Federal Acquisition Regulations and Defence Federal Acquisition Supplements that were called up in the contract that said we didn't have to give our customer the rights to software or hardware design and we could sell directly to the government and not have to sell through our customer. I found this a week after I joined and the CEO, Clemens, said, "I don't know you that well but if I did, I would hug you." More stuff was grossly underestimated like a maintainability analysis that we quoted as taking one day. (For this analysis, you have to determine how long it takes you to diagnose and repair a piece of equipment and this is done by counting the time required to remove screws, remove panels, diagnose the problem, install parts, replace panels and tighten screws. This analysis usually takes several weeks and may expand into months.) We didn't get paid for that work package because we didn't do it and we didn't do it because the people who came before me didn't understand it. When I asked why they signed the contract, the production manager said, "We had to sign. Our backs were against the wall,."
Is this some standard phrase they teach in some business courses? It may be the case that they had to sign but there was no excuse for not knowing what they signed. So congratulations to you for being more aware than a couple of senior company officers. Add your stepfather to the list of people who may know how to read, but don't know what they are reading or to never sign without reading.
