Hello I hope this is ok to ask here. I’m studying horticulture and I have a job at a nursery to work in the field for some experience. Currently I’ve been there two years and am the longest standing employee. The turn over rate is very high to say the least because the pay is horrible for the amount of work and knowledge required for the position.
Because of this I do side jobs and have had many in the two years i’ve worked there.
One of these side jobs is social media management. I saw a flyer for a random company needing one so I thought I’d give it a try and it was pretty easy. An acquaintance of mine learned I was doing social media management and asked if she could hire me as well for her business. She does plant maintenance for houseplants on a small scale, it’s just her running the whole thing and mainly gets jobs from friends and word of mouth.
The nursery I work at offers landscaping and plant maintenance as well, but it’s on a large scale, mostly outdoors or large restaurants where it’s a multi person job. Their clients are ones that just google a nursery and call us up.
Also note that I’m not involved in the plant maintenance/landscaping aspect of either job. At the nursery I just work at the physical store location and for her I’m purely making posts for instagram, where she has 56 followers (they have 20k on theirs and have multiple locations.)
My boss found out about it and interrogated me and called me an untrustworthy lair because when he asked if I knew the girl who’s business it is (before I knew he knew about it) I responded with “yes vaguely.” Technically not a lie we’re not really friends I just do a job for her. he threatened my job which I need to keep my apartment.
I live in California and non compete agreements are not legal here to my understanding. Also in the horticulture field it’s pretty common to do jobs with many different companies even if they offer similar services. My boss is now saying anything else “related to plants” while working there is a conflict of interest. I quite literally have to do a work study where I work with different nurseries and landscapers to get my degree. My specialty is landscape design so it’s pretty hard to avoid doing anything for any other nursery. Is this legal or am I in the wrong here???
Edit: I hope this all make sense it’s been a rough day and i’m very tired. Thanks for reading.