"Hey, low-status/power/etc person. We have an arbitrary hoop here. You must jump through it." They're usually contracts of adhesion ("Negotiate the terms of the

"Hey, low-status/power/etc person. We have an arbitrary hoop here. You must jump through it." They're usually contracts of adhesion ("Negotiate the terms of the NDA? They were established by legal 5 years ago and everyone uses the same ones. Get with the program.") and usually filed-and-forgotten. And to add to the fun and joviality all around, quite often the people who ask you to sign agreements like these (or their spiritual counterparts: overly aggressive indemnity clauses) don't actually know (haven't bothered to read the nuts and bolts of) what they're asking you to sign. Which has a lot to do with how they suddenly get so anxious when you ask questions about (let along make specific objections to) particular bullet points that you're being asked to sign on the dotted line for.