From the article:

BreAnn Scally quit her job at PetSmart in September of 2021. She had been bathing and grooming dogs at the retail chain’s Salinas, California, store for seven months, and she struggled to get by in such a pricey area on $15 per hour. She left in search of better pay and less stress.

But PetSmart wasn’t done with Scally. The following January, she was doing one of her regular credit checks through Experian when she saw her new debt: She owed $5,000 for the cost of her training through PetSmart’s “grooming academy,” as well as another $500 for the tools she’d received for the job. PetSmart was apparently seeking to collect because Scally had left less than a year into a 24-month minimum tenure listed in the contract she’d signed.

Scaly is the lead plaintiff in a new proposed class-action lawsuit filed against PetSmart last week, alleging that the company’s training program is little more than a scheme to lock workers into lower-wage positions for an extended period. Worker and consumer advocates sometimes call these “training repayment agreement provisions,” or TRAP’s, which require workers to foot the bill for training if they leave an employer before a specified time.

Such agreements function a lot like noncompete clauses, which prevent workers from taking jobs at competing companies for a certain period.