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Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals o
by seattle_spring 9y ago
Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals others' stuff is a good, honest person in other parts of their life.
- codingdave 9y agoFiring someone for a mistake is a fairly extreme response, and should be reserved for extreme mistakes. This sounds like a correctable habit, with some mentoring and coaching.
- greedo 9y agoTheft is a correctable habit? It's theft. The perp KNEW it wasn't his food, then when exposed, got HR involved to cover his tracks.
- bdamm 9y agoUsually people that I've worked with that have this kind of habit also have other habits, like copying open source into commercial code with no regard for license, checking in code under other people's names, flagrantly disturbing massive chunks of code (e.g. checking in whole-repository reformat) without telling anyone, etc. It's definitely marginal and indicates a kind of thoughtlessness. Firing? Maybe not. But it's not easily forgotten.
- raverbashing 9y agoThe spice was the correction. The fact that they tried to push back instead of owing up shows it's uncorrectable.
- nordsieck 9y agoThere is a big difference between mistakenly eating someone else's lunch and being a thief. It's conceivable that someone could have a visually identical container (brown paper bag) and a visually identical lunch (sandwich and apple), in which case yes - that would be a mistake. I'd bet that that is the case for much less than 5% of the lunches misappropriated. Calling deliberate theft a "mistake" is fundamentally dishonest - it pollutes the meaning of the word mistake.
- jdtang13 9y agoIf you're a white-collar worker who is making a decent paycheck, you should definitely be accountable for the action of taking clearly-labeled food that doesn't belong to you. We should be merciful and try to help them, but that person is also committing a small form of thievery.
- AckSyn 9y ago"mistake" you have to be a complete fool to not recognize the container you brought your lunch in (written with your name on it even), but the lunch itself. This is such a BS response.
- gdy 9y agoPlease correct your habit of downplaying deliberate theft by calling it a mistake. Do you need any mentoring or coaching for doing that?
- cortesoft 9y agoMistakes happen. There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch, and having a 'zero tolerance' policy is a good way to end up firing an innocent person.
- dpeck 9y ago| There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch Want to give us some examples?
- vorpalhex 9y agoSame lunch box as someone else. In an office of 7 people, I had the same lunch box as two coworkers. Have someone else make your lunch or bring a generic enough item and it could happen. Honest mixups happen and when they are followed up with an apology then it's fine. Let common sense prevail.
- EvanKelly 9y agoI've eaten/drank parts of co-workers lunches unwittingly thinking they were part of the community food/beverage selection. I never got reprimanded, but I did have to sheepishly explain to a coworker that I drank his soda thinking it was one of the community ones since it was in the door of the fridge and unmarked. I now work at a company with an extensive free kitchen and you have to do an extremely good job of marking your personal food since the default assumption will now be that the food is everyones.
- Blaaguuu 9y agoThis happens occasionally at my work, and I'm pretty sure it is always accidental - but it is because we get food delivered every day, and a combination of food not being very well labeled, orders getting messed up, and people forgetting what they ordered that day - things get mixed up. That said, I really can't imagine any situation where it is reasonable if you are talking about people's homemade lunches, in a well labeled lunch box - as is the case in this story.
- poizan42 9y ago
- lpa22 9y agoMost companies would quickly have 0 employees if this was a universal policy
- parliament32 9y ago...most companies really don't have employees eating each others' lunches, that's ridiculous. Where do you work where this is considered normal?
- seattle_spring 9y agoReally? You think that 100% of employees steal from their co-workers at some point? I guess I must be crazy because I've never done that, nor considered it.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoI would certainly quit a company with a culture of dispensing harsh and summary justice. And, while I agree that eating other people's lunch is unethical, we should be very wary of the "broken window" attitude towards lashing out severe punishment for minor things. Very often it goes together with leniency towards CEOs "giving themselves" huge exit bonuses & so on.
- rjp0008 9y agoWell... at least one... You can't steal your own lunch.
- vermontdevil 9y agoAha good answer to a potentially trick question!
- deepbreath 9y agoThe last two employees would eat eachother's lunch. The issue is that the last employee has to have the moral integrity to fire himself.
- williamdclt 9y ago
- y04nn 9y agoFor me it looks like HR is just trying to protect an essential/key employee of the company agains a new employee even if what has been done is unethical. Some employee may think that they can do anything because the company can't replace them.
- ZetaTwo 9y agoI actually had a boss who stole my lunch. His wife cooks for him so he didn't know/remember what food he was bringing to work and he had the same kind of (IKEA) lunch box as me. He apologized and bought me lunch the next day so it was absolutely fine in the end but there was a moment of confusion and some colleagues mocking me.
- yourself92 9y agoI think stealing implies intent, not that it was an accident
- jdtang13 9y agoThat's not stealing. That's just an unintentional mistake. Pedantic, yeah, but quite different morally.
- colemickens 9y agoI'm sorry, but how are the other replies to you defending this behavior...? I have never "accidentally" eaten an entire lunch that wasn't mine. I'm actually offended that people are defending this. It's stealing. It's petty, childish, dishonest behavior. I think I would just be dumbstruck speechless if a coworker actually was brazen enough to just take my food and eat it. It's comically absurd.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sverige 9y agoI agree completely. Not only does theft make their work untrustworthy, their actions have a huge impact on the morale of their coworkers. I have fired an employee for stealing lunches (with plenty of evidence, of course). I would have fired the person in this story immediately if it were within my power. Similarly, I have also fired people for other obvious character failures, such lying about bereavement leave to take time off. (It happened so often at one job that I ceased to be amazed when I caught it.) For example, one guy brought me an obituary for his dad that was obviously altered (fonts on dates didn't match, etc.). Google immediately informed me that his dad had died three years earlier. That was a fun conversation. For those who think such behavior should be considered a mere mistake and that firing is too extreme, please tell me how such poor character can be corrected by actions taken by management at their workplace. If the job requires good character, then the only correct response to such behavior is to separate them from the company, as happened in this case.
- mathieuh 9y agoI don't know if I would sack them right off the bat, but I would definitely keep a very close eye on them. The fact that they are adults in the workplace who steal from colleagues definitely points to their character simply being incompatible with societal norms, so who knows what other demoralising actions they are taking part in? Six-year-old primary school children who haven't been disciplined yet steal lunches. Not supposedly functional members of society.
- sverige 9y agoWhen I was younger, sometimes I would hesitate to fire people even though they had crossed a bright line into fireable territory. With experience, it became very clear that it was never a good idea, so I stopped hesitating. That sort of thing gets old, though, so I don't manage anyone now. Life is much less stressful that way.
- blackbagboys 9y agoCan't say I blame the bereavement guy. Nearly every firm in the United States has an unacceptably stingy PTO policy.
- phlakaton 9y agoI've never had someone steal my lunch, nor have I stolen anybody's lunch, so the issue seems a bit moot to me. Steal my _chair_, though, and may all the laws of Gods and Men come down upon you in their most unmitigated rigor! That has happened to me _way_ too often.
- jdtang13 9y agoI generally agree with what you're saying. It's kind of hilarious to me that so many people here don't know what "stealing" means. Have they not read the article at all? News flash: the act of stealing requires intention. Accidentally swiping someone's ambiguously-labeled lunch is very different!!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fl0wenol 9y agoI think the issue is that it can be difficult to prove/disprove intent for something like stolen lunches unless there was a camera pointed at the fridge (or some other clear indicator) if you're going to fire someone over it and be protected against a wrongful termination suit. It's a bit over the top to have that in place to enforce the policy unless it was a known issue in that workplace. So the statement the GP made seems a bit extreme without context.
- GordonS 9y agoDisagree. Anyone who steals someone else's lunch is a total arsehole, but I wouldn't class it as a firing offence.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CodeWriter23 9y agoGiven enough time, someone who steals from coworkers will eventually steal from the company. Antisocial behavior isn't about the victims, it's about the behavior. They may say things like "I would never do that to YOU", but in the end, when it is to their advantage, they will do that to you.
- whack 9y agoWould you also fire someone who takes an office pen home? What about printing personal documents on the office printer? Sure, they are all technically "stealing" stuff, but lighten up.
- seattle_spring 9y agoCompletely different scenarios. Stealing an office pen is slightly immoral but basically affects no one. Stealing a lunch ruins someone's day, and is a direct insult to their time and existence. An absolute false equivalence and you know it.
- whack 9y agoSure, taking someone's lunch is worse than stealing a pen, but firing them is overkill. The punishment does not fit the crime.
- seattle_spring 9y agoIf you believe that theft is an isolated incident then sure. I'd argue that someone who steals a coworker's lunch is not a good person in other areas of their life.