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The person in the story is right. There's a simpler solution. A company can easily stock more stuff. It's not that hard. If my colleague says that they need t

The person in the story is right. There's a simpler solution. A company can easily stock more stuff. It's not that hard. If my colleague says that they need to take 6 bottles a day because it makes them 0.01% more productive, I'll be totally fine with that. It costs so little. I'll probably request the company to stock more. Different people have different needs. Why would Google want to create an environment where employees need to fight for food? Why would Rachel blame that person instead of Google?

mattigames 7y ago
Is right about future actions the company should take, is extremely wrong about what he/she _did_ already, if one person takes all the stock intended to be distributed company-wide that raises thousands of red flags as team player, doesn't matter if tomorrow they get a magic fridge that has an infinite amount of Tejava bottles, I still wouldn't want that person near any executive positions in the company.
- ergocoder 7y ago
  If 6 bottles make them 0.01% more productive, I'd be okay with that. Actually, take 10, just in case. This person takes 6 bottles. You are exaggerating that number to infinity. Really? To add to your point, we don't want an exec who aims to blame a particular person instead of a system as well.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    Don't you dare to fire me from your hypothetical company! In a more serious note, where did you find that drinking Tejeva is making them more productive? It sounds like an mild addiction wish I suspect is doing the opposite. The infinity was to make a point about resources, you put much focus into it and is just a silly hypothetical scenario to state a point. In organizations there is always problems with people and always problems with the system, pointing out the former doesn't mean one doesn't acknowledge the later; and like I said their solution for the future of just buying more stock is correct, so I agreed the system is flawed, their previous behavior is _also_ on the wrong and the one that raises red flags in a personal level.
    - ergocoder 7y ago
      > where did you find that drinking Tejeva is making them more productive? In the blog post, the person said they wanted to drink 3-4 bottles a day. So, I assume drinking it makes them happy and, thus, more productive. > It sounds like an mild addiction wish I suspect is doing the opposite. I don't understand the need to drink Tejeva. But different people have different needs/wants. In a similar situation, I'm not a parent or a handicapped or a minority. So, I don't truly understand their needs/situations. But I don't assume that "oh honey your need isn't significant; you can absolutely live without X", especially when it costs so little. > The infinity was to make a point about resources, you put much focus into it and is just a silly hypothetical scenario to state a point. But we are judging a person's action, and we should avoid judging them based on something they haven't done. Of course, if they start hogging 100 bottles a day where it's not physically possible for a single person to drink it all, then, yeah, I agree that it seems too many. > their previous behavior is _also_ on the wrong and the one that raises red flags in a personal level. This is where I disagree. The person's not in the wrong. They are upfront about taking 6 bottles. They are clear that they enjoy drinking that many bottles. Needing to drink 6 bottles is like any other need (e.g. need to leave early, need to exercise, need to rest, need to go on a walk, need to poop longer than normal, need to eat more than a normal person). Some people need something more than the others. What raises a red flag is a person who points finger at another person instead of a system that creates scarcity. This person would be destructive in a post mortem, for example.
  - tasty_freeze 7y ago
    You are misusing the word exaggerating. Hypothetical != exaggeration. By focusing on what you think is an exaggeration as a means of attacking the logic of the person you responded to, you entirely missed their point. To restate what was already a clear point: even if the supply of drinks was a non-issue, the fact the person behaved so antisocially raises concerns about what other behavior they are willing to justify.
    - ergocoder 7y ago
      We are deciding whether a person is guilty or not. We can't judge based on a hypothetical situation where that person might do in the future. That seems unjust.
      - tasty_freeze 7y ago
        I'm flabbergasted. People do that every day, all day. We imprison people based in part on their future hypothetical behavior. If someone displays antisocial behavior every day and when questioned about it defends their antisocial behavior, I'd be stupid to think: well, I'd better not assume that he won't be this way tomorrow. Whether or not the employer should have bought more of the popular drink, it doesn't change the ethical calculus performed by that person that day: there is a limited resource that many people would enjoy using; therefore I'm going to take all of it to maximize my enjoyment. Yes, yes, the long term solution is to get management to buy more drinks, or horror, buy your own. But on any given day, they deprived coworkers of the chance to get their favored drink. Say the two of us go to a restaurant, and there are six delicious looking prawns on a bed of rice. You get the place first. Do you take all six because you like them and then tell me tough nuts that the restaurant didn't put more prawns on the dish? Or do you think to yourself: I'd love all six, but the fair thing to do is take three, and leave three?
loeg 7y ago
The person single-handedly consuming 3/4 of the total supply of a beverage stocked for dozens of people isn't in the right. Sure, a company can supply more; soda is cheap. That doesn't make the guy in the story not an asshole here.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
The company is obviously failing to meet demand, but there are also social rules about utilizing a shared resource. The person in question is extremely inconsiderate to preemptively allocate all shared stock to themselves. Did you see the argument they made? "Let me come first and take all of the popular snack, because otherwise other people will take some and I won't have enough.". That's defecting in a prisonner's dilemma-like situation; exactly not the kind of behavior you want to see in a team.
- ergocoder 7y ago
  Rachel's reasoning is blaming a particular person. It's also possibly identifiable if you work at Google. The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It's just so little. I also don't want people who aim to blame other people first, especially when a systematic improvement is so obvious here.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Well, maybe that person should've raised the point about snack scarcity instead of hoarding. > The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It's just so little. They don't need 6 bottles. They won't die if they get only 2. They want 6 bottles, and are willing to disregard the fact that other people want a bottle just as much. Blaming is a bad idea in case of mistakes, because mistakes are unintentional and you don't want people to hide mistakes. Blaming and peer pressure is absolutely a good idea when someone behaves antisocially. The systematic improvement you're seeking isn't that obvious when behavior Rachel describes is tolerated. Say the company ups the supply. It may be that this resolves the situation, but it very well may be that the 6-bottle-taker now decides to take 8, or 12 - 6 for work and 6 for home. And then some extra for their kid. Others will notice it, realize that it's apparently accepted behavior and follow suit. Now the company has to either up the supply significantly, in hope of saturating the leak, or start regulating behavior. Either way, at this point a sane manager would just pull the free snacks program instead. You'll notice that this exact pattern of behavior Rachel is exposing here is common enough to be recognized and named as a large social problem, that it's literally the meaning behind "that's why we can't have nice things", and that a good chunk of laws exist to prevent or punish this kind of behavior.
a13n 7y ago
Two wrongs don't make a right
wil421 7y ago
It’s called sharing and you learn it at a very young age. There are people who don’t refill an empty coffee maker and probably think if someone else wants some they can make it themselves. I’ve seen the same thing at Costco and fast food places. Some lady took all the ice at Costco so they could fill up their cooler outside but they do not buy anything. There’s a video online of the same thing. Same with fast food, people taking all the toilet paper, napkins, plastic forks, or ketchup to use personally at their house. Saw that in college towns and vacation places.
zelos 7y ago
Surely the non-selfish solution is for the person drinking all the Tejava to just say to the office manager "I really like that Tejava stuff but so does everyone else and there's never any left, can we stock more of it?" I see our office manager and the guy who refills our snacks discussing what to stock a few times a week.
denton-scratch 7y ago
"A company can easily stock more stuff." The creep's behaviour isn't different from the multi-billionaire who has a scheme to shift his company profit-centre to Luxembourg to avoid paying corporation taxes. If everybody behaved in the same way, the employer would eventually end up providing the entire locality with free chocolate-milk. And the creep's response is the same as the response you hear from those avoiding corporation tax: "Hey, it's perfectly legal, it would be irresponsible of me to pay more than I have to, why should I buy my own if $EMPLOYER provides it for free". If you extend that fully, you get people sponging off the taxpayer-funded health and social security systems, which results in taxpayers voting for cuts in funding for those systems, which makes everybody happier (hang on, musht be shome mishtake).
denton-scratch 7y ago
Also: isn't this way too much soda? ("Soda" meaning sweetened drinks, that make you obese). If you're thirsty, drink water. If water is too bland for you, add cool-aid. Or battery acid. If I had to work with a colleague like that, I'd quit.

mattigames 7y ago

Is right about future actions the company should take, is extremely wrong about what he/she _did_ already, if one person takes all the stock intended to be distributed company-wide that raises thousands of red flags as team player, doesn't matter if tomorrow they get a magic fridge that has an infinite amount of Tejava bottles, I still wouldn't want that person near any executive positions in the company.

ergocoder 7y ago
If 6 bottles make them 0.01% more productive, I'd be okay with that. Actually, take 10, just in case. This person takes 6 bottles. You are exaggerating that number to infinity. Really? To add to your point, we don't want an exec who aims to blame a particular person instead of a system as well.
- mattigames 7y ago
  Don't you dare to fire me from your hypothetical company! In a more serious note, where did you find that drinking Tejeva is making them more productive? It sounds like an mild addiction wish I suspect is doing the opposite. The infinity was to make a point about resources, you put much focus into it and is just a silly hypothetical scenario to state a point. In organizations there is always problems with people and always problems with the system, pointing out the former doesn't mean one doesn't acknowledge the later; and like I said their solution for the future of just buying more stock is correct, so I agreed the system is flawed, their previous behavior is _also_ on the wrong and the one that raises red flags in a personal level.
  - ergocoder 7y ago
    > where did you find that drinking Tejeva is making them more productive? In the blog post, the person said they wanted to drink 3-4 bottles a day. So, I assume drinking it makes them happy and, thus, more productive. > It sounds like an mild addiction wish I suspect is doing the opposite. I don't understand the need to drink Tejeva. But different people have different needs/wants. In a similar situation, I'm not a parent or a handicapped or a minority. So, I don't truly understand their needs/situations. But I don't assume that "oh honey your need isn't significant; you can absolutely live without X", especially when it costs so little. > The infinity was to make a point about resources, you put much focus into it and is just a silly hypothetical scenario to state a point. But we are judging a person's action, and we should avoid judging them based on something they haven't done. Of course, if they start hogging 100 bottles a day where it's not physically possible for a single person to drink it all, then, yeah, I agree that it seems too many. > their previous behavior is _also_ on the wrong and the one that raises red flags in a personal level. This is where I disagree. The person's not in the wrong. They are upfront about taking 6 bottles. They are clear that they enjoy drinking that many bottles. Needing to drink 6 bottles is like any other need (e.g. need to leave early, need to exercise, need to rest, need to go on a walk, need to poop longer than normal, need to eat more than a normal person). Some people need something more than the others. What raises a red flag is a person who points finger at another person instead of a system that creates scarcity. This person would be destructive in a post mortem, for example.
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  You are misusing the word exaggerating. Hypothetical != exaggeration. By focusing on what you think is an exaggeration as a means of attacking the logic of the person you responded to, you entirely missed their point. To restate what was already a clear point: even if the supply of drinks was a non-issue, the fact the person behaved so antisocially raises concerns about what other behavior they are willing to justify.
  - ergocoder 7y ago
    We are deciding whether a person is guilty or not. We can't judge based on a hypothetical situation where that person might do in the future. That seems unjust.
    - tasty_freeze 7y ago
      I'm flabbergasted. People do that every day, all day. We imprison people based in part on their future hypothetical behavior. If someone displays antisocial behavior every day and when questioned about it defends their antisocial behavior, I'd be stupid to think: well, I'd better not assume that he won't be this way tomorrow. Whether or not the employer should have bought more of the popular drink, it doesn't change the ethical calculus performed by that person that day: there is a limited resource that many people would enjoy using; therefore I'm going to take all of it to maximize my enjoyment. Yes, yes, the long term solution is to get management to buy more drinks, or horror, buy your own. But on any given day, they deprived coworkers of the chance to get their favored drink. Say the two of us go to a restaurant, and there are six delicious looking prawns on a bed of rice. You get the place first. Do you take all six because you like them and then tell me tough nuts that the restaurant didn't put more prawns on the dish? Or do you think to yourself: I'd love all six, but the fair thing to do is take three, and leave three?

loeg 7y ago

The person single-handedly consuming 3/4 of the total supply of a beverage stocked for dozens of people isn't in the right. Sure, a company can supply more; soda is cheap. That doesn't make the guy in the story not an asshole here.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

The company is obviously failing to meet demand, but there are also social rules about utilizing a shared resource. The person in question is extremely inconsiderate to preemptively allocate all shared stock to themselves. Did you see the argument they made? "Let me come first and take all of the popular snack, because otherwise other people will take some and I won't have enough.". That's defecting in a prisonner's dilemma-like situation; exactly not the kind of behavior you want to see in a team.

ergocoder 7y ago
Rachel's reasoning is blaming a particular person. It's also possibly identifiable if you work at Google. The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It's just so little. I also don't want people who aim to blame other people first, especially when a systematic improvement is so obvious here.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Well, maybe that person should've raised the point about snack scarcity instead of hoarding. > The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It's just so little. They don't need 6 bottles. They won't die if they get only 2. They want 6 bottles, and are willing to disregard the fact that other people want a bottle just as much. Blaming is a bad idea in case of mistakes, because mistakes are unintentional and you don't want people to hide mistakes. Blaming and peer pressure is absolutely a good idea when someone behaves antisocially. The systematic improvement you're seeking isn't that obvious when behavior Rachel describes is tolerated. Say the company ups the supply. It may be that this resolves the situation, but it very well may be that the 6-bottle-taker now decides to take 8, or 12 - 6 for work and 6 for home. And then some extra for their kid. Others will notice it, realize that it's apparently accepted behavior and follow suit. Now the company has to either up the supply significantly, in hope of saturating the leak, or start regulating behavior. Either way, at this point a sane manager would just pull the free snacks program instead. You'll notice that this exact pattern of behavior Rachel is exposing here is common enough to be recognized and named as a large social problem, that it's literally the meaning behind "that's why we can't have nice things", and that a good chunk of laws exist to prevent or punish this kind of behavior.

a13n 7y ago

Two wrongs don't make a right

wil421 7y ago

It’s called sharing and you learn it at a very young age. There are people who don’t refill an empty coffee maker and probably think if someone else wants some they can make it themselves. I’ve seen the same thing at Costco and fast food places. Some lady took all the ice at Costco so they could fill up their cooler outside but they do not buy anything. There’s a video online of the same thing. Same with fast food, people taking all the toilet paper, napkins, plastic forks, or ketchup to use personally at their house. Saw that in college towns and vacation places.

zelos 7y ago

Surely the non-selfish solution is for the person drinking all the Tejava to just say to the office manager "I really like that Tejava stuff but so does everyone else and there's never any left, can we stock more of it?" I see our office manager and the guy who refills our snacks discussing what to stock a few times a week.

denton-scratch 7y ago

"A company can easily stock more stuff." The creep's behaviour isn't different from the multi-billionaire who has a scheme to shift his company profit-centre to Luxembourg to avoid paying corporation taxes. If everybody behaved in the same way, the employer would eventually end up providing the entire locality with free chocolate-milk. And the creep's response is the same as the response you hear from those avoiding corporation tax: "Hey, it's perfectly legal, it would be irresponsible of me to pay more than I have to, why should I buy my own if $EMPLOYER provides it for free". If you extend that fully, you get people sponging off the taxpayer-funded health and social security systems, which results in taxpayers voting for cuts in funding for those systems, which makes everybody happier (hang on, musht be shome mishtake).

denton-scratch 7y ago

Also: isn't this way too much soda? ("Soda" meaning sweetened drinks, that make you obese). If you're thirsty, drink water. If water is too bland for you, add cool-aid. Or battery acid. If I had to work with a colleague like that, I'd quit.