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That's how the free pop at RIM ended. The story I heard is that Mike L saw an employee loading flats of coke into the trunk of their car one day, and the free p

by malexw 13y ago

That's how the free pop at RIM ended. The story I heard is that Mike L saw an employee loading flats of coke into the trunk of their car one day, and the free pop ended shortly after that.

jdminhbg 13y ago
That's interesting. The story here is always "taking away free sodas is just an indicator that things are screwed up and the company has lost its way." I wonder if it actually goes one step deeper -- the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed; taking away free drinks is just the more visible manifestation of that.
- malexw 13y ago
  That's a really interesting point, actually. Though I should mention that the free pop ended long before RIM hit their peak. It was gone by 2007 (along with the Wednesday movie nights), but I don't know exactly when either of those ended.
- 300bps 13y ago
  >the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed Interesting theory but the major flaw I see is that the Employee Is Not Always Right. Often times, you get someone who is just a Jerk. Such people often think along the lines of, "Free soda is a perk, there is no explicit rule limiting the amount of soda I can use so I am within my rights to take as much as I can carry."
  - gwillen 13y ago
    I wonder what the fraction of such people is, in an average company. I've encountered people before whose feeling is "if there's no written rule against it, I'm entitled to do it." Is the best solution to the "soda problem" just to fire those people and be done with it? I'm sure they take liberties with more than just sodas.
    - softbuilder 13y ago
      >"if there's no written rule against it, I'm entitled to do it." This is a variation on "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission", a disappointingly common point of view within the tech and startup communities.
      - philwelch 13y ago
        That's because asking forgiveness rather than permission is a good way of actually getting things done, rather than having everything blocked by permission-givers. As long as you're not being a dick, forgiveness beats permission any day.
        liquidgecka 13y ago
        Only if you understand the impact of the decision you are making. Most people that use this mantra don't! Its one thing when its "Tony is out of town, I will borrow his lawn mower and ask for permission later." Its completely different when you don't understand the implications of the thing you are doing. I have been the "permission granter" thousands of times where permission couldn't be granted due to everything from in feasibility of the request [There are not that many widgets to give], prioritization [its not worth taking from the main product to feet your pet project], compliance [doing what you want will get us fined], to flat out legality. Developers with this attitude RARELY understand the implications, even in a company of 20 people. They assume that they are getting things done but really they are just moving the problem to a team further down the stack. Within a company, going around a permission giver is almost always a good way to be labeled a "dick" by the people cleaning up after you.
        nostrademons 13y ago
        I look at in terms of game theory: A person who always follows the "ask permission" strategy ends up with an ingrained unconscious belief that most things they could do are ultimately bad ideas. They end up limiting themselves and only taking actions that are safe, uncontroversial, and unlikely to result in a "no". A person who always follows the "ask forgiveness" strategy will end up getting slapped down a few times and occasionally get a reputation as a dick and have to find new people to work with. But over time, he'll learn a good intuitive sense of both what the limits are (because he's broken them so many times) and why the limits are there (because he's seen the consequences of breaking them). All this means that eventually, the person who asked forgiveness a whole lot eventually ends up being the "permission granter". Eventually he ends up taking an opportunity that the "ask permission" folks deemed was too risky and it works out, and people remember the one huge success more than the dozens of minor messes. So while you may be justified in labeling the "ask forgiveness" guy a dick, that won't stop him from replacing you. Life is sometimes unfair, and assholes sometimes win.
  - illuminate 13y ago
    And? The problem is the Employee That Is Wrong, not the free soda policy.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  I think that's a factor of people being assholes. I've worked in places large and small, public and private sectors. There's always an idiot who will do something that ruins things for others. In one case I was exposed to, it was an attorney making north of $150k stealing change from people's desks, and trying to frame the cleaning crew. In another, it was a person taking advantage of time & attendance rules. In another, it was a guy pilfering silverware from the lunchroom.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>In one case I was exposed to, it was an attorney making north of $150k stealing change from people's desks That sounds more like kleptomania, which is a mental disorder. It doesn't have anything to do with "being an asshole." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptomania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptomania
    - crucifiction 13y ago
      Just because its a mental disorder doesn't mean the guy isn't being an asshole.
    - ansgri 13y ago
      I'm sure every 'asshole' will sooner or later be diagnosed, at least in US. Might as well declassify every diagnosis not related to obvious physical damage back to the level of 'assholes needing cultural education'.
    - frobozz 13y ago
      Not necessarily. It could be racism, in the case that the cleaners are of an ethnicity the attorney despises. It could be bullying, in the case that the people whose change he is stealing deliberately leave cash in their desks for paying vending machines, or because they know they are prone to leaving their wallets at home. It could be that he was so well off that he couldn't see the problem with taking a few dollars from a desk to pay a parking meter or whatever; then became embarrassed when confronted. Feelings of wealth vs poverty are not absolute. If the attorney has an expensive plastic surgery habit, all his friends are on $500K, and he can only afford two trips to Klosters this year because his yacht needs servicing; the money may have utility to him in an "every little helps" kind of way. He might feel that everyone else is better off than he is. If this is a big office, you could probably make $100-$200 in a session of theft (I know there is normally at least £15 in desks in my office of 8 people). If his salary is paid into a joint account, and he wants to pay for something without the knowledge of his partner (e.g. charlie and hookers), then stealing cash might be the easiest way he can see to conceal this spending.
- lenazegher 13y ago
  > I wonder if it actually goes one step deeper -- the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed I would guess it's got more to do with size than anything else. When you're in a startup with 50 people and you know the guy who orders the office groceries by name, very few people would start taking home crates of soda. Such an act would have observable consequences (no soda for your team-mates, or office grocery bill goes up very noticeably and you feel like you're ripping off everyone else). If you work in an office building of 5,000 people, taking home crates of soda doesn't have observable consequences in the same way. Perhaps the office grocery bill goes up 0.5% or one of your teammates has to walk 20 yards to the next fridge over to grab a soda, but from your perspective the effects are marginally indistinguishable from 0. It becomes "wrong" in abstract principle rather than "wrong" in observable effects.
untog 13y ago
Surely the solution would be to fire that employee?
wvenable 13y ago
Keep the free pop, can the employee.
stevoski 13y ago
I think a good approach would be to immediately tell the employee that this is stealing and a fireable offence. Either fire them, or give them a warning. That is much better than punishing everyone for the crimes of one (or some).
- basseq 13y ago
  The employee who is carting out cases of free drinks is also the employee who will sue you for wrongful termination because the drinks were free and there were no guidelines to the contrary. The right thing to do is either to have a quiet, informal chat with the employee in question (if you know who they are) or to send a broader message with the appropriate chagrin ("We wish we didn't have to send this email, but...").
  - tlear 13y ago
    Well you fire them in a way that does not get you sued, you have a whole HR and legal departments for that purpose, it is pretty damn easy
    - basseq 13y ago
      So in an argument about following both the letter and spirit of an agreement (e.g., free drink perks), the solution is to be underhanded about why they're being fired? Playing devil's advocate, I know. Statistically, the guy carting cases of Coke out the back door is probably doing more than just that.
conjecTech 13y ago
Honestly, I think after reading this thread, I am set on offering free perks like this when I start a business just so that I can see who would engage in this type of behavior and fire them. I think the qualities that would lead you to blatantly steal something provided for free as a convenience by your employer would also lead a person to be the kind of callous, selfish team member that no one enjoys working with.
kabdib 13y ago
So they should have fired that bad egg _and told people why_. Maybe the company is afraid of a lawsuit?
noonespecial 13y ago
Its so hard to believe that someone like that would be allowed to keep their job after such an incident that I think the story is false. It was a made up (or exaggerated) excuse to justify the removal of the free soda.
- malexw 13y ago
  I never said he was allowed to keep his job. To be honest, I don't know what happened to him.

by malexw 13y ago

That's how the free pop at RIM ended. The story I heard is that Mike L saw an employee loading flats of coke into the trunk of their car one day, and the free pop ended shortly after that.

jdminhbg 13y ago

That's interesting. The story here is always "taking away free sodas is just an indicator that things are screwed up and the company has lost its way." I wonder if it actually goes one step deeper -- the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed; taking away free drinks is just the more visible manifestation of that.

malexw 13y ago
That's a really interesting point, actually. Though I should mention that the free pop ended long before RIM hit their peak. It was gone by 2007 (along with the Wednesday movie nights), but I don't know exactly when either of those ended.
300bps 13y ago
>the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed Interesting theory but the major flaw I see is that the Employee Is Not Always Right. Often times, you get someone who is just a Jerk. Such people often think along the lines of, "Free soda is a perk, there is no explicit rule limiting the amount of soda I can use so I am within my rights to take as much as I can carry."
- gwillen 13y ago
  I wonder what the fraction of such people is, in an average company. I've encountered people before whose feeling is "if there's no written rule against it, I'm entitled to do it." Is the best solution to the "soda problem" just to fire those people and be done with it? I'm sure they take liberties with more than just sodas.
  - softbuilder 13y ago
    >"if there's no written rule against it, I'm entitled to do it." This is a variation on "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission", a disappointingly common point of view within the tech and startup communities.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      That's because asking forgiveness rather than permission is a good way of actually getting things done, rather than having everything blocked by permission-givers. As long as you're not being a dick, forgiveness beats permission any day.
      - liquidgecka 13y ago
        Only if you understand the impact of the decision you are making. Most people that use this mantra don't! Its one thing when its "Tony is out of town, I will borrow his lawn mower and ask for permission later." Its completely different when you don't understand the implications of the thing you are doing. I have been the "permission granter" thousands of times where permission couldn't be granted due to everything from in feasibility of the request [There are not that many widgets to give], prioritization [its not worth taking from the main product to feet your pet project], compliance [doing what you want will get us fined], to flat out legality. Developers with this attitude RARELY understand the implications, even in a company of 20 people. They assume that they are getting things done but really they are just moving the problem to a team further down the stack. Within a company, going around a permission giver is almost always a good way to be labeled a "dick" by the people cleaning up after you.
        nostrademons 13y ago
        I look at in terms of game theory: A person who always follows the "ask permission" strategy ends up with an ingrained unconscious belief that most things they could do are ultimately bad ideas. They end up limiting themselves and only taking actions that are safe, uncontroversial, and unlikely to result in a "no". A person who always follows the "ask forgiveness" strategy will end up getting slapped down a few times and occasionally get a reputation as a dick and have to find new people to work with. But over time, he'll learn a good intuitive sense of both what the limits are (because he's broken them so many times) and why the limits are there (because he's seen the consequences of breaking them). All this means that eventually, the person who asked forgiveness a whole lot eventually ends up being the "permission granter". Eventually he ends up taking an opportunity that the "ask permission" folks deemed was too risky and it works out, and people remember the one huge success more than the dozens of minor messes. So while you may be justified in labeling the "ask forgiveness" guy a dick, that won't stop him from replacing you. Life is sometimes unfair, and assholes sometimes win.
- illuminate 13y ago
  And? The problem is the Employee That Is Wrong, not the free soda policy.
Spooky23 13y ago
I think that's a factor of people being assholes. I've worked in places large and small, public and private sectors. There's always an idiot who will do something that ruins things for others. In one case I was exposed to, it was an attorney making north of $150k stealing change from people's desks, and trying to frame the cleaning crew. In another, it was a person taking advantage of time & attendance rules. In another, it was a guy pilfering silverware from the lunchroom.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  >>In one case I was exposed to, it was an attorney making north of $150k stealing change from people's desks That sounds more like kleptomania, which is a mental disorder. It doesn't have anything to do with "being an asshole." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptomania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptomania
  - crucifiction 13y ago
    Just because its a mental disorder doesn't mean the guy isn't being an asshole.
  - ansgri 13y ago
    I'm sure every 'asshole' will sooner or later be diagnosed, at least in US. Might as well declassify every diagnosis not related to obvious physical damage back to the level of 'assholes needing cultural education'.
  - frobozz 13y ago
    Not necessarily. It could be racism, in the case that the cleaners are of an ethnicity the attorney despises. It could be bullying, in the case that the people whose change he is stealing deliberately leave cash in their desks for paying vending machines, or because they know they are prone to leaving their wallets at home. It could be that he was so well off that he couldn't see the problem with taking a few dollars from a desk to pay a parking meter or whatever; then became embarrassed when confronted. Feelings of wealth vs poverty are not absolute. If the attorney has an expensive plastic surgery habit, all his friends are on $500K, and he can only afford two trips to Klosters this year because his yacht needs servicing; the money may have utility to him in an "every little helps" kind of way. He might feel that everyone else is better off than he is. If this is a big office, you could probably make $100-$200 in a session of theft (I know there is normally at least £15 in desks in my office of 8 people). If his salary is paid into a joint account, and he wants to pay for something without the knowledge of his partner (e.g. charlie and hookers), then stealing cash might be the easiest way he can see to conceal this spending.
lenazegher 13y ago
> I wonder if it actually goes one step deeper -- the fact that employees are willing or feel justified in lifting flats of free soda is the first indicator that the company is screwed I would guess it's got more to do with size than anything else. When you're in a startup with 50 people and you know the guy who orders the office groceries by name, very few people would start taking home crates of soda. Such an act would have observable consequences (no soda for your team-mates, or office grocery bill goes up very noticeably and you feel like you're ripping off everyone else). If you work in an office building of 5,000 people, taking home crates of soda doesn't have observable consequences in the same way. Perhaps the office grocery bill goes up 0.5% or one of your teammates has to walk 20 yards to the next fridge over to grab a soda, but from your perspective the effects are marginally indistinguishable from 0. It becomes "wrong" in abstract principle rather than "wrong" in observable effects.

untog 13y ago

Surely the solution would be to fire that employee?

wvenable 13y ago

Keep the free pop, can the employee.

stevoski 13y ago

I think a good approach would be to immediately tell the employee that this is stealing and a fireable offence. Either fire them, or give them a warning. That is much better than punishing everyone for the crimes of one (or some).

basseq 13y ago
The employee who is carting out cases of free drinks is also the employee who will sue you for wrongful termination because the drinks were free and there were no guidelines to the contrary. The right thing to do is either to have a quiet, informal chat with the employee in question (if you know who they are) or to send a broader message with the appropriate chagrin ("We wish we didn't have to send this email, but...").
- tlear 13y ago
  Well you fire them in a way that does not get you sued, you have a whole HR and legal departments for that purpose, it is pretty damn easy
  - basseq 13y ago
    So in an argument about following both the letter and spirit of an agreement (e.g., free drink perks), the solution is to be underhanded about why they're being fired? Playing devil's advocate, I know. Statistically, the guy carting cases of Coke out the back door is probably doing more than just that.

conjecTech 13y ago

Honestly, I think after reading this thread, I am set on offering free perks like this when I start a business just so that I can see who would engage in this type of behavior and fire them. I think the qualities that would lead you to blatantly steal something provided for free as a convenience by your employer would also lead a person to be the kind of callous, selfish team member that no one enjoys working with.

kabdib 13y ago

So they should have fired that bad egg _and told people why_. Maybe the company is afraid of a lawsuit?

noonespecial 13y ago

Its so hard to believe that someone like that would be allowed to keep their job after such an incident that I think the story is false. It was a made up (or exaggerated) excuse to justify the removal of the free soda.

malexw 13y ago
I never said he was allowed to keep his job. To be honest, I don't know what happened to him.