It's a software company, after all, not a grocery store.
Would you take home a bunch of sodas if you were going to have a party that weekend?
What if your party guests were exclusively other employees?
What if your party guests were partially other employees, their families, and some unrelated families?
Would you drink an employer-provided soda at home if you weren't thinking about work?
What if you were at the office and not thinking about work?
I could, but I wouldn't. Too much work, and I'm paid well enough that it's easier just to buy soda.
No.
Yes, I do it all the time.
Yes, I do it all the time.
It is true that no matter how much you pay a person, they can still be cheap and "exploit" a resource. I don't think it's important enough to worry about on the whole.
If it's a private party, I'd look into purchasing cheap soda via the job's supplier, they're usually cheaper than grocery stores.
That would be ridiculous right you could be thinking, programming and improving the product to get a better bonus in the end rather than sell soda off of craigslist or ebay.
But you see that is how they think about it. You are stealing it and could be doing <insert the worst possible thing>. That is what management might come to conclusion about.
Another perspective + a story. (Warning: getting a bit prejudiced here). I have heard of foreign H-1B workers (won't name a country will stop at a vague level of prejudice) stuff their backpacks with soda. Stay late, look around, see if anyone is looking start shoving soda cans to fill the backpack up as much as they can carry.
It wasn't that management was upset, you see, it was other co-workers that were disturbed by that. Why? Because they realize they are working with "that" person. That would be disturbing to me. Is the company not paying them enough. Are they a kleptomaniac. Did they grow up poor and learned to steal food. What else are they stealing? Are they sabotaging our product? Do I want them around? Questions like that.
They complain. How does management react. Well they could lay off so and so. But heck he is chugging along programming and we got him on H-1B sponsorship. Laying him off because of a soda issue is worse than just making everyone pay for soda and, in return we get to save couple of thousand dollars a year.
That is how I heard about* (from another party, so this might have been made up, I don't know, take it for what it is worth).
Putting a sign up in the kitchen is always the wrong solution.
And I don't think what you said was prejudiced either.
Don't feel ashamed, this level of cheapness has nothing to do with your nationality.
My dad was a physician, born and raised in the US. He earned a good living, worked very hard (he never had fewer than 2 jobs the whole 3 decades I knew him), and saved money religiously. And he was very frugal as well: he never went into debt for anything, drove cars till well after they fell apart, had clothing that I know was older than I which he wore till the day he died.
One of his great loves, though, was to steal things from the hospitals he worked at. Anything that wasn't bolted down - office supplies, filing cabinets, tables, chairs, desk lamps. At one point, he was bringing home hard boiled eggs that he pocketed in the staff room, because obviously we couldn't afford food. Several times when we were doing remodeling at home, I got to keep a lookout for security while we snuck bags of construction waste into the dumpsters at work.
Now, you didn't know the guy so it might not be obvious, but this was all about not spending a cent more than he had to. So, don't feel ashamed because some of your fellow country men are taking soda from work.
I find it seriously backwards that no one had the spine to walk up to the person, talk with him about courtesy, cultural norms, and basically use "implied shame" to do the rest. If the behavior continued, a more direct approach "I saw you take the sodas last night" could also suffice.
I mean, why would putting a suitcase full of sodas == sabotaging product? It's pathological behavior in the over-abundance environment, but seriously?
Is Redmond a foreign country or something?
Not so much in Seattle, but in MTV people seemed to raid the MKs on their way out of the office. It felt like some sort of communal effort to ensure that the next day's stock would all be fresh.
I started as a Noogler in 2009 and my original cubemate was a pre-IPO Googler who started around 2002. I asked him what some of the biggest changes have been since he started, and he said that there was less of a feeling of community and more of one of entitlement. The snacks in the microkitchen was a specific example he used, that in the beginning everyone understood they were for office use only but around 2006-2007 he started to see people stockpiling them.
More generally - the perks you get as a Googler are not because you were so awesome that Google decided to hire you. They're there to build a sense of community and common purpose. General guideline for when something's okay: Are you in this together with your coworkers, or are you in it alone?
| Smuggling? Really?
If someone is rolling out suitcases full of soda, it might not warrant removing the free soda perk, but it definitely warrants calling attention to it, and finding out who is doing it (and possibly giving them the boot).
But I guess they did have a big theft problem N years ago that justifies this behavior. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this would be a real problem.
For what it's worth, I bring in my own leaves to the office.
Chai is an Indian flavor, I can get something decent at the local Indian restraunts, but that's it.
These kinds of perks always seem to get ruined by that one idiot who goes overboard.
It's irrational, but so is most management in practice.
Look at why it is provided. It's not a prize or a bonus. It is to keep you happy and productive while you work. The company feels that is worth the cost. Where in there does someone drinking soda on the way home figure? It doesn't.
If I were the person providing the free soda I would be upset at being taken advantage of.
Finishing your soda on the way home, sure. Grabbing an unopened one and walking out the door... that seems to me to be a good place to draw a line.
Personally I stick to water because HFCS is bad for you.
My beverage of choice is Ito-En bottled green tea. I'd prefer if it came in glass vs. plastic bottles, though, and it is $1/bottle even at Costco, so at home or office I tend to just make my own using either matcha teabags (also from costco) or looseleaf green tea.
Going back to the topic of expense to the company - healthier foods are also generally more expensive than junk food. But if you think it's worthwhile to keep employees at optimal performance, it's a small price to pay...
| HFCS is bad for you.
As an example, I asked my employer if I could borrow my steel toed boots meant for site visits to use during some work outside to help a friend for a weekend. I told them if I damaged them I would gladly pay to replace them. My boss told me that they would lose much more value from me missing work injured than those boots would cost to replace, so not to worry about it and then gave me a fatherly lecture about being safe using a chainsaw before digging out safety glasses to send with me.
It's hard to make a bright line for abuse, but for a general rule I won't take anything or take advantage of anything I wouldn't pay for myself without asking ahead of time.
(1) Will it cause a substantial loss/burden if everyone did what I'm doing. Everyone taking a case of soda home regularly would be a pretty huge burden. Everyone taking a can or two home every once in a while would not. You can apply that to pens, a pad of post-it notes, etc.
(2) Would I be embarrassed if someone saw me taking this item home and knew it was for my personal use. Generally, if you feel like you have to hide that behavior, that's a good point to stop and ask "why". You may not always come back with "I shouldn't do it" but you probably will most of the time.
(3) Assuming the first two aren't true, would my usage of the item embarrass my employer to their customers. This probably doesn't apply to the soda thief but does apply to a lot of other decisions of this nature. The best example I can think is "I ran out of paper, so I'll just use company letterhead to advocate people attend the annual KKK rally at city hall". I'm sure there's less extreme examples, but absurdity goes a long way toward making a point.
As for office supplies which are used for work at home, I'm guessing you mean more than just pens and paper. If the total take is over $20, I'd probably ask permission, but I've never been in this situation. My office supply is my laptop and these were officially given to me for work (and must be returned when I'm done working there), everything else I already have at home.
(I tend to be picky enough about pens/pencils/computers/etc. that I just bring my own from home to work in most cases)
Really, this attitude is precisely the problem. You're looking at this as a confrontation from the start. Perks like this only work if they're offered and accepted in good faith. If you don't trust your employer to interpret your soda consumption charitably, your employer is getting no benefit from offering it.
Basically, if you want your employer to offer snacks and soda, be grateful about it and don't look for trouble.
Well, if they're spending millions on it in general then many employees taking 1 or 2 home every day is actually probably a much greater financial 'burden' on them than a handful of employees taking entire flats every now and then.
And you also don't tend to put up signs like that unless your goal is to change everyone's behaviour.
It is kind of staggering to think of 90,000 employees times 2 sodas every workday.
Those 90,000 employees cost about $45M a day to employ, $35k on drinks is meaningless. Especially against the PR disaster of a thread full of potential employees hearing you hide the soda at night.
But, as someone said, if someone is stealing from you and views it that way you should deal with them personally, directly, and immediately. Passive-aggressively hiding soda is only going to make them switch to office supplies, if you're lucky.
Yes, "you" do. You specificaly may not do that, probably most people around here will not do that, but lots and lots of people do, enough so that most signs are put down by this kind of people.
This was over ten years ago now, I have no idea what the state of soda smuggling is today.
It's the same with any perk. Flexible schedules are nice, but not if people don't work at all. An equipment budget is nice, but not if people use it to buy stuff for their friends.
If my teammates were dishonest like this, I'd feel uncomfortable working with them. But in any case, I much prefer that those individuals be confronted than that the perk be taken away from everyone.
The point here, which you missed, is that all these perks only work if everyone plays by a sane set of rules and doesn't try to stretch things to their advantage. Having free soda is fine. Playing games with what you're allowed to get away with wrecks things for all of us even if you never get punished.
Whiners ruin it for everyone.