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.
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.
It's a software company, after all, not a grocery store.