Have you ever kept work equipment?

I walked out with pride and dignity, reclaiming them as my own 😃

Thank-you, but please don’t worry - it isn’t used any more, I think DF only switched it on to see if it would work. He has a laptop too, which is completely up to date. The Windows 95 computer is also so old that it was never online, one of the last pre-internet relics - DM just used it for Word documents which she printed and saved to floppy disks. Those disks are long gone, DF destroyed them with a hammer before throwing them out so that nobody could ever access the documents!

I never deliberately took anything but I was in a serious car crash on the way home from work and by the time I was out of hospital and realised that my work bag had been left in the boot the remains of my car had been crushed. I presume that a variety of things including my work phone, charger and office keys went into the crusher, if they weren't pulverised during the crash anyway.

The obsolete computer may work but you should know it is very vulnerable to cyber attacks. Once an operating system is obsolete, the editor (Microsoft) stops sending security updates, therefore any vulnerability discovered by hackers will not be corrected.

I’ve never deliberately stolen anything of value but I did work with someone rather irritating who was obsessive over their mug and anyone else using it, so it now sits nicely in my cupboard and I use it whenever I want.

Yeah because returning most things for a remote company is a pita so they asked me to keep it all except for the laptop.

I'm a teacher and there's always an odd assortment of board pens and marking pens in my house and car from my pockets. Every now and then I gather them up and take them back to work so I'm not really keeping them....although I can't say for sure my kids don't pinch them sometimes....but them I have a stack of stationary from home that I've purchased on my desk at work.

I kept a headset which had stopped working and I didnt get round to replacing. I came across it just the other day and thought of throwing it away. It’s been 18 months, surely nobody wants it.

Headset and a laptop bag.

No, the NHS can't afford to have people thieving. It's a disciplinary offence.
I have on occasion bought dated equipment that needed to be replaced and it was all above board.

A bit different but while working for a company they went into administration. We had the bailiffs or whatever come to the business just before closing. I’d had this happen 10yrs prior in another company so knew the drill. All my staff were lovely and it was Christmas time. Head office knew it was happening and all these staff on minimum wage were not only heartbroken but so worried they weren’t going to be paid. So I decided to say to them all I wasn’t doing bag checks at the end of the night and remember the bailiffs don’t know what is yours.. no regrets.

I have a 30cm wooden ruler from the primary school I taught at

Only stuff that I have asked for when employers have been refitting, rebranding or closing down.
I had a filing cabinet from when Midland Bank became HSBC, a medical dictionary from another and loads of stationery from another.

Both times I've been made redundant I've negotiated with them to keep my computer, even though it was company property. It was worthwhile as I had a computer to job hunt on. You can't just keep things on an asset register, but yeah small peripherals like a mouse, headset etc for WFH won't be logged as needed to be returned. I still have a bit of company marketing swag I don't know what to do with!

Yes a work monitor. They never asked for it back & so I didn’t return it. Most toxic workplace id ever worked at & feel no guilt.

No, because I'm not a thief.

I come across the odd pencil now and then from the Bank I worked in, oooo about 30 years ago now (wow didn’t realise it was so long ago!). And I must confess one of their staplers stuck to my hand on my way out.

My DM had a desktop computer from work which was loaned to her back in 1995, and runs on Windows 95. She had it for about twelve years before she retired; she offered to give it back when she left, but they told her to keep it - I think returning it would have just given them the headache of disposing of it, as it was pretty much obsolete by 2007. Sadly DM has now passed away, and DF doesn’t like throwing anything out in case it’s ever useful, so it’s in a box in a corner of the study, and apparently still works.

I was essentially forced out of my teaching position, and they were very clear they wanted back anything that was theirs (so basically just laptop and a door key) - very reasonable and entirely as I expected, but they were twats about it (not just getting the laptop back, the whole debacle), so I politely said I would be taking back everything that was mine from school…4 car loads, including several pieces of furniture, later and I’d taken all of my stuff. I’d bought a lot of things over the years and ended up donating a lot of it to the school my nephew was at, there was just no way I was leaving it there!

I have a pair of scissors from my first teaching job. I don’t think I thought about it- we did so much work at home and that’s where they were when I finished.

However my current job has issued nothing but a laptop. I bought a stand on expenses. The monitor is repurposed from DS1. My phone is an old one of mine… so no risk of me appropriating anything! let alone a chair!

Oh similar here. A dead twig in a pot at the entrance of a school I worked in over twenty five years ago. It was unloved and uncared for. I ‘rescued’ it. I planted it in my garden. It turned out to be a beautiful Magnolia tree. I was really sad to leave it when I moved house but hopefully the new owners appreciate its blooms every spring.

my employer only wants laptops and phones back. Desks, monitors, chairs etc they don’t want back

I also have a plant rescued in the pandemic! It's thriving and is quite a statement piece now that it's looked after properly. The only other thing I have, which I'll return when I leave, is an office chair liberated during the same lockdown run as the plant. Tech has to go back and it's just as well, I wouldn't want it. Some of my colleagues use their work laptop as their only laptop, but I wouldn't want my personal banking data etc on my work laptop.

2 monitors, docking station, multiple power supplies…yup😉

No, never. I did take home the office spider plant when lockdown happened though. Then the office closed completely. I returned all the various VPN cables etc and the printer but the spider plant stayed with me. No-one asked after him. And I had gone into the dark abandoned office a week after lockdown to use the photocopier and he was there all alone. Rescue mission really.