"Stealing" free things from work

[FickleUsernameChooser]

WIBU to pocket about 6-8 sachets of the free sugar that comes with the free tea and coffee at work for when I go camping next week?

It feels wrong although I'd argue if I was here I'd be using them anyway (and possibly more) and it is offered free anyway. Seems a bit pointless to have to pack a bigger container of sugar.

GO TO STARBUCKS!

Wow this thread has been quite a wake up call. I've never thought twice about taking the odd pen or notepad home from my office but clearly I am just a petty thief

TAke the sugar.

I best watch out for my p45 - I've been know to wrap presents at my desk using company sticky tape, write out birthday cards using company pens and at the last meeting I scooped up a load of left over hospitality for my kids' lunchboxes the next day.

Agree with others though, why not just scoop some form home into a little tub - that's what would have occurred to me first before the snaffling from work thing. if you work in a penny pinching place where backstabbing is rife, you'd do well to urge caution but the fact that free tea and coffee is provided in the first place makes me think you'd be ok if you really have to

This thread would be great for an Introduction to Ethics class.

Morality and ethics are complicated and have been theorised about by philosophers for centuries. This thread shows why.

Taking the sugar is basically a victimless crime. No one is getting hurt. But what if everyone did it? And where do you draw the line between sugar, notepads, computer accessories, office furniture...

Nothing is black and white, that's for sure. Of course the question if legality is something else entirely.

I'd take it :)

I wouldn't think twice about it. Sugar, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, milk all provided for our use. There is no policy dictating how they are to be used. Some people use loads, others don't touch them.

If suddenly the cost of providing these things went through the roof, eyebrows might be raised. If someone were removing vast amounts and clearly taking the piss, someone might have a word. Fortunately we are adults though, and can be treated like adults and trusted to make our own decisions as to what is reasonable.

I could be taking a handful of sugar to sprinkle on my porridge at breakfast or on my strawberries at lunch or to eat on the way home, no one would bat an eyelid. I'm sure if they were to decide that sugar is for use in hot drinks only to be consumed on the premises during working hours only they will send round and all desks email.

Then we will all take the piss whilst whilst pointing out the billion pounds worth of revenue we generated for them this year.

River

I thought the same and I also remembered my nursing tutor who also discussed a similar issue and counselled that "sloppiness of thinking (or lack of it) in one area will lead to sloppiness in others." That people actively consider the issue with regards to their own working life and then imagine if they were that small business owner trying to make ends meet- would they be quite so sanguine?

BTW my favourite High St indy cafe has to make £700 per week just to pay her rent and struggles terribly. Think on that guys before you stuff your pockets with condiments you didn't need or use at the time.

It's a slippery slope. Taking the meal trolley example. Someone takes leftovers. Then they decide that they'll just hold back a bread roll. Then they order a dinner for patient X who they know is nil by mouth. Then they decide that even though patient y went home just after breakfast, they order a lunch.... etc.

One pen, a handful of pens, a box of pens...

A sheet of paper, a small bunch of paper, a team of paper, a box of paper....

If you have to take something secretive, you shouldn't be taking it.

WTAF? I didn't think this would still be going?

Given that my company allows us to take our computers, mobile phones, etc home for personal use, gives us free pizza, tea, coffee and occasionally fruit and often gives us "old" equipment for tuppance ha'penny, I don't actually think in my specific instance that I would get into trouble for it.

However, in honour of MN I have decided that if I am going to pinch some, I'll smuggle it out in my mooncup.

Brilliant :o

Blimey. I used to rob everything from work; pens, post it's, files, folders... people used to put the nice pots they had their plants in the kitchen after they'd died.

I took them.

i should have been fired clearly!

at mooncup smuggling.

Sorry if this has already been said - I've only read the first and last pages - but surely the best thing to so is to take one extra sachet each time you have a cup of tea/coffee for a week or so. That way you're not stuffing a huge handful into your handbag in one go, but still get plenty of sugar!

Ha ha excellent return OP!

(might give you an itchy minge though)

Just read back and saw someone had already said it! Sorry!

I am a fairly honest person and do agonise over stuff like being overcharged etc but really....some sugar sachets. Just take them.

I have pens and post it notes from work all over my house. I don't set out to steal them but take them out on visits etc and they just end up in the house. Technically theft I guess but I don't lose sleep over it.

Take the sugar if you want.

Here's an innovative solution:

For the next few days at work, either don't drink tea, or put up with drinking sugarless tea. Then, for every sugar you didn't use at work, you can ethically take one for your camping trip, guilt free.

Then if a colleague or boss pulls you up on your supposed misdemeanour, you can explain the approach above, and they'll just think you're bananas, rather than a thief

This is BRILLIANT.

I'm not sure what I'm most agog at - that anyone would start a thread on it, that it would be considered gross misconduct, that some have suggested you ask your manager (that would make you look really good, wouldn't it?), that over two hundred posts have been written . . .

It is another world here, another world .

I love the Mooncup smuggling suggestion. Alternatively you could try the Shawshank Redemption approach. Pour the sugar in your knickers, shuffle outside, using a variety of squats and lunges release the sugar from your knickers and scatter on the ground. Then sneak back in the dead of night and scoop it off the gravel.

Crafty.

Apologies for not fully rtft, if someone has already said this, but could you not take the sugar and buy some naice biscuits on your return?

It all depends on the likelihood of getting caught.

That's how I roll anyhow

Or you could put the energy into lobbying for a pay rise so you can buy your own sugar?

Everyone will get some naice biscuits as well.

Itchy fanjo is a small price to pay for convenient sugar sachets, I'm sure you'll all agree.

I think I might have to nc again after this

Change it to a variant of the Mel Gibson 'Sugartits' to reflect your new hiding place.