I work in a huge open plan office – c800 people on each floor. We are a small team of 8, and together with several other small teams make up a larger department of about 50. Each small team tends to buy its own treats, biscuits, chocolate etc, but due to the office layout, these usually end up being kept on top of chest height cupboards which border the walkways round the office – there isn’t really anywhere to keep them that’s out of reach. Even within our department of 50, we all ask each other if we want to have something to eat out of another team’s supply, out of courtesy as all treats are bought with personal money, there’s no kitty or anything.
But there is another department of about 200 a bit further down, and some of them think it’s perfectly fine to just walk past and take team treats without even saying anything – we’ve had people cutting the first slice of what is obviously a home made cake and walking off with it, grabbing handfuls of sweets and so on. These are people we do not know or have anything to do with workwise as they work in a totally different area. They never ask if its okay to take anything, just help themselves!
One of us always says something when this happens (like ‘ahem, I think you’ll find that I made that cake for my team, not for people I don’t know’, or ‘excuse me those are our team’s biscuits, not for anyone to take one’), as we all think it’s downright bloody rude, but we’ve had responses such as ‘well don’t put it where I can see it then’, or just now ‘well we’re all one big team in this company aren’t we, so you should share’. And most of the time they still take whatever they wanted anyway, laugh and walk off!
AWBU and petty or is this really fucking rude??