To think that taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing irrespective of what it is

[welshdeb]

I am one of the few volunteers on my dc school PTA. We have little or no help from teachers to run any events except the summer fête.
We try to hold a disco every term where we sell penny sweets (aka haribo I am ashamed to say) and small bars of chocolate.
We keep our unused sweets and chocolate in the store room. We don't always have the same people helping so it's difficult to keep track of what's in there on an ongoing basis. However, I think it's obvious that the stuff isn't the school's as they only have fruit for tuck these days.
We have been noticing that our stocks aren't going as far as usual and head said yesterday that she had caught a teacher a few times coming out of the store room eating our chocolates. It seems this has been going on a while.
By the way us volunteers are always scrupulous in ensuring we always pay for anything we or our children have. In fact we don't ask for for any expenses like phone or paper ink laminating sheets etc
So AIBU to be pissed off with this teacher and to think if she did it in a shop it would be theft and the fact it it the pta's is irrelevant.

To all those who se not problem with this...

Would it be OK for the pupils to start taking home school resources?

Text books, exercise books, library books etc?

After all, they are all in a public spaces!

think you need a lockable space for storage.

its not the crime of the century

I assume that the teacher is allowed to go into the stock room and help themselves to the pens/paper etc.

If the sweets are not clearly labelled as belonging to the PTA, perhaps they simply assumed that they were free to help themselves to the sweets as well as other materials in the stock room.

I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt before flinging around serious accusations of theft - in this case I would assume a simple misunderstanding.

A polite note making it clear that the sweets are for PTA fundraising will probably end the problem.

The teacher knows he/she is stealing. They don't think they'll get caught though so they don't care. I'm sure they'd be very red faced if they were caught. I very much doubt there's any "confusion" going on.

Many, many people from all walks of life think it's ok to steal little things of low value. It's strange.

I think if you just made it be generally known, not in a big deal sort of way, that it had been noticed that sweets were going missing it would probably stop.

Pip, the op has already said that the box is labelled pta. You're a good soul to give the benefit of the doubt but there's a petty pilferer in that school.

Hmmmm - in which case I'd be tempted to store the sweets at home until the next event, and ask the head to clarify with staff that PTA stuff doesn't belong to the school and has had to unfortunately be rehoused due to items going missing.

It's so sad that so much trust (essential for the PTA/school relationship to work properly) has been lost over a few penny sweeties. That's what sticky fingers will cause though .

The sweetie stall at our PTA events raises quite a bit of money. So it is important people don't just help themselves!

I'd ask the head about reminding teachers anything in the PTA box is the property of the PTA and used for fundraising, and is not for people to help themselves. And ask him or her whether the PTA could stick a notice to that effect on the stockroom door. Might shame the culprit into mending their ways...

Well, you could always "borrow" the teacher's car and she if she complains!

Just because something 'isn't the crime of the century' doesn't make it right, imo. The teacher has had to rootle round in a box that is labelled as PTA property to get the chocolates they took.

I agree with the poster who said that, if a child had been caught taking sweets from the PTA box, they would have been in big trouble - why should a teacher be held to a lesser standard?