where I work, with food, it happens constantly that employees take some of that food and before it goes to waste, they eat it. I’ve been doing it for the last 3 years. It’s really a lot of food.
Apparently somebody doesn’t like me and complained to our manager accusing me of eating some of that food. My manager and an employee who used to eat the food and even told me once to help myself, asked me if I took some of the food. ‘yes, like I’ve been doing for the last 3 years, exactly like him, otherwise it goes to waste.’
‘that’s stealing’ was all the manager said. ‘Don’t do that again.’
I just said fine and left it at that thinking that would be the end of it.
2 days later I get a letter from hr, asking about an accusation against me for stealing food and asking me to see them to tell them my side of the story.
It wouldn’t make any sense to lie at this point, because my manager and that other guy who used to eat that food before it goes to waste already heard me clearly stating that yes, and I don’t know who made the accusation. I did eat it, so I stuck to that story.
Stupid? Only you can decide, but would it have made any sense to claim otherwise at that point?
If this is something I should change in the future, how would I get away with it, or try to get away with it?
To those of you to the left tempted to write I shouldn’t tell on my coworkers, when one of my coworkers did exactly that, you really don’t see how stupid is that?
I would just say I’ve been working here a long time and thought it was policy that I could eat because that’s what I’d been told in the past. Now that I know it’s against policy, my bad! Apologies! Thanks for letting me know.
Depending on the company, you just admitted to them you stole and will be fired. If it’s a large enough company HR will just walk you right out the door after saying that.
From an HR perspective it would depend on if the policy was clearly communicated to employees prior to the incident and if that could be proven in a wrongful termination lawsuit. It’s a perfectly acceptable answer if the employee really wasn’t aware of the policy. There are for sure some companies that aren’t as risk averse, but if you get fired for something like a rule they didn’t tell you about that’s grounds for a lawsuit.
Also, add i have been told so by x when i started
I agree, a lot of these other comments seem to be making this a huge thing. The only reason these “stealing” rules exist for this is because people will abuse it and make extra food that will go to waste so that they can eat it.
If that company is going to fire someone on the first offense without a warning because they ate food, they’re incredibly stupid.