Forums | MacLife

justine · 2006-07-11 12:59 am

I don't mean the pens and pencils and stuff like that. Bathroom supplies. My company supplies free tampons and pads to female employees. The metal boxes they are kept in are left unlocked. It's a very nice and convenient thing for them to do. I know people take some home from time to time which isn't a real big deal because sometimes we all get caught off guard and haven't gone to the store, but some people NEVER go to the store.

This morning i saw one of my coworkers taking pads home. It looked like she was stocking up for winter. I couldn't believe it! Anyone seen any blatant thefts at work? People that take stuff and don't care who sees?

Oath · 2006-07-11 2:00 am

I havent seen anything like that in my new job of about 6 months (GEICO) but they brag about being the "low cost provider" and horde supplies. My old job Wal-Mart had some rampant theft by 1 or 2 people and everyone else didnt touch a thing. So in short not much to report.

macnuke · 2006-07-11 7:22 am

when I worked in engineering, we also had a fab shop. one guy was busted when they found out he would "accidently bend" wrong curves on sheet metal, "accidently cut pipes the wrong length", toss it all in the scrap dumpster, then later, remove his "waste" and weld up some nice BBQ pits to sell to people.

justine · 2006-07-11 9:23 am

macnuke wrote:
when I worked in engineering, we also had a fab shop. one guy was busted when they found out he would "accidently bend" wrong curves on sheet metal, "accidently cut pipes the wrong length", toss it all in the scrap dumpster, then later, remove his "waste" and weld up some nice BBQ pits to sell to people.

There was a guy at work that got fired for putting an arc welder in the dumpster and then retrieving it in the morning. He was an idiot. Apparently he never noticed all those cameras outside. There was a woman a few years ago that got fired, and arrested, for stealing gold from our wafer fab area. They started noticing the supply going down bit by bit when it wasn't being used in a process, so they started watching people. They busted her. She was stealing it and sending it to relatives in India. She screwed herself, too. They offered her a deal. If she gave it all back, they wouldn't press charges. She couldn't get it back. The sad part about that is that her daughter also worked for the same department and had to suffer the looks of coworkers that were whispering about her mother. She ended up quitting.

notJames · 2006-07-11 9:38 am

When I worked at a liquor store, one of my coworkers was notorious for cracking open a long neck in the cooler during his shifts. Some nights, he would take a couple of six packs home with him. A real class act. Typical frat boy on his way to an unremarkable marketing job or something. He had a hot girlfriend who he totally didn't deserve. She was a really nice person, and her parents were loaded. Sigh.

sturner · 2006-07-11 10:30 am

no, I never do anything like that. Just the odd offshore company that I divert funds to. The birthday party for my relatives, where I rented a Greek island with company funds.

The special loan account that I don't have to pay back.

My name? oh, just call me ken.

VegasACF · 2006-07-11 10:59 am

notJames wrote:
Typical frat boy on his way to an unremarkable marketing job or something.

Nice stereotype. I became a member of a fraternity in my undergrad days, and I can say I cannot think of a single of my brothers who would do such a thing--we always paid for our beer, even if it was Beast Light.

Anyway...

The number one thing employees steal from their employers is time. My current job is a prime example. There's a paralegal in the office who also happens to own several rental houses. She spends office hours taking phone calls on her cell phone, making signs directing people towards her homes for rent, et cetera. I'd report her to the boss, but the boss is her husband. He blithely ignores her wastes of time and pays her (nearly twice what I'm making as an intern) for all the hours she should have been working (which sticks in the craw of the other paralegal and I, who have to take up the slack she creates). It wouldn't bother me nearly so much if I didn't have to clean up after her mistakes in briefs and filings, have to do jobs she was assigned but somehow couldn't find the time to complete, and have to be grilled constantly about the number of billable hours I submit when they show me doing the job she was assigned.

If my boss didn't have so much to teach me (he's really a brilliant lawyer, anticipating with aplomb what his counterparts will do, and cutting down the oppositions' forests without having to concentrate on every tree they plant) I would move on. One more year of school... One more year...

davic3 · 2006-07-11 11:57 am

In a restaurant I used to work at a long time ago one stupid waitress would take the credit slips people would leave behind and on her following shift when people paid with cash she would charge the dinner to the card using the number and pocket the cash. She ended up taking the deal that the DA offered of six months in jail and paying back all the money (over 15,000) plus interest.

[HTO]SueZQ · 2006-07-11 4:35 pm

I used to work at a decent sized truck company. We were bought out by a larger outfit, but they kept on the same staff. Big mistake. I found out tens of thousands of dollars were being "misdirected." They would hide jobs performed from the management at the larger company by sending out separate invoices and not reporting it to the accounting guy at the larger company so that he would bill the appropriate people. The customers, unaware, would pay the invoice to the office I worked and that money would go into a bank account that the larger company didn't know about.
I got laid off about 3 weeks after everything came out, but the CEO knew that I was innocent since I was just the phone girl. They just didn't need me anymore since they were closing the office.
I stole a box of Sharpie Markers on my way out the door, so maybe I'm not totally innocent. Haha!

Tallgeese · 2006-07-11 5:03 pm

I've got a couple NATO Sea Sparrows mounted on my wall.

Last edited by Tallgeese (2006-07-11 5:03 pm)

Pariah · 2006-07-11 5:42 pm

At the last print shop I worked at the honor box where we could buy chips, gum and candy, always came up short. At first it was small, a few bucks but pretty soon it was like $30, which was about the total amount it should have had.
It was a real poser because it was a small shop, we were all making good, above market wages it was kinda driving the owner of the place nuts.

Then one of the girls from bindery quit.

The box was never short a penny after she was gone.

smurfing bindery people tongue

Zetetic Apparatchik · 2006-07-11 5:49 pm

Bit off topic but there was an interesting bit in Freakonomics on honour boxes.

resedit · 2006-07-11 6:05 pm

I work at Fort Knox ... wink

resedit · 2006-07-11 6:11 pm

OK - seriously, when I was a lifeguard at a public pool, I would collect the money on ticket sales at the beginning of the shift. It was 50 cents to get in.

A lot of kids would pay with silver dollars, I can only presume stolen from coin collections. I'd substitute real dollars and pocket the silver dollars (which were worth about $10.00 a piece, none of them were great condition or rare). But so did all the other life guards when it was their job to take the money.

Thus - we didn't really steal from the pool, it got the money it expected - but I guess thinking back, we should have reported it to the police - 12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.

justine · 2006-07-11 7:05 pm

resedit wrote:
OK - seriously, when I was a lifeguard at a public pool, I would collect the money on ticket sales at the beginning of the shift. It was 50 cents to get in.

A lot of kids would pay with silver dollars, I can only presume stolen from coin collections. I'd substitute real dollars and pocket the silver dollars (which were worth about $10.00 a piece, none of them were great condition or rare). But so did all the other life guards when it was their job to take the money.

Thus - we didn't really steal from the pool, it got the money it expected - but I guess thinking back, we should have reported it to the police - 12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.

What did you do with them?

longboy · 2006-07-11 8:02 pm

Pariah wrote:
smurfing bindery people

HEY! I was a smurfing bindery person in college roll cool

At my current employer, one of our employees was recently canned for stealing Hard Drives freshly delivered. We supply a lot of our satellite imagery on hard drives, just because of the sheer size of the image scenes. Well, we get rather large shipments of hard drives delivered weekly, and they are 'securely' stored in our production/delivery department. Evidently this employee worked the 3rd shift, and would park her car in the shipping/receiving bay in the middle of the night and open the overhead door and move them out during her night shift.

Stupid woman didn't think that:
a) video cameras throughout our office would catch her, and
b) using her badge to "Badge-In" to the production department would give Security a clue as to who was stealing them

She was canned and had to return all the hard drives. I'm not sure if they pressed charges against her or not, but they should have.

Orion · 2006-07-11 8:10 pm

resedit wrote:
OK - seriously, when I was a lifeguard at a public pool, I would collect the money on ticket sales at the beginning of the shift. It was 50 cents to get in.

A lot of kids would pay with silver dollars, I can only presume stolen from coin collections. I'd substitute real dollars and pocket the silver dollars (which were worth about $10.00 a piece, none of them were great condition or rare). But so did all the other life guards when it was their job to take the money.

Thus - we didn't really steal from the pool, it got the money it expected - but I guess thinking back, we should have reported it to the police - 12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.

They are worth that much?!?!?!? I have hundreds of them from the late 1870's to the 20's and 30's. My grandpa worked at a bank and collected coins to beat the band.

mackerm · 2006-07-11 8:15 pm

resedit wrote:
12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.

Maybe they took it from a family member's coin collection. Way back, I had a relative who took silver dimes from her daughter's coin collection to put in the washing machine.

resedit · 2006-07-11 8:24 pm

Orion wrote:
resedit wrote:
OK - seriously, when I was a lifeguard at a public pool, I would collect the money on ticket sales at the beginning of the shift. It was 50 cents to get in.

A lot of kids would pay with silver dollars, I can only presume stolen from coin collections. I'd substitute real dollars and pocket the silver dollars (which were worth about $10.00 a piece, none of them were great condition or rare). But so did all the other life guards when it was their job to take the money.

Thus - we didn't really steal from the pool, it got the money it expected - but I guess thinking back, we should have reported it to the police - 12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.
They are worth that much?!?!?!? I have hundreds of them from the late 1870's to the 20's and 30's. My grandpa worked at a bank and collected coins to beat the band.

That's about what they cost at retail coin shops. I never sold any that I got ahold of.

macforme · 2006-07-11 10:29 pm

resedit wrote:
I work at Fort Knox ...

Actually my buddy was stationed at Fort Knox after he got back from Iraq in November. I don't have any interesting stories from him about the fort - now interesting war stories, those he does have.

The company I worked at for 8 years went bankrupt two years ago - a lot of stuff went missing. Apparently several of the office people slipped their computers and monitors outside one of the outer doors the day we closed, hiding them behind some bushes. We had several digital cameras and laptops go missing, the salesman that had them claimed they turned them in. I know of at least 2 Apple 23" LCD's (the old model) that ended up at people's houses - one of those guys also ended up with a PC laptop, PC tower, and a Titanium PowerBook. A couple of external hard drives vanished, and interestingly enough, some of our backup art CD's disappeared (I think one of our sneakier salesman got those, they were all from his accounts). Some of our older films also vanished (screenprinting films) that we were unable to replace - they were old enough that there was no electronic art for them, they had been done by hand as in-camera blow-ups.

*Rant On: Not to mention all the greedy thieving management with their sneaky book-cooking, rotten job forecasting, huge un-earned bonuses, over-extending, underselling, over-staffed, asinine (sp?) programs that overstretched our core business ... (I could go on much longer) that bankrupted us in the first place. The same scumballs that knew we were bankrupt six months before they told us, and that had several offers on the table that could have saved us, weeks before we closed. Rant off*

A few months later we reopened under a new name with new investers and a much smaller crew. I found out how bad we got raped when I went back to work there - it still kind of irks me that they hired back some of the same people that ripped the old company off.

mtpalms · 2006-07-11 11:41 pm

VegasACF wrote:
I'd report her to the boss, but the boss is her husband.

That sucks for you, but it is a brilliant move on their part, both from a business expense standpoint and especially a tax standpoint.

Everytime we get those 'bills' in the mail from the 'yellow pages', that say we need to pay, or our ad (or rather our clients' ads, since it is their mail we get) won't be in the phonebook, and all those companies that 'for a small fee' will file certain business tax forms, so we don't go to jail for noncompliance (which we can file for free thankyouverymuch), we look at each other, and think, "what kind of schmucks are we for not setting up a sweet little 'money for nothing' business like those?

ckm · 2006-07-12 6:30 am

I used to manage an arcade at the resort oceanfront that saw a lot of Quebe�ois (I hope I spelled that correctly) vacationers. They would often get confused between quarters and Susan B. Anthony dollars, and we would frequently have to clear coin jams that were caused by Susan B's or Canadian quarters. Often, the backlog of quarters would be several dollars' worth (sometimes up to $10). Since we had no way of tracing the owners (and we usually gave game credits to those who had trouble with the games), we would end up pocketing the jam change.

Also, when we'd do inventory (count the quarters in the game machines and bills in the change machines), if we ran across a silver quarter or a red bill, we'd exchange it for one of our own...but that's not really stealing, since the value was replaced.

iBubba · 2006-07-12 9:31 am

resedit wrote:
Orion wrote:
resedit wrote:
OK - seriously, when I was a lifeguard at a public pool, I would collect the money on ticket sales at the beginning of the shift. It was 50 cents to get in.

A lot of kids would pay with silver dollars, I can only presume stolen from coin collections. I'd substitute real dollars and pocket the silver dollars (which were worth about $10.00 a piece, none of them were great condition or rare). But so did all the other life guards when it was their job to take the money.

Thus - we didn't really steal from the pool, it got the money it expected - but I guess thinking back, we should have reported it to the police - 12 year old kids continuosly using silver dollars from the late 20's and early 30's probably meant they stole someone's coin collection and were too stupid to know what to do with it.
They are worth that much?!?!?!? I have hundreds of them from the late 1870's to the 20's and 30's. My grandpa worked at a bank and collected coins to beat the band.
That's about what they cost at retail coin shops. I never sold any that I got ahold of.

Here, you two thrifty collectors, you go - baseline values: http://coins.heritageauctions.com/info/ … 0Dollar%20

user · 2006-07-12 10:42 am

I would have nabbed those rare coins, too and not thought twice about it. If they had stayed in the drawer, they would have most likely just gone to the bank and gone back into circulation until someone else took them out. That's how they got into collections in the first place. I regularly checked out the change in any of my cash drawers - but I mostly only found weaties.

no1crush · 2006-07-13 3:54 am

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:
Bit off topic but there was an interesting bit in Freakonomics on honour boxes.

word up

Forums | MacLife

#1 2006-07-11 12:59 am

Stealing from your employer

#2 2006-07-11 2:00 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#3 2006-07-11 7:22 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#4 2006-07-11 9:23 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

macnuke wrote:

#5 2006-07-11 9:38 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#6 2006-07-11 10:30 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#7 2006-07-11 10:59 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

notJames wrote:

#8 2006-07-11 11:57 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#9 2006-07-11 4:35 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#10 2006-07-11 5:03 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#11 2006-07-11 5:42 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#12 2006-07-11 5:49 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#13 2006-07-11 6:05 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#14 2006-07-11 6:11 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

#15 2006-07-11 7:05 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

resedit wrote:

#16 2006-07-11 8:02 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

Pariah wrote:

#17 2006-07-11 8:10 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

resedit wrote:

#18 2006-07-11 8:15 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

resedit wrote:

#19 2006-07-11 8:24 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

Orion wrote:

resedit wrote:

#20 2006-07-11 10:29 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

resedit wrote:

#21 2006-07-11 11:41 pm

Re: Stealing from your employer

VegasACF wrote:

#22 2006-07-12 6:30 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#23 2006-07-12 9:31 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

resedit wrote:

Orion wrote:

resedit wrote:

#24 2006-07-12 10:42 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

#25 2006-07-13 3:54 am

Re: Stealing from your employer

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:

Board footer