Stealing From The Company

We're not talking about actual theft here; instead we are talking about a bit of DoubleSpeak that one encounters in the workplace, used by employers as a justification for MicroManagement, among other things.

"Stealing from the company" is a phrase some employers (Wal-Mart is often alleged to use this phrase) use to describe any of the following behaviors:

Work on anything other than the assigned task(s) on company time (excluding the 15-minute breaks hourly employees in the US are required to be given)
Giving less than 100% effort while on the clock
Disagreeing with them about WhoOwnsYourMind

Sometimes, this phrase is used for FullTimeExempt employees--a bit curious, as part of the definition of FullTimeExempt is (should be?) that the employee manages his/her own time.

Derivation is obvious; company asserts that while the employee is on the clock; the employee owes full devotion and effort to company. Anything less is depriving company of what rightfully belongs to it; hence, stealing. For FullTimeExempt employees, some companies think they own you 24/7

Of course, from a legal standpoint (at least in the U.S.), the notion that this is theft is hogwash. Ensuring that employees are productive is the employer's problem; the cops won't come haul you off and book you for sending e-mails to Mom while at work. The employer is entitled to fire you if you do so against company policy, but even then they must pay you all wages due; employers may not dock an employee's wages for loafing. At least not in the U.S.

An employer's attitude to minor instances of this is a good measure of how good that employer is. Obviously, a company should deal with employees who don't get their jobs done; however, some companies insist that even a five minute phone call with the wife, or a trip to the restroom, is a serious offense -- equivalent to hanging out at the water-cooler all day.

The notion of theft is also hogwash from a philosophical and moral standpoint. You enter into an employment contract with a company. They agree to pay you. You agree to be an employee. If one of the parties feels the other is not living up to the bargain, then the former can dissolve the agreement. Simple as that.

Not really. It is always easier for an employee to resign than it is for an employee to be fired.

That *really* depends where you are. Averaged over all employments, it is probably exactly backwards.
- I can assure you that as an employer in the UK, firing someone is nearly impossible. Making someone redundant is difficult. When you hire someone you'd better be damn sure you want to keep them. And no, carefully worded contracts of employment don't help, because a disgruntled employee will claim that the contract is unfair and therefore non-binding. They will then get legal aid and tie you up in litigation. I will never again voluntarily become an employer, and I'm not the only one. The people I have now are superb, without exception, but I will not quickly put on someone new, no matter how experienced, talented or useful.
- In the UnitedStates, for those unfamiliar with labor law here, the default mode of employement is "at will"--meaning the employee can quit, or the employer can choose to terminate, at any time and with or without cause. However, there are a few cases where wrongful termination can exist, even in the context of at-will employment. For example, employees may not be fired due to race, religion, sex, disability, pregnancy, family status, etc. Nor may employees be (legally) fired for reporting workplace or legal violations to the authorities; though termination of "whistle-blowers" still does occur (often on trumped-up grounds). Massive layoffs are generally subject to the "plant closing" law; in which employees must be provided 90 days(?) notice. The employer can require employees to work those 90 days, or the employer can choose to dismiss them immediately but must continue to pay their salary for the 90 day period. Employees who are represented by unions generally have collective bargaining agreements, which usually spell out different terms and conditions of employment; high-level executives also generally negotiate contracts of employment as well.

Moral admonitions and finger wagging don't enter into it, except as a means of guilt-tripping, as mentioned up above.

You get paid a certain amount. That amount is completely abstract. It is simply what you were able to negotiate. It's whatever you were able to pull out of the company. And they do what they can to get what they can from you, for the least cost on their part. This is no honour oath, nor is it any kind of personal vow of fealty.

The "amount of effort you put in" is also abstract. It is most abstract when evaluated in terms of the minutiae of how a person lives out his work day. It is less abstract when evaluated in terms of actual concrete results, in the end tally.

This should all be obvious.

You're not an employer, are you?

(Begin new author, not writer above) --CharlieMitchell) An Employer Perspective:

I manage a small US technology company. I have an system to avoid the StealingFromTheCompany anti-pattern. It starts with recognizing that employees have other things to do in addition to work and those things don't all fit neatly into non-work hours. So I tell my employees to figure out what work hours make them productive. (Productivity is a little subjective. When they do things I like, I tell them what I like about it and to do more things like it. When they do things I dislike, I tell them why and ask them to do less of it.) I tell them to shop on-line during using the company provided Internet, to call their families on our long distance bill, to show up late if they had a flash of brilliance and worked late the night before, to take a three-hour lunch when their daughter has a school event, to leave work early if they think their work would benefit from an afternoon of biking. I also tell them to buy themselves comfortable chairs and expense them and I tell them the company will pay for books they are willing to read. We have a nap room for sleeping on the job. The result is fierce loyalty, pride, hard work, and good productivity. The odd thing is, this is a very easy approach to manage because no one wants to lose this kind of job. --CharlieMitchell

This is an AntiPattern.