101–110 of 220 posts
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Is it illegal to booby trap your property?
It is very illegal. Like, violating the Geneva Conventions level illegal: https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/
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Is it not always wrong to cause someone harm? edit: If he would have poisoned the food and the thief died, would that be ok? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if he did purposely contaminate the food in order to get back at the thief, instead of just talking to him about it, the talk with HR seems justified.
Maybe it is "always wrong" given a particularly rigid and simplistic code of ethics, but in American society at least we are very comfortable with the notion of causing deserved harm (whether physical, financial, or merely emotional) to wrongdoers as a deterrent to others.
In the US the law allows for you to make the case of self defense, it is a defense for violations of the law. I.E. it is always illegal to kill someone, but it is a defense if you kill someone who was trying to kill you..
Things like bobby traps, or poisoning your food against a thief would not be legal under American law. For example I can not setup a series of Automated Gun Turrents in my home to kill anyone that breaks in, but I could (in some states) shoot someone myself if they break in.
In a food theft case as an individual could in fact assault someone possibly even commit battery against someone in order to prevent the from stealing my lunch but I could not say put bobby trap that could cause physical harm to them on the lunch
One mystery that continues to fascinate me is when people at work say things to me that are obviously irrational -- are they sincere or is it some kind of manipulative power play? I've had managers ask me things such as "When will the rebuild of the website be done" and I answer "In two months" and they say "You have two weeks" and I say "Maybe 6 weeks, but not 2" and then they repeat "You've got two weeks." I wonder…
Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals others' stuff is a good, honest person in other parts of their life.
Mistakes happen. There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch, and having a 'zero tolerance' policy is a good way to end up firing an innocent person.
Usually if one is a self-centered jerk who just grabs the first thing that barely looks like their lunch from the fridge and doesn't care much about others.
Or if people just buy similar lunches from the same place and keep all of them on the fridge, confusing similar names/packaging, but yeah, it's usually the 1st case.
Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals others' stuff is a good, honest person in other parts of their life.
Firing someone for a mistake is a fairly extreme response, and should be reserved for extreme mistakes. This sounds like a correctable habit, with some mentoring and coaching.
Well, to me it seems plausible that the writer is not telling the whole truth. They noticed food being stolen from the fridge and he purposely put extremely hot spice in the food to harm the perpetrator. But how do you prove that. And even if you prove it, would it hold in court since the food was stolen?
Unless their plan for revenge started years back when they started slowly building up their tolerance and taste for spicy food, I really don't see how that's even close to the most plausible explanation.
Who steals other people's food? This is completely bizarre to me. Do these people do it every day and just never bring their own lunch? Do they just see something that takes their fancy and decide to nick it? The mind boggles.
Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals others' stuff is a good, honest person in other parts of their life.
Firing someone for a mistake is a fairly extreme response, and should be reserved for extreme mistakes. This sounds like a correctable habit, with some mentoring and coaching.
It's definitely marginal and indicates a kind of thoughtlessness. Firing? Maybe not. But it's not easily forgotten.
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Mistakes happen. There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch, and having a 'zero tolerance' policy is a good way to end up firing an innocent person.
Do tell, which are a couple of those ways that someone might accidentally pick someone else's lunch box, open it, and start eating some unknown food without realizing?
You come back to a missing lunch and become incensed, but start to cool off when given an explanation.
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Mistakes happen. There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch, and having a 'zero tolerance' policy is a good way to end up firing an innocent person.
| There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch Want to give us some examples?
That said, I really can't imagine any situation where it is reasonable if you are talking about people's homemade lunches, in a well labeled lunch box - as is the case in this story.