If you crowd rats together in a small cage (the modern open office) they will start irrationally attacking and abusing each other. 95% of office dysfunction can be explained by this.
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A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
71–80 of 220 posts
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#72Your company’s HR is terrible. One suspects this could be written on every occasion.
I think it bears repeating that HR exists to protect the company , not the employee . Often, an interaction with HR will work out terribly for the employee when HR is acting in the company's best interests. That's not the case here though. They're just terrible.
I've been berated by people (especially HR people) for giving this advice, but I couldn't agree with this more. HR does not exist to help the employee, period. Because they manage benefits, it's easy to get confused and think of them as your advocate, but they are not. If you have an issue in the workplace, you first must figure out what to do, and then you talk to HR. It should be your last step.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#73There's an update to the original post. What a lovely ending to the story. http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-m...
It is a lovely ending! What I fear for is that the termination will be in his records and he will have to explain this extremely bizzare story to whoever asks or is interested. I'm glad it all worked out so well for him. Hopefully that silly detail will not affect his future.
That would suck, but it's a good story.
I'd hope the owner of the company would be willing to provide a reference explaining that he was the victim of misconduct.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#74IANAL, but could the person file a police report for theft, then forward it to HR to ask for their assistance in a criminal case?
not going to help if HR was sleeping with the thief (which was later uncovered)
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#75Well, 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?
Why are you inventing scenarios in this story that you could never possibly prove to exist?
Because I don't believe the story, and the ending certainly seems to good to be true, which usually means it is.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#76One 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…
The obvious answer is "well good luck doing it on your own in two weeks", then quitting as asap.
I wouldn't work at a place where the person tasked with supervising and organizing my work is clearly incapable of doing so and also rude.
Edit: Unless you have recourse with higher ups - in that case try talking to his superiors.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#77Kind 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.
I'm sorry, but how are the other replies to you defending this behavior...?
I have never "accidentally" eaten an entire lunch that wasn't mine. I'm actually offended that people are defending this. It's stealing. It's petty, childish, dishonest behavior. I think I would just be dumbstruck speechless if a coworker actually was brazen enough to just take my food and eat it. It's comically absurd.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#78Reddit's /r/legaladvice subreddit has had a lot of interesting corporate mismanagement stories lately (with the typical take-with-a-grain-of-salt caveat).
There was a recent "poisoning" case where instead the OP was the victim (https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/89wgwm/tricked...), commenters found out the perpetrator posted in the subreddit before (https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8825e8/threw_a...), and the outcome is just as satisfying (https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8d0z1u/tricked...).
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
What "records"? Unless he filed for unemployment, the only other people who would know would be his employers.
And employers rarely confirm anything other than hire and seperation dates during reference calls due to liability/litigation risks.
Not every place is so insane, this sounds like a small company with an involved owner.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#80The story reminds me of burglar suing the house owner and win, because slipped on his way out ...