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’m a trained union steward, I’ve been a “workplace lawyer” against hr investigations in the past. Your first mistake was responding “yes” to an investigation by management instead of asking why. Your second mistake was giving them a time frame for how long you’ve been doing it. But not all is lost, this can be recovered.
First and foremost, do not give any information that is not directly relevant. If they ask yes/no questions, only respond with yes or no. Do not give any additional information unless directly asked about it. If you don’t know an answer, don’t try to explain yourself, just say that you don’t remember. If they ask you the same question several times, tell them that you’ve already answered that question.
Secondly, don’t point to any specific coworkers. Just say that this is a commonplace thing in which several workers participate. The only person you should name is the manager that told you it was ok. Fuck the manager, he’s on HR’s side in all this. But your coworkers shouldn’t get thrown under the bus.
Lastly, form a union so you can get food reclamation as status quo and then formalized in your collective bargaining agreement.
This is the 2nd comment i read suggesting pointing out that it’s common practice for employees but not naming anyone else. I totally get the logic, it’s what I would do too, however it seems like it’s unlikely to survive the obvious next question “could you tell us who else for example?”, or “what gave you the idea that this was common practice?” or “have you personally seen anyone else eating company food?”. If such a question naturally arises you’re now painted in to a corner whereby there’s no evasive or ambiguous phrasing to hide behind and hope for the question to be dropped and if you name someone you’ve now officially gone on record making an accusation you can’t necessarily substantiate and if you point blank refuse you will obviously help construct a narrative that you were stealing and attempted to lie about common practice in order to deflect.
Honestly I think if I thought I knew who had specifically made the accusation and they were also the one who was partaking in the same practice AND I was probed further along just the lines as I described I’d probably feel I had no choice but to name names, though I’d absolutely need to be sure that person did indeed make that complaint.