What if you sold it?

That would be ridiculous right you could be thinking, programming and improving the product to get a better bonus in the end rather than sell soda off of craigslist or ebay.

But you see that is how they think about it. You are stealing it and could be doing <insert the worst possible thing>. That is what management might come to conclusion about.

Another perspective + a story. (Warning: getting a bit prejudiced here). I have heard of foreign H-1B workers (won't name a country will stop at a vague level of prejudice) stuff their backpacks with soda. Stay late, look around, see if anyone is looking start shoving soda cans to fill the backpack up as much as they can carry.

It wasn't that management was upset, you see, it was other co-workers that were disturbed by that. Why? Because they realize they are working with "that" person. That would be disturbing to me. Is the company not paying them enough. Are they a kleptomaniac. Did they grow up poor and learned to steal food. What else are they stealing? Are they sabotaging our product? Do I want them around? Questions like that.

They complain. How does management react. Well they could lay off so and so. But heck he is chugging along programming and we got him on H-1B sponsorship. Laying him off because of a soda issue is worse than just making everyone pay for soda and, in return we get to save couple of thousand dollars a year.

That is how I heard about* (from another party, so this might have been made up, I don't know, take it for what it is worth).

I don't think your story is prejudiced. I can only imagine how coming to work at [major tech company] from [developing nation] would be such a mind-fuck that the person may honesty have no idea what the intent of the 'complimentary sodas in the kitchen' policy actually is.

Putting a sign up in the kitchen is always the wrong solution.

God damn that was depressing to read. I've seen various levels of cheapness but this takes the cake. Stuff like this makes me ashamed of being an Indian, really. Oh well..

And I don't think what you said was prejudiced either.

> I've seen various levels of cheapness but this takes the cake. Stuff like this makes me ashamed of being an Indian, really.

Don't feel ashamed, this level of cheapness has nothing to do with your nationality.

My dad was a physician, born and raised in the US. He earned a good living, worked very hard (he never had fewer than 2 jobs the whole 3 decades I knew him), and saved money religiously. And he was very frugal as well: he never went into debt for anything, drove cars till well after they fell apart, had clothing that I know was older than I which he wore till the day he died.

One of his great loves, though, was to steal things from the hospitals he worked at. Anything that wasn't bolted down - office supplies, filing cabinets, tables, chairs, desk lamps. At one point, he was bringing home hard boiled eggs that he pocketed in the staff room, because obviously we couldn't afford food. Several times when we were doing remodeling at home, I got to keep a lookout for security while we snuck bags of construction waste into the dumpsters at work.

Now, you didn't know the guy so it might not be obvious, but this was all about not spending a cent more than he had to. So, don't feel ashamed because some of your fellow country men are taking soda from work.

I don't think this has nothing to do with nationality. I work in a MNC in India and we have free sodas. I have never seen any one raid the soda at the end of the day. In fact there are lot of sodas left at the end of the day even though they stock only as much required for one day of consumption. Bottom line there are ass holes everywhere, nothing to do with nationality or race.

Why did no one confront the individual?

I find it seriously backwards that no one had the spine to walk up to the person, talk with him about courtesy, cultural norms, and basically use "implied shame" to do the rest. If the behavior continued, a more direct approach "I saw you take the sodas last night" could also suffice.

I mean, why would putting a suitcase full of sodas == sabotaging product? It's pathological behavior in the over-abundance environment, but seriously?

Is Redmond a foreign country or something?

It's generally not considered Googley to smuggle soda out of the office. Nobody will stop you because Google by-and-large trusts their employees, but I've heard coworkers complain about people who take home food from the microkitchens, and I've gotten friendly ribbing when I brought a microkitchen soda to an off-site where everyone else was drinking beer (which I don't drink).

Really?

Not so much in Seattle, but in MTV people seemed to raid the MKs on their way out of the office. It felt like some sort of communal effort to ensure that the next day's stock would all be fresh.

I think this may have been one of those cultural changes that happens when you double the size of the company in 2 years and norms are not explicitly stated...

I started as a Noogler in 2009 and my original cubemate was a pre-IPO Googler who started around 2002. I asked him what some of the biggest changes have been since he started, and he said that there was less of a feeling of community and more of one of entitlement. The snacks in the microkitchen was a specific example he used, that in the beginning everyone understood they were for office use only but around 2006-2007 he started to see people stockpiling them.

More generally - the perks you get as a Googler are not because you were so awesome that Google decided to hire you. They're there to build a sense of community and common purpose. General guideline for when something's okay: Are you in this together with your coworkers, or are you in it alone?

Strange, I've never heard anything of the sort here.

  | Smuggling? Really?

As others suspected, and partially confirmed above, someone was abusing the free soda, by taking significant quantities of it home. If Microsoft has to refill their fridges every day because someone takes home all of the extra soda at the end of the day, is this supposed to be 'part of the culture?'

If someone is rolling out suitcases full of soda, it might not warrant removing the free soda perk, but it definitely warrants calling attention to it, and finding out who is doing it (and possibly giving them the boot).

Its even worse at Microsoft China: they empty fridges after 6 PM or so, and they never stock them very fully. So if you work at night or on the weekend, you are pretty much SOL on anything but hot or luke warm water (its a Chinese thing, I would kill for a water cooler), or taking a 10 minute walk to the nearest convenience store outside the building. Suffice it to say, I never overtime at the office, its just too much of a logistical nightmare if I get thirsty.

But I guess they did have a big theft problem N years ago that justifies this behavior. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this would be a real problem.

Can't you just drink tea like a proper resident of China?

I would rather get a decent Chai, impossible here.

What's the difference? Or rather, what do you mean by Chai? As far as I know, that's just a different word for tea. I guess you might mean some drink that has milk?

For what it's worth, I bring in my own leaves to the office.

Specifically, I want Starbucks to being chai tea lattes to china. Unfortunately no one else will join my protests around their beijing headquarters.

Chai is an Indian flavor, I can get something decent at the local Indian restraunts, but that's it.

OK, I was just asking, because Chai is also e.g. the Turkish word for tea. (I guess it's just that some cultures we use the chai-based word for tea instead of the tea-based word use more milk. In Mongolio it's chai as well, and they have lots of milk and butter and salt and pepper.)

It's interesting to see how people interpret the intent of 'complimentary drinks in the office kitchen'.

Would you take home a bunch of sodas if you were going to have a party that weekend?

What if your party guests were exclusively other employees?

What if your party guests were partially other employees, their families, and some unrelated families?

Would you drink an employer-provided soda at home if you weren't thinking about work?

What if you were at the office and not thinking about work?

It depends. If it's a work party, I'd see to arranging some budget for drinks and order some for that party separately from the regular stock.

If it's a private party, I'd look into purchasing cheap soda via the job's supplier, they're usually cheaper than grocery stores.

No.

I could, but I wouldn't. Too much work, and I'm paid well enough that it's easier just to buy soda.

No.

Yes, I do it all the time.

Yes, I do it all the time.

As a former contractor, I saw the occasional bag full of milk cartons. I find it weird. I don't think it's worth a crackdown or treating the employees like babies, though.

It is true that no matter how much you pay a person, they can still be cheap and "exploit" a resource. I don't think it's important enough to worry about on the whole.

It sounds to me like you're suggesting that this sign went up because somebody took a single Diet Mountain Dew home. I strongly suspect that some joker took a case of Diet Mountain Dew home and said "what!? they're free!" when he or she was caught. And I don't think you're suggesting that it's okay to take a case of soda from work.

It's a software company, after all, not a grocery store.