Post by gsteemso on Apr 9, 2016 23:47:37 GMT
I think your problem with the theft question is therefore one of definitions.
Companies who ask such screening questions are concerned about DELIBERATE AND SELFISH THEFT, but in considering how to honestly answer, you immediately (and, in my mind, inexplicably) conflated that with ACCIDENTAL ACCUMULATION. The two are not remotely similar.
No one I have ever met, not even the most deranged martinet, would seriously initiate a firing over someone ACCIDENTALLY acquiring items of small value. In that situation, the question of a "second chance" would never arise because no one sane would consider the matter to have used up the first one. Taking a company pen normally falls into this category even if at some level one is nominally aware it is not personally owned by the taker, because it is a consumable supply that the company expects you to use on its behalf until it stops working and chances are it will still be in your pocket when you return to work the next day.
An employee who KNEW they were committing a theft and cheerfully did it anyway, no matter how small the value of what was taken, is a completely different matter. This is the kind of person who makes a habit of stealing as many supplies from their job as they can get away with, and outfits friends, family members, passersby, etc. with them in order to avoid paying a few cents out of pocket to buy their own. Such a person has little or no respect for the concept of ownership save as applies to preventing similar fates from befalling items they themselves possess (and, in many cases, places little weight on other personal boundaries except in their own interest either), and also would probably consider themselves not to have committed an offence worthy of using up that first chance… but a reasonable and law-abiding individual with at least minimal ethics would not agree.
That is the difference.
Companies who ask such screening questions are concerned about DELIBERATE AND SELFISH THEFT, but in considering how to honestly answer, you immediately (and, in my mind, inexplicably) conflated that with ACCIDENTAL ACCUMULATION. The two are not remotely similar.
No one I have ever met, not even the most deranged martinet, would seriously initiate a firing over someone ACCIDENTALLY acquiring items of small value. In that situation, the question of a "second chance" would never arise because no one sane would consider the matter to have used up the first one. Taking a company pen normally falls into this category even if at some level one is nominally aware it is not personally owned by the taker, because it is a consumable supply that the company expects you to use on its behalf until it stops working and chances are it will still be in your pocket when you return to work the next day.
An employee who KNEW they were committing a theft and cheerfully did it anyway, no matter how small the value of what was taken, is a completely different matter. This is the kind of person who makes a habit of stealing as many supplies from their job as they can get away with, and outfits friends, family members, passersby, etc. with them in order to avoid paying a few cents out of pocket to buy their own. Such a person has little or no respect for the concept of ownership save as applies to preventing similar fates from befalling items they themselves possess (and, in many cases, places little weight on other personal boundaries except in their own interest either), and also would probably consider themselves not to have committed an offence worthy of using up that first chance… but a reasonable and law-abiding individual with at least minimal ethics would not agree.
That is the difference.