Comment by teekert

2 months ago

Yes and they will hide their sushi-grabbing because somewhere deep inside they know it's not part of the deal, while at the same time still strongly feeling that they have indeed paid for it.

Ah, to be human!

I'd argue they hide their takeaway because of what GP comment said — not because of anything innate, but because a staff member will not let them.

I grew up in an Asian household of six. We definitely took food home at AYCE places. My parents definitely knew it wasn't OK, but they felt like they were gaming the system (like a dubious life hack of sorts) and saving money, so they were actually quite proud of it, bragging to friends how much they were able to get.

To be human indeed!

  • In the Eastern Bloc states, it used to be so common for workers to steal from the workplace that new moral norms were established around this; if you're not stealing from work, you're stealing from your own family!

    Goes to show just how fragile a high-trust society is. Theft and corruption can easily be normalized to such an extent that not participanting gets reframed as immoral.

    • The slogan of the Russian Revolution of 1917 was: "Factories to the workers, land to the peasants."

      If the factory is yours, then everything inside is yours ;)

      But it's funny how low wages under the broken Soviet economic system turned such things into a semi-official, informal work perks, allowing people to make ends meet.

      5 replies →

    • In Poland, factories' light installations ran on non-standard voltage, so that, if you stole the lightbulb, it'd be useless in your household. Unfortunately, they couldn't figure out similar solution for toilet paper and many other household items.

      As for motivation, beyond the obvious one, people also stole because many items were not available in stores (having a guy who has a connect on toilet paper was a thing back then), and also, since Communism in Poland was actually a Russian dictatorship, the idea was that if you steal from communist factories you're fighting the system and making it fall faster.

    • Wow, I was just saying to a friend that I couldn’t understand people risking their jobs to steal stationery or toilet rolls from the workplace.

      I guess if it’s your moral obligation to steal from the workplace it reframes it somewhat.

  • It is not a justification, but, it is not like Anthropic didn't pirate tons of books and burnt evidence... The only difference is that books don't have a terms of service

The cooperative and competitive sides of our soul fighting it out in a single situation