Vanilla syrup? Like for a latte?
Yeah, we watched him stuff the bottle in his backpack and then head out the door.
Okay, I’ll reach out and let him go.
Thanks, buddy.
I’ve fired more people for more reasons than I can count. Most of the time it’s not their work. That’s counterintuitive but true. Tardiness, abrasiveness, offensiveness, and laziness are much more common. The intangibles are what make or break people.
People stop bathing.
People sell porn. Their own porn.
People fight. They use the N word. They fight about using the N word.
Being easy to work with is half the battle.
This one has always stuck out though. Firing someone because they stole a bottle of vanilla syrup. That is a top tier loser move.
All the coffee and syrup you can handle while at the office, but just like those paperclips, it’s not for taking home with you. Pretty standard.
Stealing is wrong morally, we get that. But this was wrong for a different reason. This was wrongheaded and showed a complete miscalculation of risk.
When we make decisions, we need to ask ourselves what’s at stake.
What’s the upside? What’s the downside?
The upside on the one-night stand is clear enough, the downside of a pregnancy or the clap, that’s where you’ve got some decisions to make.
Less of a decision with that slice of chocolate cake.
More with drunk driving.
Every decision is a bet on the future. A bet on the upside vs. the downside. What we are looking for is asymmetric risk. We want potential outcomes to have an uncapped and massive upside and a limited and manageable downside.
A person making $15 per hour steals a bottle of sugar water that costs $5 at the grocery store. The upside is $5, downside is almost infinite. He’ll lose the $15 per hour, he’ll also lose his resume and his reputation. Someone might even write a blog post about how foolish he is.
And they could have pressed charges, too.
Is stealing always a bad bet? Not always. You live on the street, you don’t have a home or money for food, that’s a decent bet. You steal some food and either eat that night or get put in jail and have food and a roof over your head. The downside is limited.
But if you have a home, a career, a reputation, you have something to lose.
Our former colleague with the syrup could have earned enough to buy his own bottle while sitting on the toilet during a break.
He traded his career for the price of a bathroom break.
That’s a bad bet.
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