my family has been on WIC before, and the ladies there mean well but what they give you is that depressingly pitiful. that may have even been generous, and you are supposed to stretch that WIC check throughout the month. i won’t say it doesn’t help, because when you are in a bind anything helps, but it’s kind of a “fuck you” from the State.
Indeed. The grocery store is their employer and the post is about “quiet quitting” vs. “chaotic quitting.”
In quiet quitting you screw over or steal from your employer by doing the bare minimum or less as is required to keep your job.
In this “chaotic quitting” you screw over or steal from your employer while doing some act to benefit another human being, seemingly one in some form of serious need.
Although it is actually arguable as to wether he is or is not screwing over the grocery store since with rare exception does the average grocery store even manage to sell 80% of their currently sellable produce inventory before it spoils, and many food charities do not take perishable items.
In some places in the USA there are laws requiring or encouraging stores to make perishable items available to charities or non profits requesting them, but there generally is no frame work provided or subsidization from the government towards the goal. That means in such areas stores…
.. which make their perishable items available to those in needs at or past the expiration dates, not only shoulder the costs or pass those costs on to the charities which reduces the actual hood suck laws do; but it is the case stores generally also carry liability even for products given away at or past expiration for free. So we can’t really even say they screwed their employer as giving away that produce COULD actually result in real world cost savings. It is also worth mentioning that the missing inventory could either be counted as shrink or scrap, each of which can have tax and income advantages for an organization. Scrap and shrink wrote offs can be used to lower earnings reports which can lower taxes, share holder dividends, and weaken union bargaining positions in contract negotiations which can have HUGE long term savings outpacing even $1000 a day in free produce for a large organization.
Lastly, we also have to consider that it is not uncommon for WIC recipients to be on other forms of welfare such as “food stamps” or “EBT.” Regardless of this they often have some secondary source of income. Therefore there are surely cases wherein a random customer given free groceries this way physically had the funds to purchase the full amount of produce but was not budgeted to do so as they had reserved that money for other grocery items which they needed and perhaps couldn’t get with welfare benefits. So some percentage of additional sales were made possible by this act. Especially once the “moms” caught on and began grocery budgeting based on the assumption of artificial totals and extra grocery budget.
This could benefit the company several ways- for example the cost to profit ratio may be higher on the other items- now, produce tends to be one of the highest markup items at the rockery store but this is largely to offset the fact that it is perishable and rarely gets “sold out” in terms of turns on a given stock compared to many other longer lived or faster selling items.
Regardless of mark ups, the turns and sale metrics still hit which give grocers clout with vendors to negotiate.
So it is POSSIBLE they screwed their employer but debatable and we would need much more data to make that assumption. They may have actually HELPED their employer- again, we need more data.
While I personally take work place ethics very seriously and feel that whatever wrongs an employer may have done we can usually apply some version of the concept: “2 wrongs don’t make a right..”
There is a question both ethically and legally as to wether this is stealing.
The cashier has taken nothing, no action they performed has removed any property or funds from their employer. They have furnished a receipt, a transfer of goods. NOW, one could argue that this is essentially a “false title” and thusly the cashier has “stollen” by transferring property from the employer to the customer using a false title. There are several issues with this.
Firstly is the fact that if we use a case where a customer pays for 1lb of apples but actually has 2lbs- the receipt issued will say 1lb. Meaning the clerk hasn’t presented a false document, they have merely only authorized removal of 1lb of apples by that customer. So in that sense they are technically doing the customer a disservice as the customer is the one we could more accurately say was “stealing.” Again- there is debate and legal semantics- but it would generally be reasonable to assume a customer would weight the produce before purchase, especially if they have a fixed income and/or a voucher for a specific amount of produce. Thusly there is a strong case as to the responsibility of the customer to not leave the premises with reasonable doubt that they have unpaid items. Of course- intent and such are hard to prove here. Perhaps the customer assumed the scale at the register was more accurate or did not notice. Regardless- the clerk has taken nothing nor transferred anything..
.. which was not paid for. We MIGHT consider this conversion- all theft tends to be conversion but not all conversion is theft.
In retail parlance “under-ringing” is considered theft- IF the employee rings a lower amount than listed but charges the full amount and keeps the difference. Another example of theft is where an employee rings multiple items up and disguised it as a single item and keeps the additional items.
Within the umbrella of “theft,” “stealing” is only one type of theft. Not all thefts involve stealing and not all things that are stolen represent theft- though that gets nuanced.
What we can say is that the employees actions are “dishonest.” They almost certainly are against company policy and the instructions and understood intent of the employees functions which they have given their word- tacit or explicit- to uphold. They have created a situation they know within reason will result in a transaction being underpaid and a customer being given a receipt…
Tl:Dr- we can’t necessarily call it stealing. This term has certain implications and criteria the cashiers actions may not fit.
It would be accurate to call the behavior dishonest.
Beyond saying I generally do not believe that two wrongs make a right, I will leave the moral judgments to the philosophers and thinkers who have battled for thousands of years well into the modern day and modern law over when and where dishonesty constitutes a crime and what if any “humanitarian” or other exceptions may or may not apply to such quandaries.
In quiet quitting you screw over or steal from your employer by doing the bare minimum or less as is required to keep your job.
In this “chaotic quitting” you screw over or steal from your employer while doing some act to benefit another human being, seemingly one in some form of serious need.
Although it is actually arguable as to wether he is or is not screwing over the grocery store since with rare exception does the average grocery store even manage to sell 80% of their currently sellable produce inventory before it spoils, and many food charities do not take perishable items.
In some places in the USA there are laws requiring or encouraging stores to make perishable items available to charities or non profits requesting them, but there generally is no frame work provided or subsidization from the government towards the goal. That means in such areas stores…
Regardless of mark ups, the turns and sale metrics still hit which give grocers clout with vendors to negotiate.
So it is POSSIBLE they screwed their employer but debatable and we would need much more data to make that assumption. They may have actually HELPED their employer- again, we need more data.
There is a question both ethically and legally as to wether this is stealing.
The cashier has taken nothing, no action they performed has removed any property or funds from their employer. They have furnished a receipt, a transfer of goods. NOW, one could argue that this is essentially a “false title” and thusly the cashier has “stollen” by transferring property from the employer to the customer using a false title. There are several issues with this.
In retail parlance “under-ringing” is considered theft- IF the employee rings a lower amount than listed but charges the full amount and keeps the difference. Another example of theft is where an employee rings multiple items up and disguised it as a single item and keeps the additional items.
Within the umbrella of “theft,” “stealing” is only one type of theft. Not all thefts involve stealing and not all things that are stolen represent theft- though that gets nuanced.
What we can say is that the employees actions are “dishonest.” They almost certainly are against company policy and the instructions and understood intent of the employees functions which they have given their word- tacit or explicit- to uphold. They have created a situation they know within reason will result in a transaction being underpaid and a customer being given a receipt…
It would be accurate to call the behavior dishonest.
Beyond saying I generally do not believe that two wrongs make a right, I will leave the moral judgments to the philosophers and thinkers who have battled for thousands of years well into the modern day and modern law over when and where dishonesty constitutes a crime and what if any “humanitarian” or other exceptions may or may not apply to such quandaries.