How far should I investigate petty office theft?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

I have a coffee mug on my desk. Every time I finish a can of soda, I pop off the top and throw it in the mug. It's a quirky way to represent how long I've been at this job.

I noticed someone stole it over the weekend. It has basically 0 monetary href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/value">value (the mug was free too), but it does have decent sentimental href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/value">value. I'm just not sure what the tolerance policy is of typical American corporate offices.

Even if I dig through the footage of a security camera around my cubicle and find damning proof of who stole it, would anything even be done? The stolen article is href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/worth">worth nothing, but would it still be a fireable offense? My only href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/concern">concern is that I do some investigation, and HR and other href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/managers">managers on this floor are like "so what?", and I get pinned for overreacting. I just want to double check that I'm not being unreasonable for raising an incident report and starting a whole process with security, HR, etc.

Edit: Reason I think someone stole it is that I've had other items like my macbook charger, board markers, etc. stolen from my desk when I wasn't there. Couldn't reasonably follow up on those since they happened before the security camera was installed. Also, I understand it's possible some cleaner just threw it out. But my question is how far I should go with it if I do find something in the footage of the security camera.

manpreet 3 years ago

Since you have a series of thefts, you need to document it and file a complaint with your HR. As far as security footage, I would be surprised if they let you review it. File the complaint and provide updates if anything else goes missing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t harass HR about the status.

You should lock up anything you have on your desk that means anything to you to help with the issue going forward.