The Subway handbook says that workers can have free soft-drinks while working. Jackie Lang shared a drink that she’d poured while on shift with a friend. Not only has she been fired, but Subway called the police. The police arrested her and charged her with theft, and she was in the cells for two hours.
That story was in the same paper as a story on mobile trucks in South Auckland, ((a poor area of Auckland)) that sell goods on credit at extortionate prices. This is perfectly legal, if being a parasite off the poor was illegal our entire economic system would collapse. But I would hope that taking money from people’s bank accounts wouldn’t be:
Customers were sometimes being asked to sign multiple, undated direct debit forms allowing the company open access to their accounts.
Many companies continued to take money after the debt was repaid and failed to advise customers when they have gone into credit.
I know there are people, who consider themselves progressive, and believe that the police are neutral, that their primary role isn’t to uphold the power system we have in place. I would ask those people why police care about a 19 year old who shares a soft-drink, but not companies who steal through direct debit.
I guess I would say that the police, as an institution, are going to be biased in most situations.
I tend to react to individual police officers as neutral, however. I’m sure the fact that I’m white and have a lot of cultural (if not economic) capital contributes to my ability to do that.
Absolutely right.
I would also ask them why crack carries a harsher sentence than powdered cocaine, why there’s such a social stigma against dealing pot but not against insider trading, etc, etc, etc.
Also, I’d add the the same thing applies to the military that applies to the police. They exist to uphold the current power structure.
I would ask those people why police care about a 19 year old who shares a soft-drink, but not companies who steal through direct debit.
The police do not care about a 19 year old who share a soft drink. They are responding to the stupid, but legitimate, claim of theft by the employer (who is apparently an ass).
I imagine that the police would care about someone stealing through direct debit, but since there are no reports of that here (just a vague, unsourced statement by the article author that it happens) it’s hard to compare the cases directly.
Maybe it is because the owners vote, make political contributions and pressure advertisers for favorable coverage, while some workers make excuses not to vote because “Democrats suck”, watch Rupert Murdoch’s TV stations and read his newspapers.
Robert, I wouldn’t say it is a legitimate claim of theft. Employees get free drinks. It was the employee’s drink, belonging to her and not the company, and she had a right to give a friend a sip if she wanted to. This is the same kind of situation as if a couple of friends and I go to McDonald’s, but I don’t have any money, so my friends give me some of their fries.
It’s always easier to respond to complaints against nonviolent individuals than to go out looking for actions by possibly violent groups.
That alone explains almost all complaints against the cops. The rest can be explained by arrest quotas.
I disagree with you, slythwolf. The drink does not belong to the employee – it belongs to the employer, and is granted to the employee as a personal benefit during working hours. By your logic, the employee could pour him or herself as many drinks as he or she could manage, and then hand them out to friends and strangers for free, as they all belong to him or her after they’re poured. Clearly that would be theft. This isn’t any different, except that it’s on a scale so small as to be probably not worth pursuing. Every retail employer I’ve ever known, though, has very strict rules concerning employee benefits. For example, if you have an employee discount on merchandise at your store, you may not use that discount to buy merchandise for other people: to do so is theft and will result in firing. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Robert, the police are perfectly capable of exercising discretion over whether a particular infraction, while technically illegal, is worth bothering with. If they weren’t, they couldn’t do their jobs. If I were to call the police and request they arrest the kid who retreived his frisbee when it accidently landed on my lawn for trespassing, they’d (correctly) tell me to take a flying leap. If I were to accuse a friend of mine of stealing half my soda, they’d do the same thing.
The fact that they put aside sensible discretion like this when a major corporation makes a prepostrous complaint, rather than an individual, is quite support of Maia’s point here.
What DJW said is 100% right on. Consider what the police reaction would (likely) be if the situations were exactly reversed, and the employee called them in because the company stiffed him on overtime on his paycheck.
This is at least as legitimate a claim of theft as the situation in question, and I’d venture to guess is far more common, but I just cannot even begin to imagine the cops hauling the store manager away to jail. No, what they’d most likely do is shrug and tell the employee “settle this with your employer, or sue them if you need to.”
—Myca
Maia:
I would ask those people why police care about a 19 year old who shares a soft-drink, but not companies who steal through direct debit.
There is nothing in the story you cited to indicated that the police don’t care about the direct debit issue. Did anyone make a complaint to the police about the practice? Actually, in the U.S. you’d probably end up making a complaint to your local District Attorney, not the cops.
The police were not rushing to do the bidding of a corporation. Subways are franchises, and some of the owners saved for years to get one and are struggling to survive. Most will have made very clear their policies on giving out free product to friends. In this case, we know no details at all. Perhaps this particular employee had received multiple warnings, or it may have been a severe problem at this particular Subway, depleting profits. More information is needed.
Rushing to declare yet another example of the evil power structure and the corporate perversion of justice does the accusers no credit.
Myca:
Purely speculative guess: Users of powder cocaine are more likely to lead productive lives and less likely to make nuisances of themselves than users of crack cocaine. Likewise, transactions involving powder cocaine tend to be done in private rather than on the streets, and there’s less violence (in the US, anyway) associated with the powder cocaine trade than with the crack trade.
I’m not 100% sure that this is true, but I suspect that it is. In any case, it doesn’t have to be true to influence law; it just has to be perceived as true. For the record, I think both should be legalized, so don’t take this as support for the status quo.
I’m not sure there’s that much difference, but to the extent that there is, I suspect that part of it is that pot dealers are perceived as preying on children. Also, pot is seen (arguably wrongly) as a risk to public health and safety, while insider trading is just about money (though “just money” is a fallacy, IMO). Finally, most people don’t understand how capital markets work, so they don’t really understand what insider trading is all about anyway.
“so don’t take this as support for the status quo.”
Do you think the reasons you listed are legitimate?
“Users of powder cocaine are more likely to lead productive lives and less likely to make nuisances of themselves than users of crack cocaine… it just has to be perceived as true. ”
And what do you think creates this perception?