No. Edit: Wait, COVID. I took COVID home.

Nothing big but I’m the one in the office who decides what gets thrown away. It’s amazing what I find dumpster diving immediately after I’ve cleaned an area.

I always kept copies of my design/work even if my contract states that they belong to the company.

At this one office I worked at, none of their ergonomic equipment was asset-tagged for some reason, and everybody knew about it. So whenever somebody with a lot of ergo gear got fired or quit, it was a race to raid their desk and plunder their equipment. Management never looked into it because nothing was tagged, so they never qualified what equipment was given out in order to claim as missing in the first place.

I got a decent keyboard and trackball mouse out of it. I know a few people that managed to sneak out some of the $800+ chairs, but that always felt too risky to me.

At another place I worked at, they were upgrading all their computers at every desk. I asked the dude swapping then out what they do with the old machines. He told me they were literally being taken out back to a pile to be scrapped/recycled. I asked if I could take one, he said he wasn’t allowed to give them to me, but he then reiterated exactly where the pile of old computers was. I took the hint, snuck around the back of the building and grabbed one of the tiny little OptiPlex Minis. Used it as a media center for a little while.

At my previous job, once a year they had a catalog of company merch. Nobody ever got it, because it was kind of over priced. Well, I had a good year and wanted a jacket and a zip up fleece. It was like, $160. My order comes, and I love it. I give the person in charge of said orders a check. Next day, she gives it back, saying they were having an issue cashing it internationally, or something. Because the company is headquartered in Canada. So, a week goes by and I ask if it was sorted out, or should I pay a different way. She said she’d let me know. Then, she quit. I was there another year, and nobody ever hunted me down for my $160. Then I quit. Free jacket and fleece.

I do have a small collection of parts that were manufactured or ordered incorrectly. They’re useless, and too small to be of any scrap value. I like them because they are so drastically different from the prints, it’s funny. Like, what were they thinking when they made these? I’ll probably bring them back ans toss them in the scrap bin before I leave this job.

I work for a small IT company. PCs that are discarded by our customers are securely erased and removed from our documentation before they are sent away for disposal.
We don’t track how many PCs actually make it to disposal and we already have more than enough in the workshop for testing and emergencies.
So I sometimes take one for my homelab or to donate it to a non-profit I’m involved with. All it does to the company is save them money on disposal.

Old computer equipment. It wasn’t being used for anything, and would have ended up being thrown out if I didn’t take it. Stuff was too old to be useful in a business environment now, but I built a small retro gaming rig running Windows 98 out of it.

Nice try, boss.

Working for a tech company, working from home is allowed. Each employee receive a monitor, mouse, keyboard,… to be able to work from home. During Covid, my wife who is working for a social organisation, had to work from home, on a super small pc without any equipment provided. One day, I went to my office, took a screen and went back home with it. We still have it now. #wishRobinHood

I also took a bowl to put water for my cat.

About 3000 years ago I worked as a night security guard in a place where we’d often have celebrities during the day. One night during one of my rounds I found an iPod in the parking lot. Went back to the control room and started going through the menus to see if I could figure out who it belonged to, and based on the device’s name I realized it belonged to an abject asshole of a media personality / early “influencer” of sorts, who got rich by “preaching” what amounted to a secular prosperity gospel, essentially a cheerleader for the “fuck you, I got mine”-brand of capitalism.

I can say I didn’t have to think too many milliseconds about what to do with the device and felt no pangs of guilt about yoinking it. I used it for years and years, and probably much longer than that particular dude would have since I mainly worked low income jobs and I couldn’t have afforded a new one even if I wanted to.

I reset the device but kept its name as it was, just as a sort of small personal 🖕 to that guy.

My old workplace had a cafeteria where we ate as much as we wanted for a fixed price taken from our paycheck, the only thing was that we weren’t allowed to take food to bring it home… So I’ve technically stolen a whole lot of muffins over 12 years!

While cleaning up the maintenance office I found a old Sony portable Bluetooth speaker in a plastic bag. It was obviously forgotten about from the ridiculous amount of dust on it and years of crap burried over it. I was surprised when it turned on and worked with really nice sound. A little roughed up and an old model but hey a nice speaker is a nice speaker. I quit months ago and still use that speaker every day.

In case you are wondering no I do not loose any sleep over ‘stealing’ it. As far as I’m concerned it was a small bonus.

Honestly, no, I don’t think so. I’ve taken things home to keep, with permission (limited design beer glasses, mostly, some old uniforms once the design changes); and I’ve taken home disposable supplies without permission (steel scrubs, sharpies, expo markers); and I’ve taken things that would otherwise be thrown out to give as gifts (best one was a six-inch Le Creuset enameled cast iron Dutch oven).

But if a job treats me right I don’t steal, and if they don’t I either force them to or leave.

So I no longer work there but I worked 10+ years as Ops manager in international removals. Once a year we would do a stocktake on all the inbound freight locations, pull aside anything that was out of place and then try and find an owner, most of the items were returned to their owners. But every year there would also be a few items without any identification, I would set these aside myself in the warehouse and then the following year if still unclaimed I would take them home or throw it in the bin.

The best items are 3 x 1.5L bottles of Penfolds Grange & 50g bar of gold.

But other than that there are so many items, a limited edition Beatles Sargent Pepper’s marble pressing with all the inserts intact. Few antique gold mirrors. Artwork. Media centre PC. Dining table and chairs. 2 Herman Miller office chairs, that’s just the stuff I remember while looking around my house now

I pass my own printer’s cartridge to my company for recharging. I don’t print a lot tho and it’s near completely work-related. I thinks it’s a tax on them using signed paper documents in 2023.