I did not say “then make him feel like the scum of the earth.” I said taking the jar away. The end.
You implied that Ellen would be at fault if she took the jar away:
This is saying that Ellen is at fault if she doesn’t confront Steve. That’s very specifically what I reacted to, and why I quoted it up thread.
The first post I made in this thread was not addressed to you. Nor do I really understand why you are changing the premise of my post in the first place. I was denouncing the passive aggressive shit people suggested. Suggestions such as:
Nothing against the posters who made those suggestions. It’s just shitty behaviour coming from otherwise nice, normal people. CCJ’s Pig’s behaviour is unacceptable, but so is passive aggressive behaviour. If the CCJ’s purpose is to foster a sense of community and friendship within the office, taking the bowl away and then making him feel like shit isn’t the way to do it.
Forget what you think I was trying to imply. What I am saying is that no one is at fault if Ellen decides to take away the CCJ, not even Steve. At least, not until someone tells him to quit grabbing handfuls and/or contribute some candy.
An interesting coincidense: The man I mentioned earlier who is always saying “I’m going to the store at lunch, I’ll get some Jolly Ranchers then” and then never does… today he did! (I wonder if he’s reading the Dope…)
As I said, I never really cared, if I did I’d stop buying them. But I did right this day down on my calendar. 
Sad and Deranged, I’m with you. I find alot of times the Ellen’s of the world are afraid as coming off as “aggressive”, when there is a world of difference between assertive and aggressive. There really isn’t any reason to do anything more at an early stage of CCJ pigish-ness than be polite and let the offender know that the candy is to be shared by everyone, so it’s important to leave enough for everyone. Period, end of sentence. This, of course, should be done in private, or at least semi-private so no one else can hear (and thereby retain the pig’s dignity). If you expect Steve to act like an adult, it’s only fair to treat him like one.
Then if he ignores what you said and is still a pig, THEN you take the candy away if you must. Or accept the Nature of Steve and realize in order for the candy to be available that you’ll have to ignore the pig. (Be One with The Pig??? … nevermind… )
BTW, passive-aggressiveness really pisses me off. It may seem “easier” than taking responsibility for your own needs, but it’s just not ok in my book.
Count me as another vote for “I can’t believe no one is willing to mention this to Steve.”
I’m about as non-confrontational as can be, but there’s no reason this has to be a confrontation at all. It can just be a suggestion in the midst of a conversation. The OP said he was a reasonable guy aside from this, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
On the other hand, if you’re unwilling even to mention it politely, then any tension that arises from Steve’s obliviousness is more your fault than his.
No, but they are responsible for their own behavior. If they do nothing in the face of an easily correctable problem, well, that’s less than ideal.
It’s the caffeine in the chocolates, honey. 
It is a really weird social dynamic- both the bringing in of foodstuffs and the folks who indulge in a normal way opposed to a greedy selfish way.
I was that CCJ person. For four years, several times a week, we freelancers would gather and make some sports television. For the first year or two, another guy did " Junk Food Central", but he made a big noisy deal about it and would stomp around making sure everyone kicked in.
He eventually lost his cool and wrote a memo ( which I found to be hilarious, since we were all freelancers- who the hell writes a memo when they don’t have a DESK?? :rolleyes: ). He berated certain departments and people for taking stuff and not contributing. That was pretty much the end of that.
Meanwhile, I have this little obsession. They’re called Sweetzels and they are to ginger snaps what Craig Breedlove is to adrenaline junkies. They’re only made in Pennsylvania. I would pick up a hell of a lot of boxes during the late summer and autumn. Their shelf life insured that we’d be stocked past March Madness. I’d bring in a box every few days, and put them into a tin.
Never asked for any money, and never expected any or resented not being offered any. I LOVE these things and got a few of my co-workers hooked. Ditto on the jars of unsalted roasted peanuts. I munch em, they keep some protein flowing during those long evil hours after what used to pass for lunch in that place. I don’t CARE if folks kick in. I was being very well paid and could afford to indulge myself and others.
Now and then someone would wander by me as I sat behind my camera and hand me $ 5.00. The first time, it really surprised me but the guy figured he oughta kick something in.
Not a big deal, but it was nice to have something to munch on and NOT rely upon Production to provide it. Now I no longer work there, but my parting gift was to leave about 25 boxes in the file cabinet in the back area behind the set. I figure they’re still munching.
Oh, and I can believe nobody mentioned this to Steve. Nobody will. He’s a Band III Manager. Who would want to incur his wrath?
Cartooniverse
At our office there is the “snack shack”. A guy runs it outside his cube and keeps it stocked with everything from bottled water, to candy, to popcorn, to breakfast muffins, and back again to beef jerky. All proceeds(pretty much everything is 50 cents) go to the Salvation Army adopt-a-family at year’s end. On a good year he’s been able to donate over $1200. This year he’s barely breaking even because assholes are stealing, not only the goods, but actually taking cash from the jar. I can count the number of items I’ve bought there over the years on two hands, not much of a workplace snacker, I. Still, last year when we passed a Russell Stover factory, with a store attached on our way back home from vacation I bought a couple cases of some premium stuff and donated it to the store. It went fast, and he’s still barely in the black. 
Enjoy,
Steven
In our office, we don’t have a Community Candy Jar, we have a Community Candy Drawer. Actually, it’s two drawers. And not the kind you find next to your desk, that you keep your staples and WhiteOut in, but those loooong ones that hold hanging file folders. The top drawer is marker “Savory” and the bottom drawer is marked “Sweet” (although, truth be told, the bottom drawer holds the more traditional definition of “candy,” while the top drawer holds everything from Rice Krispy Treats to Pretzel Sticks to Twinkies to Sun Chips).
The Candy Drawer (always referred to in the singular, although there are two) is stocked by my boss, and resides immediately outside her office, for public consumption at an office of 80 employees.
The Candy Drawer has proven to be so popular (and sets our office apart from our offices in NYC and Dallas), that it is given a monthly budget of $100 by the head of our office (and my boss went $180 over budget this last time she went shopping at Smart & Final).
It’s not without its downfalls, though…people still manage to abuse the Candy Drawer in this overly-generous situation, primarily by grabbing a bowlful of random candy/snacks to bring to a meeting to share.
But… but… what about healthier alternatives? I don’t see anyone offering bowls of crips freshly sliced carrots or celery stalks or tomato slices drenched in fine extra virgin olive oil or cabbage leaves rolled around petite mozzarella balls with a dusting of garlic salt or stuffed grape leaves or…um.
The ones I’ve known had them if you count ass-kissin’ as a social skill. I don’t have it in this computer, but I got a bookmark from a thread here, to a webpage talking about… office bullies (I don’t remember the term they used). You know, the dude who treats life as a ladder, with his foot on top of the subordinates’ heads and his tongue so far up the boss’s ass it’s a miracle the boss can’t taste it; the one who is charming to the majority of coworkers but who picks one as a target… that kind of cutie pies.
Mind you, I’m not afraid to speak up; to me if you correct your bad CJ manners after someone asked whether you were raised in a pigsty, you’re not a CJP. Everybody is entitled to the occasional lapse. But if people tell you to “leave something for the rest” and you go and grab another handful, then where I come from your kind gets butchered in the fall and turned into chorizos.
Could someone possibly post a link to that old thread, if it is still available?
The snack shack at my office has unbuttered popcorn, granola bars, sugar free snacks and drinks(well, drink mixes like hot chocolate and Crystal Light), as well as low fat and no fat puddings. A couple of the more traditional “community candy jars” around here(I can think of four in my immediate vicinity) vary from pretzels and animal crackers to peppermints and Hershey’s kisses. Each Friday one of the supervisors in the office brings in fresh baked cookies(oatmeal raisin & peanut) and brownies. She’s been doing this for a few years and on the days she doesn’t bake she’ll bring in a couple dozen Krispy Kremes from the local shop.
Enjoy,
Steven
The hell? I hope management and HR is all over this crap. Jesus!
Treating people like adults for me means assuming that, having reached adulthood, they comprehend basic social interactions well enough to avoid being dicks most of the time. I assume an adult knows that one doesn’t just take scads of stuff without consideration of either the person who purchased it or others who might like some.
Giving a remedial lesson is fine, but it isn’t treating a person like an adult.
I don’t have any problem with taking away the candy bowl if someone is abusing it. That’s hardly passive aggressive.
Here, we don’t have the candy bowl. Our community pigs are the ones who take the last of the coffee, don’t make a new pot, and leave the dregs in the pot on the burner to stink up the place and ruin the carafe. They are the ones who cook shit in the microwave that spews all over the place, but never think to clean up the inside of the microwave.
These are all adults. They ought to know better. Leaving signs up doesn’t change their behavior. Some people are just dicks.
In my previous job, the firm was too cheap to have a drinks for the staff, let alone for clients. If you wanted water or soda, bring it yourself (or gah! drink tap). If you put food in the fridge, don’t expect it to be there come lunch time as we had a food thief.
I combated it the best way possible: the firm had a Costco membership, and I just filled the fridge with soda and water and the CCJ on the firm’s dime. Yeah, it made the senior partner uncomfortable to approve the expenditure, but then again, he was eating my lunch when I went in to get it approved.
He was such a tool. He refused to renew the Costco membership the next year, and told me to just pay for it and the firm reimburse me. One month, he opted, after I bought everything and lugged it to the 12th floor on a Saturday, not to pay me, saying the firm didn’t need it and couldn’t afford it (???). I honestly think he didn’t expect me to lug that crap back down to my van. On office time, no less.
The membership got renewed shortly thereafter, but I never bought anything for the firm again.
I’ll be honest I searched for that particular thread and didn’t have any luck. Perhaps some other doper with more savvy skills can find it.
I agree. But that’s not always the case in the real world. I know plenty of adults, including myself, that act badly sometimes and not out of petulance but ignorance.
Disagree, and disagree.
Giving someone the opportunity to correct their behavior is treating them like an adult. It assumes that they would be appropriately responsive, as any adult should, and ignorant of the harm they were causing. True, past childhood what you call a remedial lesson shouldn’t have to take place, but what do we want to accomplish here?
Taking the bowl away (consequences to continued bad behavior) is only not passive aggressive if you haven’t done step one.
Sure, same here, but there must be some reasonable line regarding what can be typically expected out of an adult without some sort of impairment. Crossing the street, perhaps? Toileting, hopefully? I see things like appropriate and thoughtful use of common resources as a skill that adults may reasonably be expected to have.
There seems to be a great deal of confusion about what passive aggressive behavior is - more often than not people misapply the label.
“Accidently” burning a spouse’s dinner because he or she is late is passive aggressive. Discontinuing a candy jar without first engaging in remedial social skills training because someone is abusing it is simply a matter of employing personal boundaries. Dummy wiping a candy and then putting it back in the jar so that the offender eats it would be passive aggressive.
Well, keep in mind that my initial response re: passive agressiveness had to do more with the other tactics suggested to solve this problem, not just removing the bowl. To me, passive aggressiveness is, in part, making others responsible for your needs and feelings. It is trying to cause some kind of behavior to happen in the other person without making it clear and plain what you want. If you want this guy to stop being a pig, Christ, tell him! Remember, the original office is trying to get him to change his behavior without having to possibly, maybe deal with a bad outcome (the pig turning into a dick. A pigdick, if you will). IOW, they want an outcome, but they’re not willing to state plain and clear what they want in a polite way. Instead, they just want the pig to “get the hint”. That’s passive aggressive.
Chocolate, no. Carob candy, yes. Find it at either the local health food store or the nearest kosher market. And keep the wrapper.