Segwaying to the unemployment line: not so schnell…

The Germans sure can be sticklers, can’t they?

I know, I know. We’re not supposed to “do” ethnic stereotypes.

But my German mother sure was a stickler.  Just try adding the tiniest bit of embroidery to a story to make it just a wee bit more interesting.  Thar she blows, stickler wet-blanket in hand, announcing that this wasn’t 100% precisely what happened. (How she ended up with my father, an anti-stickler, if ever…)  And, as the granddaughter of a German butcher and an Irish saloon-keep, I come naturally by my belief that, at least occasionally, there’s some kernel of truth to ethnic stereotypes.

So, stay with me for a moment when I say that the Germans can be sticklers. (There is a point to this blog post.)

In a German recent sticklerama, a techie named Oliver Beel was fired because he plugged in his Segway and juiced it up while he was working. The electricity purloined cost Beel’s company all of 1.8 euro cents, or a little more than two-cents U.S. plain, to power up his transportation for a completely energy-efficient ride home.  (I thought Germans liked efficiency. Like Rick in Casablanca, who came to town for the waters that didn’t exist, I was misinformed.)

Here’s the story, from Reuters:

Network administrator Oliver Beel lost his job after charging his Segway, a two-wheeled electric vehicle, at work in May 2009. After he connected the vehicle to the firm's power source for 1-1/2 hours, his boss asked him to remove it.

Twelve days later Beel found himself without a job.

Now the courts have spoken, and Beel’s company has had to give him his job back:

The court ruled that dismissal was disproportionate to the offence, especially given the "minimal electricity cost involved, the plaintiff's 19-year employment by the company and the fact other employees charged mobile phones and digital photo frames at the firm's expense without punishment."

Maybe there’s more to this story. (Were they looking for a way to say to Beel, you, my friend, are gefeuert? Was the Segway getting in the way of fellow workers?  I could completely understand if Segway annoyance were at play. Pretty much every time I encounter a Segway, it’s being manned by a helmeted tourist gawping in the wrong direction and nearly running me down.)

But it does raise the question about what we can or can’t, may or may not, do when it comes to using company property or time for something that’s not exactly work-work.

I’m not exactly one of those who lugged out briefcases brim-full of paperclips, manila envelopes, glue sticks and pens from Whatever, Inc. In fact, I was something of an, errrrrr, stickler about not taking company supplies. (Ethnicity is destiny?) Nonetheless, there were plenty of occasions when I reached into my pocketbook for a pen to write a personal note on personal time and found that the pen was company property. Despite this realization, I went ahead and used that pen, anyway, figuring that I was ripping off about one mill’s worth of ink, and that, half the time, I used my own personally paid for pens, pencils, and glue sticks while doing the bidding of whatever, inc. I was working for.

And who among us – especially in those long-ago, Hello Central, pre-cell phone days – didn’t make and/or take an occasional personal phone call, even when there was some nitwit policy about non-business calls being strictly verboten.

Then there’s the Internet.

I always pretty much restricted my aimless, mindless surfing, and aimless, mindless online shopping, to lunch hour. Still….

Especially in this day and age, when the boundaries between work and personal time are so fluid and permeable, it’s hard to get all worked up about strict separation of work and personal.

Ten p.m. emergency phone calls.  Urgent 4 a.m. on Sunday e-mails. Catching up on messages/reading/performance reviews and whatever else while nominally “enjoying” a couple of days at the beach.

Things are so blurred nowadays that I’m always shocked to hear when the hammer comes down on someone caught up in innocuous “abuse” of company facilities. I’m not talking porn-surfing here, but every once in a while you read about some maroon who got in trouble because he IM’d his girlfriend on his supposedly inviolate company smartphone.  Who cares?

Of course, plugging in your Segway (or your digital photo-frame) is somewhat different, in that the use of these items is purely personal. Then again, so’s using the company fridge to store your yogurt or, let’s face it, flushing the toilet that the company so generously provides.

A couple of euro cents to “gas up” a Segway doesn’t seem any more unreasonable than toilet flushing or fridge usage – especially since, I’m guessing, the company plows the parking lot for those who drive cars.

But, nein.

Someone just couldn’t let Oliver Beel get away with it.

Now he’s been given his job back.

Vrooom!