Clayton Utz Lawyer Rebukes Librarian Fruit Thievery

Tormented top tier law firm Clayton Utz is about to suffer yet another blow. After weeks of anguish following the defection of a major chunk of its partnership pool, and in the immediate wake of the sacking of over one third of its Melbourne graduates, one Clutz employee is taking a major stand against the firm; by hording firm fruit.

Thanks to the anonymous Clayton Utz spy who sent us the following comments and link:

http://www.eques.com.au/discus/messages/14039/479660.html?1268359427 As if Clutz doesn’t have enough problems now the fruit is going missing.. (the poster – [#####] -regularly identifies that she works for Clutz).

The link reveals the following comment on a website dedicated to horse-riding entitled The Eques Forum (those equestrian folks are super cool dudes!):

At my firm, each floor has a box of fresh fruit delivered every Mon/Wed/Fri. Each box of fruit is put in the kitchen of every floor and employees are to help themselves to the fruit. Obviously, you can’t (well, shouldn’t) come in of a morning and load up a plastic shopping bag full of all the best fruit and leave maybe 10 pieces in the box to be shared amongst the rest of the floor! This is not so on my floor.

We have a lady who we call Fruit Thief because she fills up her plastic bag with fruit and leaves the box almost empty. There are probably about 45 people on my floor.

This morning, I walked in to the kitchen and she was there, with her plastic bag empty but open, ready to pile in the fruit. She looked at me walking in and said “oh, you can use the kitchen” so I filled up my glass of water and went to my desk to put my glass there, went back to the kitchen and I saw Fruit Thief walking back to her side of the office with the bag full of fruit.
Fruit Thief works in the library of the firm and I work in a practice group, therefore confronting her would be a little unethical.

Fruit Thief has done this now on 6 occasions that I have personally seen, and many more times which other people in my practice group have seen.
Last Wednesday, my partner and I stuck up a sign in the kitchen which reads: “Please respect others – take one piece of fruit at a time ” Obviously Fruit Thief thinks she’s exempt.

So Equesers, what’s the next step?

Responses to this dilemma include:

• Inject best looking fruits with wasabi
• hide the box or dispense a proprtinal amount to your are – you say 45 work on that floor so take the share of your area and distribute – apart from that just gossip about it all over and it will get back to her perhaps
• wait till she’s away from her desk and return the fruit to the basket
• Go into the library with a friend and casually remark within earshot of the Fruit Thief that you missed out on fruit yesterday because someone keeps taking an entire bagful. Then lament how appalling this behaviour is and that you are developing scurvy through lack of fruit intake. Dunno really. Short of Friot Thief growing a conscience not sure what you can do.
• Have someone steal it back? Seriously. What can she say?
• Get someone superiour to her in her department to talk to her! I quite like the idea of injecting the fruit with laxitives…

The dismayed Clutz employee made several additional comments to forum respondees:

• Holly, in a firm of 1500 employees, HR won’t give a toss about a librarian stealing fruit And neither should we, but it’s very frustrating! We need to up the ante.
• No one sits near the kitchen as it is out near the lift wells and no desks/offices are out there, they are all behind security doors. We thought that she may be loading up to share amongst the other librarians but they still keep coming in to the kitchen to pick out what is left in the fruit box. Yes fruit is still delivered on a Friday because it is 95% of the time all gone by mid afternoon and if not, people who work on Saturdays still help themselves. I was SO CLOSE to saying something this morning but you know when you’re sort of put on the spot, it was like one of those moments where I didn’t know what to do – how stupid.
• It’s delivered usually arount 8-8:30am but Fruit Thief doesn’t start till 9am. I will make it a priority on Friday morning to hang around the kitchen area and wait for her to turn up

For someone so apparently upset with the lack of fruit, we witnessed an inordinate number of in the Clutz lawyer’s comments. However, the bitterness is very evident in her tone. Her concluding comments suggest that World Wat III will break out today if the fruit thief librarian fills her plastic bag:

• A catty response of “You obviously have nothing better to do in your time – don’t be so childish” was placed over the top of the note this morning, then promptly taken down as I suspect word got around that the Partners were behind the original 2 notes. Will be interesting to see if it happens again on Monday. The tea lady who does the rounds on each floor and cleans the kitchen, re-stocks the fridges, biscuits etc commented on the note saying she often saw people walk off with 3-4 pieces of fruit, we had to explain to her that this one lady on our floor actually bring a plastic bag into the kitchen and stocks up on fruit.
• There is no other public area on our floor (or on any floor), the lift wells and kitchen are the only public areas on each floor. I will try and catch her in the act on Friday, if not, then Monday.

We ask that the Clutz spy who notified us of this pressing fruit theft debacle to keep us updated on the sequence of events, as they unfold today. If there is violence of throwing of fruit, please, let us know.

Does your firm have fruit horders?

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