Peter Cappelli

Basically, they're kind of trying to get back at you, right?

So the employer treats you badly or treats you like a poor performer.

They say, okay, I'm going to be a poor performer, right?

or you've taken something away from me, I'm going to say, all right, I'm going to take something away from you.

And that might be my effort, or it might be not paying attention, or it might be taking pencils home.

There's all kinds of little things like that.

Yeah.

Oh, by the way, just for your listeners, there are these things called honesty tests that they give people for hiring.

And that is one of the questions on it is, is it okay to take home office supplies?

And the correct answer, by the way, is no.

That's the correct answer.

Or applying for a job, right?

So that's the logic of this, I think, is that, you know, you do something to employees they don't like, they find ways to get back at you.

What is quirky here, as you say, is that this is a pretty common thing.

If you go to gift card and birthday card companies, you know, Hallmark and all the big names, they've all got special sections on belated birthday cards.

That means they assume that a lot of people are going to forget to do it and they're going to do it late.

And the belated cars always kind of, you know, just make fun of it, you know, make fun of yourself.

So it's portrayed as something really light and simple.

And that's partly what was the pitch of this paper to the journals was how low could you go and it still have an effect on employees.

And as you say, what's interesting here is this seems pretty trivial.