为什么办公室的笔最容易丢？解密这些“小偷”的心理

Have you ever taken office supplies home? Stolen some pens and paper from your employer for your kids’ arts and crafts class? Used the office printer to print personal concert tickets?

你是否曾把办公用品带回家？或是从公司偷拿些纸笔回家给小孩画画或做手工？又或者使用办公室打印机打印游玩行程单？

In a recent anonymous survey by Papermate as part of the launch of a new pen, 100% of office workers admitted to have stolen a pen at work. Other academic researchers have reported that up to 75% of employees admitted to stealing office supplies in the past year.

美国文具公司缤类美（Papermate）近期推出一款新笔时发起了一项匿名调查，数据显示100%的办公室职员承认曾从公司偷过笔。而一些其他学术研究调研报告也指出，75%的雇员在过去一年内偷窃过公司的办公用品。

The damage in economic terms caused by these “petty theft” behaviours have been valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, may be responsible for roughly 35% of an organisation’s inventory shrinkage annually, and an average of 1.4% of its total revenues.

这种“小偷小摸”积少成多，据统计这种行为每年可造成数千亿美元的经济损失，会消耗各公司办公用品全年库存的35%，平均约占各公司年总收入的1.4%。

So if these behaviours are so harmful to our economy, why do we engage in them?

由此可见，这种行为对经济损害很大，但为何人们会这么做？

When you start a new job, your employer tends to make a series of promises to you with regards to your employment that are not necessarily part of your written contract.

当你步入新工作后，通常雇主会给刚入职的员工很多承诺，但并不一定白纸黑字地都落实在合同里。

Imagine that your employer promised you “flexible working hours” and a “collegial work environment.” By making these promises, your employer has created a set of expectations. These expectations form the basis of what we call a psychological contract.

设想雇主在聘用员工时口头许诺提供“弹性工作时间”或“良性工作环境”等，这些承诺会构建员工的心理预设，从而形成了劳资双方“心理契约”（psychological contract）的基础。

As long as your employer keeps up his/her part of the deal, you will be a happy, committed and loyal employee. The only imperfection to this situation is that it rarely exists. We know that over time, employers and employees’ perceptions of what was promised may start to drift apart.

若雇主一方信守承诺，雇员一方也会保持愉快、尽责而忠诚。但实际情况是好景不长。工作时间愈长，雇主和员工双方对之前承诺的理解就愈见分歧。

Broken promises

违背承诺的雇主

In reality a lot of people will perceive that their employer is deviating from his/her original promises. Indeed, about 55% of employees report that their employer broke promises within the first two years of employment, and 65% have experienced a broken promise within the last year.

现实情况是很多人认为雇主背弃了当初的承诺。研究发现，55%的员工表示雇主在头两年就违反了承诺，而65%的员工表示在过去的一年里雇主就不守承诺。

More recently, researchers have found that employees experience broken promises at a weekly and even daily rate.

最近更有研究指出，员工每星期甚至每日都会遭遇此事。

At this point you are probably thinking: “So if they break their promises so often, they must at least apologise for them, right?” Sadly enough, a series of recent findings has indicated that employers hardly ever seem to notice that they did something wrong.

看到这里，你可能会想：“若雇主经常违反承诺，至少要为此道歉吧？”可惜最近的很多研究都表明，雇主根本意识不到自身错误。

As a consequence, they only try to justify or rectify their actions about 6% to 37% of the time. It therefore seems that employers break promises rather frequently, but they do not seem to acknowledge their wrongdoing or intervene to offer a solution.

正因为如此，雇主只会对自身6%到37%的行为进行辩解或纠正。这样看来，雇主不守承诺很常见，但他们大多不承认那是错误行为，更遑论提供解决方案。

If you wrong us, shall we not be vengeful?

你亏待我，我不该报复吗？

Because these promises are such a central part of your employment agreement, you feel that when your employer breaks them, you can take what is “rightfully” yours.

承诺是雇佣契约的核心。有人认为，既然雇主食言在先，那自己也可以拿走“本该归属于自己”的东西。

Employees who experience broken promises tend to experience a series of very intense negative emotions such as anger, frustration and outrage, which in turn will lead to a higher desire to dominate, retaliate and get even with the employer.

遭遇雇主亏待的员工会容易出现一系列非常强烈的负面情绪，譬如气愤、沮丧以及暴怒等，进而想要掌控甚至报复雇主，以牙还牙。

Moreover, researchers found that this effect was most profound among those who were excellent at their jobs and expected to be treated fairly, meaning that an organisation’s best employees are most likely to be “vengeful” in the face of broken promises.

此外，研究人员还发现，工作出色又期望获得公正待遇的员工，受亏待后遭遇的负面效应更严重。换言之，最优秀的员工面对雇主违诺时最有可能实施“报复”。

Some studies have also demonstrated that some people seem to enjoy behaving vengefully, especially when they are in a higher status role and when they feel more dominant. So when we add one and one together, we notice that the combination of “a desire to retaliate” and “enjoying enacting vengeful” leads to a positive reinforcement of this behaviour.

另有一些研究表明，有些人乐于报复，而当他们位高权重时就更是如此。 综合来看，“报复雇主的欲望”和“实施报复的快感”两者叠加起在一起，往往会强化员工的报复行径。

As a consequence, employees are far more likely to be vengeful in the future when they are confronted with a broken promise because they mainly experienced positive consequences of their negative behaviour.

采取恶劣的报复行为后，员工心理上却获得正反馈。这将造成的后果是，一旦员工再遇到雇主不兑现承诺的情形，他们就更容易产生报复倾向。