When you own a restaurant, you need to keep track of every little thing to ensure the business is a success.

What would you do if you were reviewing your security camera footage and you saw that one of your employees was taking food that was supposed to go in the trash and putting it in their car to bring home?

That is what the business owner in this story witnessed, so she fired the employee for theft. Some people, however, are telling her that since the food was going in the trash anyway, she shouldn’t have been fired.

I agree that the employee did nothing wrong. As long as she wasn’t adding extra food to the trash pile, she really did nothing wrong. Dumpster diving is completely legal and not considered theft.

AITA for firing an employee for stealing leftovers?

My (27F) husband’s of 3 years’ father is an entrepreneur who, among his businesses in numerous industries, has several sandwich shops spread out throughout two states.

What a great opportunity for this couple.

Last year, my husband and his dad opened a new location, and he and I were put in charge of being the ultimate decision makers regarding day to day operations of that location.

My husband is the one with a MBA, but he has his hands full managing properties that his dad owns so I’ve been the one who pays the most attention to details.

It never hurts to review the security cameras.

While I trust the manager we hired, I sometimes go through the security camera footage of the store for extra assurance purposes. My husband never has the time to do so, but I can easily do so.

Our shop is not open on Sundays so inventory that we have have to be thrown out because it cannot be served on Monday.

If they were just going to throw it away, what’s the harm?

The other day I realized that on one Saturday night an employee who regularly closed was throwing out meats but would shove bread into a bag and presumably take it home. Another employee saw this happen and never reported it.

I ended up confronting the other employee first, who has been here longer. She admitted it was true but that she thought because it was peanuts compared to the bread and meats being thrown out that this was somebody just trying to feed themselves.

I agree, there is nothing wrong with taking something that was going in the trash.

I confronted the employee who did it and she said she was sorry but she was a single mom and that she thought it was going in the trash anyway.

She also said that she wasn’t making enough to not qualify for food stamps, but that it was still not enough with a growing child and she often had to skip meals.

How is this stealing? I completely disagree with this person.

I left that meeting angry that the employee didn’t seem to understand she was essentially stealing. I called the manager and said that he should have made it clear that stealing was unacceptable and to fire her.

He seemed dismayed and said that we should give her a warning and give her a chance to not do it again.

So she is getting fired for taking stuff that was going in the trash?

But I was honestly done with it because we pay well for what she does and she cannot say her issues entitled her to get away with this.

AITA?

I think it is a pretty crazy position to say that someone should get fired for taking things that were going in the trash. Obviously stealing is wrong, but if it was getting thrown out anyway, what’s the problem?

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a grocery store employee who is fed up after months of going above and beyond for no monetary return.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

It is hard to believe anyone would be this awful.

This commenter thinks that this restaurant will get a lot of bad press over this.

Make this make sense. Why wouldn’t she want someone to eat this food?

I agree with this commenter completely.

This person says this person is way out of line.

What kind of person would rather see food go in the trash than consumed by an employee? This is absolutely monstrous behavior. It is hard to believe that anyone would be so heartless.

At the very least, this restaurant owner should be donating the food to a homeless shelter or something like that. To fire someone because they took food that was going in the trash is evil.