There's a huge difference between a company with its own building, and a company that shares a building in some way with other companies.
Many I've seen have it setup so that if you get past the security guard at the lobby, you effectively had full reign of the entire building, including many companies that wouldn't lock the doors or common areas.
In the early 2000's I worked at a company where our IT section was in its own building with only about 18-24 or so people spread out over three mostly open plan areas between development, testing and infrastructure.
Even so we still had an incident where two guys walked in and just collected a few laptops before making their escape.
We like to think that we are hyper-vigilant and intelligent as human beings, but in general we tend to just focus on what is in front of us most of the time. We assume that when things are happening that they must be ordinary, or else why would they be happening?
~400 person company spread across a few floors, but only one kitchen. It wasn't weird for people you didn't recognize to come off the elevator and get snacks to take back to their floor.
I worked somewhere with a few hundred employees across 3 floors. If someone wearing business casual walked onto our floor I would have no idea if they worked for us or not.
I work at a company of ~200 people and I already don't recognize everyone. Seeing an unknown face, I just assume they are from some distant team that I never had to interact with, say hi and move on.
Another aspect besides not recognizing everyone from your company is like this- even if someone knows for sure that a person from a different company is helping themselves to snacks, people are may avoid pointing it out. People may prefer to avoid conflicts or make someone else look bad. They are more likely to act if they see someone stealing from their desk, home, etc. That's kind of their domain.
Also, a few other things may also be there- people won't make noise if someone steals snack packets, but they may make noise if someone steals laptops.
Also, if one person steals it may get pointed out more than if a lot of people steal- where stealing is culture, etc.
Feels like every time I drop by the office there's 2-3 new faces I've never seen before.
People I know seems to not take issue with them being there, so I'm sure it's probably fine. Fine enough for it not to be my issue to deal with in any case.
bombcar|5 days ago
Many I've seen have it setup so that if you get past the security guard at the lobby, you effectively had full reign of the entire building, including many companies that wouldn't lock the doors or common areas.
animal531|4 days ago
Even so we still had an incident where two guys walked in and just collected a few laptops before making their escape.
We like to think that we are hyper-vigilant and intelligent as human beings, but in general we tend to just focus on what is in front of us most of the time. We assume that when things are happening that they must be ordinary, or else why would they be happening?
hamdingers|5 days ago
nkrisc|5 days ago
mystifyingpoi|5 days ago
kjs3|5 days ago
atulatul|4 days ago
Also, a few other things may also be there- people won't make noise if someone steals snack packets, but they may make noise if someone steals laptops.
Also, if one person steals it may get pointed out more than if a lot of people steal- where stealing is culture, etc.
SomeUserName432|4 days ago
People I know seems to not take issue with them being there, so I'm sure it's probably fine. Fine enough for it not to be my issue to deal with in any case.