A lengthy period of participation observation and subsequent semistructured interviewing among the bread salesmen in an Englishfactory bakery showed that the salesmen regularly steal small sums of money from their customers. Paradoxically, although this is clearly (and seriously) theft, the salesmen manage to sustain a def inition of the practice as trifing. This paper shows that the salesmen's adoption of systematic theft (and their definition of it as unimportant) is a rational response to a critical organisational dilemma, and that ultimately, the responsiblity for illegality lies squarely with the bakery management.
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