Legality regarding selling materials gathered at work?
employment attorney Ohio Aug 13, 2026
Location: Ohio Hey all, I work 4 days a week (usually solo shifts) at a small local bar. Most days it's pretty slow, especially before 5 o'clock, so I often find myself in the bar all by myself doing menial tasks or doodling or doing some random BS to keep from losing my mind. Now let me tell you. This bar is FULL of spiders. It's so bad that my coworkers and I or sometimes just refer to it as "spider bar" or "SB" as a joke. Now, none of my co-workers are the biggest fans of spiders, and while I don't mind them, I usually can't be bothered to clean up any webs that aren't particularly prominent or in the way of anything. So a couple weeks ago, I was having lunch with a friend and he keeps talking about how there's "money in silk." Well that got my gears turning. Since then, every time I've been alone at the bar, I've been going around to every nook and cranny and collecting all the dead webs (I try not to disrupt the living spiders if I can help it) into a big silk rope. Currently it's about 8 to 9 inches long probably, and I'm gonna try selling it on eBay or Marketplace or something once it gets 1½ to 2 feet long. All this being said, if my employers found out about this, would they be able to claim the rope as company property as it's made from materials I gathered on the clock? EDIT: Respectfully, I am not concerned with speculation on the value of the rope. I am only concerned with whether or not my employer would be able to commandeer the rope.
