Fucha

Hello and welcome to Word of the Week! I’m your host, Liz. This podcast is dedicated to words and phrases that are untranslatable into English. Let’s discover the nuance of the world’s languages, shall we?

This week’s word is fucha. A Polish word meaning ‘using company time and resources for your own ends’. This is a word associated with resentment, for those of us who are not self-employed and also don’t appreciate their managers. Employee resentment manifests itself in a slightly rebellious and widespread form of theft. 

And if you add the political landscape of Poland’s history as a socialist country, where the employer and the state are often one and the same, this theft can take on political connotations. Generally and colloquially, fucha describes the act of using company time and resources to complete a job for yourself or someone else. You can think of relatively benign acts like printing off flyers for a weekend garage sale. Or the act can be more racy, like a metal lathe worker producing parts for his brother-in-law, the car mechanic. 

Fucha can also be used to refer to what Americans might understand as ‘moonlighting’. In a socialist country, fucha is regarded as a legitimate means of meeting your needs at the expense of a possibly oppressive employer. In a capitalist country, where greed motivates most employers, that attitude can bleed into the worker’s mindset also. Pilfering office supplies or working on your own project during company time is easily adopted. 

Many of us might see small-scale theft of goods as ‘fringe benefits’ of their job, even if they have no grievance whatsoever against employers. Maybe it’s a box of paper clips, or back in the day, a long-distance phone call. But there could very well come a time when employers put up No Fucha signs. Something to consider perhaps.

Here’s to this week… May you all endeavor to adopt this Word of the Week and see the world a little bit differently. I’ll be back next week with a new word. Thank you for listening!