The office manager noticed that the toilet paper in the ladies’ room was running out frequently, and she was always having to call the custodial staff to bring more. Someone would bring up a bunch of rolls and leave extra rolls in each stall. But this was happening day after day. Was there something in the water? Unless the female employees were having a sudden excessive need of toilet paper, something was up.
Sometimes, when something goes missing, a company will install cameras to watch the item in question. Cameras in the rest room, however, would present a violation of privacy (not to mention an opportunity for abuse), so that was off the table. Many women went into the bathroom with large bags—backpacks, tote bags—when they were on their way out at the end of the day, any of which could easily have stashed away a roll or two. But we were seeing more than one or two rolls disappear. So the office manager kept her eye out for someone with a larger than average bag who took that bag into the rest room in the middle of the day when we were most frequently getting the out-of-paper complaints.
It wasn’t long before she zeroed in on a staffer who went to the gym during lunch with a large gym bag. Sure enough, the bag seemed fuller when she returned to her desk after lunch than when she’d left for the gym—whether or not she was bulking up with her workouts, her bag sure was. The employee was confronted.
Who needs that much toilet paper? It turned out the employee’s best friend had opened a small café, and our employee was helping out there after hours. Our employee was stealing supplies for the café rest room, as well as other office supplies (in smaller, less noticeable quantities) as her way of pitching in.
She was very soon free to work full-time at her friend’s café.
TIPS
Look but Don’t Take
Office supplies and equipment belong to the company, not you. Use them for your work. Use them at the office. Don’t use them for personal stuff, and don’t take them with you when you leave the premises. It may seem small or innocent enough to take a few folders or pens, but if someone is looking to make trouble for you, they can point to those few items and cry thief, and there’s not much you can do to defend yourself.
MEMO TO MANAGEMENT
How you keep and dispense office supplies conveys a message about them and can help prevent shrinkage. Office supplies kept in large quantities in easily accessible areas give the message that they are ubiquitous, cheap, and nothing will be missed. Even if you order in large quantities to realize cost savings, it’s advisable to keep the large quantities in storage space and make only limited numbers of items available at once. Also, keeping bulk supplies in a secured area, even if it’s just inside someone’s office, gives the message that they are valuable. Most office supply theft occurs because people think of the supplies as “nothing.” Change the perception, and employees will think twice about walking away with the company’s property, however small.
CASE FILE
Super Bowl Shuffle
The 1985 Chicago Bears rapped that they weren’t there to make any trouble, but the Super Bowl sure caused some trouble for purchasing manager Frankie.
Frankie worked with a wide variety of vendors, purchasing numerous items in significant quantities for a manufacturing operation. A big part of his job was establishing strong relationships with his vendors so that they understood the company’s business and were able to anticipate and accommodate seasonal and other needs, and so that Frankie could negotiate the best possible prices. Frankie was a big buyer—if he moved all the company’s business from one vendor to another, it could make a big difference in that vendor’s bottom line—so they had a big incentive to keep Frankie happy.
Frankie was happy when vendors delivered high-quality product on time, within the price guidelines, because that made Frankie look good to his bosses, and he was duly rewarded when raise time came. But lots of good vendors were capable of doing that, so some of them sought an edge.
It’s common for vendors to pick up the tab for lunch with a customer like Frankie, or send a big box of Christmas cookies around the holidays. But many companies, especially those with larger budgets, have policies limiting what an employee can accept from a vendor to prevent a purchasing manager like Frankie being bribed to make a decision not in the company’s best interest, like, for example, accepting substandard materials or doing business with a company that wasn’t offering the best price.
One of Frankie’s vendors had a sales rep who’d worked with Frankie for many years. He knew that Frankie loved football, and when his team made it to the Super Bowl, the vendor rep saw an opportunity to cement his company’s place in Frankie’s business plan—he offered Frankie a pair of tickets to the Super Bowl. Good seats, too, that were selling online for five figures.
When Frankie returned to the office after the big game, he couldn’t stop talking about what a great time he’d had and how great the seats had been. He didn’t mention how he’d come by those seats, but when the same vendor made a similar offer of concert tickets to another purchasing manager, we put two and two together and had a little chat with Frankie.
Yeah, he’d accepted the tickets from the rep, he admitted, but claimed the rep was offering them not as a business associate but as a friend. Unfortunately, the seats were part of the vendor company’s season ticket package—they were clearly the property of the vendor, not the rep, and clearly from the business. Frankie had to have known that even a good friend doesn’t usually have tickets in that price range he or she can afford to hand out.
Although there was no evidence Frankie had changed his ordering patterns as a result of receiving the Super Bowl tickets, he was clearly afoul of company policies about accepting gifts from vendors and was disciplined accordingly.
CASE FILE
Naked Capitalism
Frankie was blinded to the ethics of his situation by his desire to go to the Super Bowl, but he was basically a good employee who made a bad choice. Nick was a different sort.
Nick made it clear to his vendors that if they expected his business, he expected some perks in return. “It’s just the capitalist system at work,” he told one of them.
That led to his vendors offering him a variety of so-called incentives in order to get and keep his business. The winning “bidder” paid for repeat business from Nick by hosting wild nights at strip clubs, in which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. Just to seal the deal, the vendor made sure Nick had all the lap dances and other favors from the strippers he wanted, all on the vendor’s tab.
The vendor considered this the cost of doing business. We found out when a competing vendor cried foul. Ultimately, the wild nights cost the “winning” vendor the company’s business and cost Nick his job.
TIPS
Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Giving or receiving, you can get yourself in trouble if you aren’t careful about gifts or favors in the working world.
Before you accept something—gift, meal, entertainment—from someone you or your company deals with, ask yourself:
• Does my employer have a policy about what I can accept? Does this run afoul of that policy?
• Do I have any influence over business with this person or company? Even if your role is small potatoes—hiring a temp now and again or buying small items when your workplace runs out—the possibility of influence exists.
• Might the giver think I have influence over company spending? Even if you don’t have any role in purchasing decisions, a vendor may not realize that and may be seeking to influence you. That can still get you in trouble—as well as souring the company’s relationship with the vendor when he or she finds out you implied a role you don’t have.
• What’s the value of the gift? Lunch at a modestly priced place is one thing and not as likely to be perceived as swaying you in the same way as taking you to four-star restaurants and throwing in an expensive bottle of wine.
If you are in a position to give to someone you do business with:
•
Keep the price modest. Holiday gifts of food items meant to be shared with the whole office are generally appropriate as a thank-you for the year’s business, but expensive gifts to decision makers may cross a line.
• Does the recipient company have a policy about what an employee can accept? Large companies may send vendors a letter clarifying their limits, and if the gift you envision is generous, it’s not inappropriate to query the recipient. That will prevent putting him or her in a difficult situation if you send something he or she can’t accept without violating company rules.
• Overseas business relationships are a whole ‘nother can of worms. In some countries, it’s customary to grease palms to get anything done. But in the United States, we call that bribery. Particularly if you are dealing with foreign government officials—at any level from president to dogcatcher—you may be subject to the provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. Consult with appropriate counsel in your company before you make any missteps.
CASE FILE
How the Grinch Bought Christmas
In some companies, it’s common for employees to buy a little something for their boss at the holidays. Some bosses like to thank their employees with a holiday gift. In either case, this is a personal choice . . . and a personal expense.
One boss wanted to buy the affection of his staff with nice holiday gifts. Other bosses might give a small box of cookies or a modestly priced bottle of wine. But Greg wanted to be seen as the best boss to work for, so he went the extra mile. He bought individually selected gifts for everyone in his chain of command, none of them ridiculously extravagant but still chosen to build his reputation for generosity. For example, he bought one fellow a silk necktie featuring a design from a famous painting. Greg’s staff were indeed impressed, both with the thought that went into the gifts and with the generosity each represented. Other managers noticed, too, and weren’t thrilled that Greg was making them look cheap.
Greg, on the other hand, wasn’t too happy when his expense report was rejected. He had, it seems, assumed that as the gifts were for employees, they were a legitimate business expense and would be paid for by the company.
I hope he got a lot of mileage out of the gratitude of his staff that year, because they were bound to be disappointed the next year when he was spending his own money.
Another employee at another company attempted to expense his contribution to his boss’s Christmas gift—the boss who owned the company and signed his expense reports.
CASE FILE
The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side of the Cubicle Wall
Abuse of alcohol and other substances while at work is a common problem: employees imbibing over lunch and sleeping it off behind a closed office door in the afternoon; salespeople taking customers out for a night on the town and getting hammered; employees sneaking a chemical pick-me-up in the company bathroom. Needless to say (I hope), drinking, drugs, and doing your job seldom mix. And if you get caught, there’s a good chance you will be fired on the spot.
One employee who we’ll call Mary Jane—for reasons that will soon become obvious—had a resourceful streak. She and some of her young colleagues had been known to partake of certain illicit substances, but that could get costly on their entry-level paychecks. Many employees livened up the surroundings in their cubicle farm with plants and other greenery, so Mary Jane did the same. The difference was, in among her cluster of coleus and spider plants, she was growing grass—and I don’t mean the kind in your lawn.
Mary Jane and her young friends counted on the old fogies being blind to her special plants. She didn’t realize that marijuana has been around a lot longer than these twenty-something employees. A more senior staffer, who had his own experiences with the weed back when the Grateful Dead were all alive and the Rolling Stones were still young, immediately recognized what Mary Jane was growing and warned her to get rid of it.
Not one to throw out perfectly good pot, Mary Jane decided to take the plants home. Unfortunately for her, without the protective cover of the other plants that she’d had surrounding it, the plant’s identity was obvious to anyone who’d ever seen so much as a picture of the leaf, and word spread—like smoke—in her wake as she carried her plant toward the door. There was quite an audience when the security guard stopped her and asked her to wait for the police.
It might seem excessive for a company to call the police, but Mary Jane put the company at risk by having this illegal substance on company premises. If management took it from her, that person would be at risk of prosecution for possession, and if they simply let her toss it in the Dumpster outside, it’s possible someone would find it, and the company would likely face a visit from the police, anyway.
CASE FILE
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
We’ve had our share of visits from the police—not always because we’ve called them. More than once, the police have shown up at our doorstep to pick up an employee for a transgression outside of work.
Dave was one example. Dave and his wife had divorced some years earlier, and despite collecting a decent paycheck for his work for our company, he hadn’t been paying court-ordered child support. I don’t know what Dave’s reasons were for avoiding that responsibility, and neither did the court; he’d failed to show up for a court date about the matter. And that led the judge to sign an order for his arrest.
Officers arrived at our front desk and asked for Dave. When the receptionist called his extension and wouldn’t, at the officers’ request, say who was there to see him, he claimed to be unavailable. Human Resources and company security were alerted, and the officers were shown directly to Dave’s desk, where he proceeded to attempt to evade them by pretending to be another employee.
Naturally, our personnel knew who he was and were able to confirm his identity. Then he claimed not to be the correct Dave—that there was some other person with his name who was the subject of the court order. Unfortunately for him, Dave had been very vocal around the office all through the course of his acrimonious divorce; everyone knew he had been fighting with his wife about the child support. Dave was perhaps not at his sharpest in thinking that one was going to fly.
When Dave finally left with the officers, he did so in handcuffs, thanks to his efforts to evade arrest.
Go Directly to Jail
That’s far from the only time an employee has been arrested on company premises. The most common reasons are domestic, like Dave’s case, but we’ve also had employees collared for drunk driving, domestic abuse, and even one nice, clean-cut fellow who was arrested for attempted murder. We’ve also had visits from police to interview employees about events they may have witnessed or people they had information about, just like you’ve seen on Law & Order, and we get regular visits from process servers bringing papers about divorces, lawsuits, and similar matters.
Companies will just about always cooperate with police. It is in the company’s best interest to establish and maintain a good relationship with them for the protection of the company’s personnel, customers, and property. So even if you are completely blameless in an incident, if the police come calling, don’t expect the company to side with you or protect you. Sure, there may be the occasional situation in which management is trying to protect a high-level executive or avoid bad publicity, but those are rare. Most companies would rather let the police take care of their business with the minimum of fuss and disruption and get the problem off their premises.
And no company will reward an employee for behavior that brings the police to their doorstep. Even if the alleged crime has nothing to do with the employee’s work or performance, a visit from the heat is, as we saw in Dave’s case, an unwelcome interruption and a distraction from work well after the police have gone.
CASE FILE
Sugar, Sugar
Certain industries were hot, hot, hot back in the seventies and eighties. Books have been written and movies made about the excesses on Wall Street, for example. The culture
was anything goes.
What went on at one company was a lot of cocaine. One star sales rep was known to excuse himself to “get a little sugar for my coffee,” and step into the conference room to use the polished surface of the table to snort lines of cocaine. Everyone knew what he was doing; the conference room had glass walls.
The thing that finally got him in trouble? He expensed a plane ticket to see a client but never turned up at the client’s office. Instead, he’d exchanged the ticket for one to the Caribbean and spent three days on the beach working on his tan and his high.
TIPS
Up in Smoke
Question: When are illegal drugs in the office okay?
Answer: Never. Even if you claim you needed them to do your job—as, for example, some long-distance truckers have said about amphetamines to keep awake—the company will always distance itself from illegal conduct. Even if someone in the chain of command knew and was looking the other way, the employee who gets caught is getting thrown under the bus.
Question: What about prescription drugs, including medical marijuana?
Answer: If your prescribed medications don’t interfere with your ability to do your job, you should be able to take them. However, if you are using marijuana for a legitimate medical need under a doctor’s supervision, you still may run afoul of company policies, for example, about smoking. It’s best to discuss the issue with human resources to make sure there will be no problems.
Question: Is it any of my employer’s business if I like to have a couple beers at lunch, if I do it off-site?
Employees Gone Wild Page 9