Thursday, July 21, 2005

Bank Robbers Can Justifty Robbing Bank



As you can see I am busy charging my cell phone . I am at work and the phone will more then likely only be used for personal calls and it is my personal phone. There is a huge outside chance that I may well use the phone for office needs .i.e. I may be out on the system and Call Cecilia to see if I have had any calls or that I may just leave from the meeting or project I happen to be at to go home. This has happened more hen once and I will use my cell phone to notify the office folk of my intentions. Am I bad??

This truly one of those gray areas we all we all discussed in some lost Sunday School class or Ethics 101. The perfect crime, the scenario: would you commit the crime if you knew you would never, ever get caught? What is the line we cross that conflicts with our established mores: using the company phone to make personal calls “Hi honey. Do you want me to pick anything up on the way home from work?” “ Hi Mom how are you doing today? Do you need anything are you alright?” How about “ High John, it’s been a long time—I saw your name in my email thought I’d give you a call…”

I get confused…since I spend so much of my time here it seems like home and many times I am doing office work at home and that feels natural too. So I begin to treat my office as an extension of my home. There is so much work I do at home and away from work which I am never compensated for I can talk, or write surf a few minutes as long as I get my prescribed work done. Am I turning into the bank robber? Is this how the big contenders get started, one phone call then another phone call, then a company vehicle over night, then a gas purchase on the company plastic then all the sudden your are the CEO for Enron. I got busted a couple years ago because I suckered into a deal from the local Sam’s club. I got a piece of mail here at the office saying everyone at the office was eligible for a free Sam’s Card!! I dutifully drug a sign-up sheet round the office and got a couple of other folks interested in signing up to join. I sent in the money and never thought of the incident again until a couple of years later. There was a lot of trauma at the office one of the employees, a good employee was being set up. There was some stress over how she fit in with the rest of the staff and they definitely wanted her gone. An audit was performed—outside goons were brought in from the head office ad guess what? The Sam’s Club Card affair surfaced. The employee in question moved on to another position in the organization far, far away and I was asked to reimburse the organization for the 24 dollars the membership cost. It was a pretty scary ordeal the whole audit thing but it was a true learning experience in Business ethics and morals( or lack) but I digress maybe I should just charge my phone at home, just to be sure.


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