I remember that there was something deliciously naughty in the air when the Chief Executive’s secretary got on board and sat next to us at the start of a long journey.
She was being sent to take minutes at a meeting. He was travelling by car so that he could claim generous mileage and take his wife for a ride to the City on the firm’s expense.
Although normally loyal, the long journey was too much for her and she regaled us with mischevious tales of a man on a huge salary claiming for ballpoint pens and other items that would make a British MP proud.
We also discovered that two large industrial strength shredders had just been purchased and were in the private walk-in cupboard that only he and she had access to. Our jaws dropped when she revealed why . . . .
He retired about a year later.
Do you think that by “regaling” you with these stories she was in a sense trying to salve the guilt she must have felt for going along with the man’s dishonesty and not reporting it? Or was she perhaps boasting, because, after all, as an accessory to his dishonest behaviour, she is as bad as he is.
Either way I personally would love to hear the story she had to tell.
Having worked in the corporate world all of my working life I have seen and heard many things that have made me mad with rage with regard to how employees would treat their employer.
I have personally seen a high ranking manager talk a bar in to putting ‘Food and Drink’ on a receipt for more than was spent so he could use the extra cash to go to a nightclub. He took a number of co-workers with him, all aware of what he had done, to enjoy his dishonesty.
I also heard of the same man using his company paid for mobile phone to call chat lines in the evenings after he split with his wife.
The same man that didn’t service his company car as required and when the engine literally went bang one day refused to pay to have it fixed. He literally left it in the car park to rot.
He wasn’t around long after that. And I bet that he and all of the other co-workers that joined him in his dishonesty have shouted at the dishonesty that the MP’s have been charged with, if not officially then morally by the general public.
My point is that whilst we point at the MP’s and are shocked at what they have been doing (and yes, I am shocked) it isn’t different than what happens in the corporate world. Just that the corporate world is at a smaller scale, at least in my experience, and when dishonesty is discovered it doesn’t tend to hit the national news.
I’m not sure what the answer is. However I am sure this subject will continue to shock me for the rest of my working life, just not at the national level that we are all reading and hearing about but rather at the local level in my corporate existance.
SilverTiger
Interesting point about her possible guilt. I suppose her actions could have been one way of trying to deal with it.
acetuk
I agree there is a lot of hypocrisy around the outrage at the MPs’ scandal. The mob do seem to be making a lot of noise and not looking in their back yard. It would be interesting to also read about journalists’ expenses at some stage.
I agree that the corporate world can be equally shocking. I heard recently of a chief executive paying for prostitutes on the company account as a way of keeping a couple of senior managers happy!!!