An Ethics Moment, October 2000 PA TIMES
Have you ever wondered about what you can and cannot take home from the office? Most of us use city or agency supplied pens and pencils at home and elsewhere and don’t get particularly upset about the ethics of doing so. But what should you do when the office toilet paper starts disappearing? Is this an ethics crisis? A management crisis? Both of the above? As a city manager friend once advised, when employees start taking toilet paper home, you’ve got a problem!
As it turns out, while toilet paper may not be a prime commodity for employees to take home in most organizations, there are many other commodities that seem to walk out the door regularly. A recent article in the New York Times points out that employee theft is a growing enterprise. A KMPG survey of 5,000 business firms found that the average loss per company between 1994 and 1998 due to the the filing of false expense claims, cash advances, fraudulent checks, bad credit card charges, and medical insurance claims had jumped considerably. Theft and misuse of company credit cards by employees, for example, tripled to an average loss of more than $1.1 million per firm.
Have you checked the supply of toilet paper in your office recently?