A former colleague of mine sent me a quick email asking to catch up over the phone sometime soon. He had left the company over a year ago, and he had developed quite the reputation for himself. He rarely came into the office. When we had to travel to San Francisco and Napa for team events or the annual company kick-off, he would make every excuse from “my mom is having a tumor removed” to “my basement flooded during the storm last week, and I need to take care of it.” He frequently stole office supplies when he’d be in the neighborhood on the weekends (our office manager told me this, as she saw the footage on our office cameras installed by both entrances). And when we finally caught up over the phone, he admitted to fake expensing on average about $3K/month for his last nine months at the company. “I milked them for every last cent that I could,” he said, gleefully. He made up business trips to see friends who lived in other states who happened to be located in the same cities where he had customers in his book of business. He wrote in work notes that he was doing “quarterly business reviews” with customers, when in reality, he never went onsite to see the customer for more than a “hi, how are you?” Instead, he took them to expensive, plush restaurants and wined and dined them. Well, those were his “business reviews.”
In the end, he got fired, but in a “nice way”: he was given a few days to say his goodbyes, tell his customers he was leaving. Management wanted to frame it as though it was voluntary to make him feel better. They gave him one month’s severance and even paid health insurance for him and his family for two additional months.
I’ve seen a lot of shady and unethical activity working as a “white-collar” professional, but I truly believe that this guy really took the cake.