If you’re a movie buff you might recognize the title of this blog as the name of the book written by the character Hubbell Gardiner in the movie The Way We Were. Robert Redford played Hubbell, all golden blond, young, athletic and almost unbearably handsome. He was the gorgeous goyem guy to Barbra Streisand’s Katie Morosky, the bright, outspoken, politically-passionate, Brooklyn Jewish girl. He was penthouse condo to her top floor walk-up. An odd couple if ever there was one. The screenwriter Authur Laurents said, “Hubbell gave her class, and Katie gave him sex.”
But it’s Hubbell’s book title that hooks us into his world. He imagines his one percent world as a privileged confection – cold, rich, sweet and creamy, with no nutritional value. It holds its form for a short while before it begins to get soft. It’s delicious for the first few scoops, then sugary and sickening after that.
My friend Terrie (not her real name) is a woman whose edges have pretty much dissolved. Her exterior is attractive, polished, well put together with a great sense of humor. But her integrity around money, poorly defined for many years, has now led her to the precipice of a fourth arrest for misappropriating funds. She got paid for a job she did not complete and then continued using the client’s credit card number. I just called it misappropriating. How quaint. The DA called it a felony misdemeanor.
If you described Terrie’s situation to other people, most would probably declare that they could never do such a thing. But they might borrow some petty cash, or use funds from a work project to float themselves a temporary loan during a rough patch, paying it back as soon as the emergency passed.
Want to know how many times you can use someone’s credit card, money, or company funds without permission? Five times: never, never, never, never, and never. A quick “loan” of a couple hundred dollars, or a couple thousand dollars, is the first step down that proverbial slippery slope to doing it again, and doing it for more.
When we read about the government agency head who gets his house re-modeled as a “gift” from a constituent, or the executive who borrows from his expense account to cover the kids’ tuition, or the doctor who sells hospital drugs on the side, or the construction manager who cut corners with inferior materials and pockets the difference…they all begin with a teeny-weeny bending of the rules done over and over again.
It all starts so simply, going down easy like ice cream.
Are there places where your integrity has begun to melt around the edges? Is it in not quite completing the work you contracted to do, but patching it over to look like you did? Taking a few short cuts in the quality of that product you’ve been paid to deliver? How about signing those business car service vouchers for some personal trips? Has the office supply room become your one-stop-shop? Using the company Fedex account for shipping your personal items? Do you take the occasional shopping spree with the funds from a seldom-used business budget line? After all, who would know?
It’s all stealing, make no mistake. And it is smooth and sweet and small – just like a teaspoonful of ice cream – until its not, and you’re left facing public ridicule, the loss of your livelihood, a steep fine and a stretch in prison.
