Several years ago, a friend who worked for a corporation mentioned pirating some new software. When I asked her if that wasn\u2019t illegal, she shrugged and mumbled something about, \u201cEverybody does it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Her response reminded me of an article I read years ago in Time magazine called Larceny in Everyday Life<\/em>. The gist of the piece was that people who considered themselves to be honest often showed no qualms when it came to stealing from their employers. They \u00a0weren\u2019t \u00a0talking about embezzlement; they were talking about office supplies or padding an expense account. The big impersonal corporation would never know, never care, they reasoned.<\/p>\n \n The corporate world is so removed from my daily life that I haven\u2019t given such things much thought lately. Then I came across some advice from a popular Web site that specializes in financial advice. This site had recently gathered some of their favorite articles in a book so I got a copy.<\/p>\n \n Imagine my surprise when I read a piece about squeezing money from your workplace. Most of the tips sounded more cheapskate than larcenous: bring Tupperware and use it\u00a0 to gather up leftovers in the break room, recharge your electronics at the office. Pretty innocent stuff, I admit, but there\u2019s a bigger issue at play here. What kind of habits are being built?<\/p>\n \n A woman in one of my seminars told us that she and her boyfriend were thinking of starting a housecleaning business. “If we get paid in cash, we don’t have to declare the income, do we?” she asked.<\/p>\n \n I pointed out to her that the IRS might never know about these cash infusions, but there was a bigger issue here. “At what point do you plan for your integrity to kick in?” I replied.\u00a0It’s easy to rationalize small scale larceny, but tiny deeds have a habit of growing.<\/p>\n \n There was a huge scandal in Minneapolis several years ago when it was discovered that a bank president, who also happened to be a prominent citizen in the community, had embezzled millions of dollars from his customers. Like many criminals, he seemed an unlikely crook, but the evidence proved otherwise.<\/p>\n \n As this story unfolded, it occurred to me that he hadn\u2019t taken millions all at once. He probably began with a small emergency, maybe told himself that he\u2019d repay the money as soon as possible. Before that could happen, he took a little more. Eventually, he took a lot more.<\/p>\n \n It\u2019s easy to forget that behavior\u2014good or bad\u2014is cumulative. How we relate to money in general and our own money in particular is establishing patterns that we may be quite unaware of. \u00a0However, making peace with money requires that we not only notice our patterns, but confront the ones that aren\u2019t working for us, the ones that keep us in bondage. Double standards won\u2019t cut it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several years ago, a friend who worked for a corporation mentioned pirating some new software. When I asked her if that wasn\u2019t illegal, she shrugged and mumbled something about, \u201cEverybody does it.\u201d Her response reminded me of an article I read years ago in Time magazine called Larceny in Everyday Life. The gist of the…<\/p>\n