.
A ream of A4 paper because your son needed to print out his project and you’d run out and didn’t have time to stop at Officeworks.
A roll of sticky-tape.
A USB stick.
A packet of Kingstons from the staff kitchen.
A bottle of wine on Friday night (you were the one who stayed behind to clean up – you earned it).
Perks of the job?
Office pilfering?
Stealing.
Last week, news.com.au ran a story about a German office worker who stole 20 tonnes of office supplies. That’s a lot of paper-clips. And it’s not like he flogged it on eBay. He kept it – under his house. Maybe his kids had a lot of projects coming up. Maybe he was unwell. Maybe he was just a criminal. From news.com.au:
The 69-year-old retired caretaker from Stuttgart stole everything from pencil sharpeners to detergents to office ladders.
After an anonymous tip-off police went to his home and are now working hard to sort through truckloads of office equipment which the worker stole from city offices he had access to while working.
The police said the man did not try to sell any of the items and just hoarded them in his apartment, basement, attic and garden shed.
According to studies an estimated $US50 billion is lost annually from US businesses due to employee theft with a massive 75 per cent of employees stealing from their employers.
Pens and post-it notes are the most commonly pilfered items according to a study by media company Vault.
But employee theft which costs companies billions of dollars every year ranges from pens and envelopes to more “extravagant” items such as lap tops, office chairs and falsifying time sheets and expenses.
So you might not have a truckload of paper-clips under the house but ask around. Most people will admit to taking home something they didn’t pay for and aren’t entitled to. We laugh it off, saying we work so hard we’re entitled to a packet of post-it notes. Who notices anyway? The waste in that place is shocking!
But the bottom line notices and the topic turns business owners purpley red with rage. Because it’s not just physical stuff – personal phone calls can be counted as theft too, ‘I’ll call you from the office so work can pay.’ Sound familiar?
So what is it? A sense of entitlement? A sense that we are underpaid and overworked so these little self-awarded bonuses are okay?
It’s interesting stuff and it seems the bigger the company, the more okay it is. Telstra can afford to lose a yellow highlighter.
What do you think? Is taking home a pen from the office a criminal offence?
Comments
114 Comments so far
Stealing is stealing, no matter HOW you try to justify it. It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong, otherwise this article wouldn’t have been written.
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I remember when my mother worked at a hospital and drug reps would try and flog the dr’s hundreds of pens and sticky pads. Of course they never needed them so mum would end up with a bunch at home. Needless to say, my school notes to teachers were all written on Viagra pads!
Embaressing? yes. Criminal? no.
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I’m enjoying reading all the comments to this one!
Interestingly as I’ve got older I have got more conservative on this issue. Probably because I’m more aware of how costs work in companies now?
The odd throwaway pen (i.e. a single pen, not a handful!) is NOT an issue. I throw whatever pen I’m using in my bag out of habit half the time. It comes back the next day (usually).
Scrap paper for the kids to draw on (where there is no client/company info on the other side) = OK
Ream of paper = not OK
Sticky-tape, blu-tack, tissues, scissors, calculators, toilet paper, biscuits, light globes etc = not OK. They might not all cost much but they are not for personal use and they are usually scarce in the stationery cupboard these days so you’d be doing someone else out.
Personal phone calls – obviously limited and local – of course are OK.
Web browsing, personal banking online etc – just follow your company’s policy, most allow a little bit.
At my last workplace they kept the stationery cupboard locked and only two people had a key. This felt a bit draconian but actually probably worked well to limit waste (and stealing).
I’m contracting where I work now and that makes me much much less likely to make personal calls etc as I’m aware I’m on an hourly rate. It’s probably a bit silly but that’s how I feel.
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I have a few work pens that live in my handbag. Reason being, all the other pens at work always seem to grow legs and walk off. Although we do have anywhere between 1000 – 2000 people through the front doors each day, so it’s not overly surprising. The pens that are in my handbag come out during the day at work, and at the end of the day, they go back into my bag ready to be brought out the next day. Yes, it probably does constitute as stealing but it is the only way to ensure I don’t have to spend 10 mins at the start of every work day looking for a damn pen!
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I think it depends on what you’re “stealing”. One pen? Then no, I don’t think it’s stealing. A box of pens? Yes. A handful of paper? No. A ream of paper? Yes.
I’ve taken a few pens home, printed personal things on the work printer. Taken a notebook for personal use. I dont think these things aren’t really stealing, although a company might feel differentially.
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Haha, I worked in an office during my uni years. I had to bring my own pens – there was nothing to steal! I take my own resources to school (work for me) too – from coloured paper for kids to do projects with to whiteboard markers, again nothing to steal. I once caught a casual teacher making away with a sheet of my scratch’n'sniff stickers – that was awkward….
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It’s about give and take…I doubt the total value of all the pens, post-its and personal photocopying I’ve pinched over the years would even come close to the value of the unpaid overtime I’ve done.
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Of course taking home a pen is stealing. You wouldn’t let your kids do it would you? You wouldn’t take home a pen from your neighbor’s house would you? You would be pissed if somebody took home a pen after they visited your home, wouldn’t you? How can there be any question as to whether it’s stealing or not? it’s small time stealing sure, but is that like being a little pregnent?
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Or, if you’re like me, you could think of it as payback for the minimum 30 minutes overtime I did for the company every single day – unpaid. That would have bought a sh–load of pens!
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Well honestly? If you feel that ticked off about the unpaid overtime, you should have said no, you couldn’t do it. They can’t sack you for refusing to do OVER TIME, in fact it’s actually very hard to sack anyone these days!
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I think the funniest thing about this whole article is that I’ve been to Stuttgart. There’s not much there… except a bloody fantastic restaurant that is still to this day the best meal I had in Europe!
At my work people steal stuff – milk, biscuits, Finish dishwasher tablets (they’re expensive!) so now it gets locked away. Pretty sad if you ask me. The most I’ve taken are pens, post-its and some boxes to move house. I don’t it’s a big deal in the scheme of things.
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I wish, our stationery supply is so bad I just bring my own.
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I just thought of another example.
As a PA i am constantly asked to do personal things for my boss. Some people could think that my boss is stealing from the company (after all I am a company resource) But he looks at it this way (and so do I)
Any personal work I do for him free him up to do quality chargeable work so therefore is beneficial to the company. Again he works ridiculously long hours and constantly travels and is away from his family A LOT.
My last boss barely put in a 38hr week! And i did more personal stuff for him than anything else – i hated him for it. So glad to be out of there!
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It’s ‘stationEry’, not ‘stationAry’. That is, unless your office has unusually still cupboards. I’m sorry, I know it’s not the point but it’s driving me nuts, especially when the comments come from teachers.
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My boss pulls me up on this all the time :s…I think it’s my achilles heel of spelling
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I do most of my printing for school at home! Does that mean the Department is stealing from me?? No, it’s just really tricky to print at school and I’ll do it at night or on my day off…
Incidently, the students (their parents i guess!) provide a ream of A4 paper each at the beginning of the year and that becomes the photocopy paper for the year. I cannot justify taking any of their paper as it’s more than needed in the classroom!
And to add to the comment below re: having to stock up ourselves as teachers – thank you for reminding me that I need to go shopping this week!
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haha – I stocked up for the term whilst doing the grocery shopping yetserday. And those incidentals on the shopping list never make it to the ‘tax deduction’ receipt file like the Officeworks ones do.
I’ll buy the liquid paper/sticky tape/calculator/stapler. They can reimburse me with printing, phonecalls and coloured paper for my kids to make birthday cards. It works itself out.
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My first school had the stationery cupboard from heaven. Absolute bliss, and we all had very organised desks…especially given that our photocopy/stationery guy encouraged us o just takes whatever we needed…
Now, with laptops, we aren’t expected to write a thing, so even getting a pen involves so much paperwork and time that it’s not worth it.
I figure I work my arse off, and the school charges enough for school fees. Some printing, a phonecall, and using my work laptop to type this message won’t send them broke.
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The stuff I come home with is mostly pens and carton knives – stuff that if I left it on my work counter would be pilfered by the night staff and I’d never get them back. I don’t make personal calls on the work phone (it doesn’t dial out from my counter), and I wouldn’t make it out the door with a ream of paper – can’t justify ‘Won’t make it to officeworks’ if you work in a place that sells office supplies! But pens, knives, permanent markers… they expect that stuff to go wandering.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, I can drink all the coffee I want, which in my universe equals heaven.
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Does anyone else in here steal company time by commenting on internet sites?
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Sometimes when I’m there. But they steal three hours a night off me and then some so I don’t feel remotely guilty about it.
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Technically, yes. It is a criminal offence and I’m guilty of it. I still have a calculator from my last office job, some 10 years ago. And yet I feel no shame…
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I agree with the other comments and think there is an acceptable level. I do all of my personal printing at work (which is exactly that much) and make a few personal calls at work due to the fact that I’m there during business hours. I’ve taken a few things, a pen and notebook for non-work use. But I think taking a ream of paper, a packet of biscuits or a bottle of wine for person use is stealing. I think all employers expect employees to take bits and pieces of stationary, but anything more than a pen, notepad or post it notes here and there is definitely stealing!
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I have advertising Award annuals (big hardcover books), from ad agencies I never even worked in. I am not sure how this happened. It is some comfort knowing none of the companies still exist.
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ok really, I think the odd photocopy is ok – where do you draw the line? are you stealing from the company if you write a personal letter with a company pen? When I worked in a school (which was the richest prep school in the UK and had THE MOST INCREDIBLE STATIONARY CUPBOARD IN THE WORLD!), the headmaster didn’t mind us printing our travel tickets, medical invoices etc. on school printers, or taking a couple of whiteboard markers back to the flat. then again, our flat was owned by the school so I guess it wasn’t stealing..
I don’t know! I wouldn’t call printing off your kids project stealing, but taking home reams of paper and pens is not good – I guess it depends on what its for?
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Yes. I openly admit to absent-mindedly taking any writing implement that is trust into my hands and placing it into my pocket. Consequently I have more writing implements than “Pens R Us” secreted all over the place.
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Nope – never steal stationary, as we have to supply our own pens and everything else (blu-tak/scissors/highlighters/sticky tape etc) is taken off the shelf and put to expenses as we need it.
I am guilty of making semi personal phone calls at work. Most days I’ll speak to a friend who now works at another store. A lot of the time it will be a legitimate question, other times it will be a “I’m cranky today, I need a pep talk”, or a bit of company gossip. My store management know I speak to him lots and they don’t mind – just this morning I was talking to my manager about a dilemma and said I’d call *** later and she said she was just about to suggest that.
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If my employer wants to steal my time by overloading me with work that I end up doing from home, I will bloody well take a pen or two
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I used to work for the commonwealth public service in the stores. When boxes of perfectly good pens, book ends, computer paper used to be thrown in the skip if, for example, one pen had been used out of a box of 12 or a box of paper had been opened and not used, I used to retrieve them from the skip and give them to my sons primary school. Not theft at all in my mind, just a recycling of scarce resources. The waste was atrocious.
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Are we really talking about whether or not we’ve ‘borrowed’/stolen an office pen?
As a manager, I would feel uncomfortable telling or questioning an employee whether or not they took a pen (or whatever). If they are achieving in their job, then why would it matter? These employees also have laptops, corporate charge cards, cab charge cards and are responsible for representing the company on all levels, so who cares if they take a pen?!
If they weren’t achieving or they turned up drunk or committed fraud, then yes, they would lose their job and appropriate action would be taken but a pen and the odd personal phone call is reasonable.
As an employee, yes, I’ve taken a pen!
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I’ve taken a couple of “things to do” notepads and a couple of those sticky post it tag/flags whatever they are called. That’s probably about it in the two years i’ve been here.
If i needed anything (within reason) I’d just ask my boss and she’d probably let me take what i needed
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My father is an operator at a major oil refinery and it never ceases to amaze me how men who earn a very handsome living would risk a $120,000+ a year job for the sake of a couple of rolls of toilet paper and some light globes.
One or two of them have gotten caught and have subsequently got the sack, it’s so stupid!
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Given that it has been calculated that it costs about 6 months salary to employ and train up each staff member…… short sighted.
The employer has just cost themselves $60,000 for the sake of a toilet roll. Perhaps they would have been better to have invested in other options – training/counselling/etc? Employers can be quick to fire but slow to invest and they may have bought unlimited loyalty.
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At my daughter’s ELC we had to send them along with tissues and their own sunscreen! We also had to supply a box of ‘sharpie’ pens and this was before the children were even allowed to use them so we were clearly supplying them for the teachers which I found a bit much!
I have taken pens home from my work but they have the logo on them and they are happy for them to leave the office. I would never take fresh paper but if I ever muck up a printing run I take that home for the kids to draw on the other side of (as long as nothing confidential is on the other side).
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So… Did anything come home with your kids name written on it in sharpie? Because what’s what we use the sharpies for at our play school centre….
Or are you implying that the teachers used them to give themselves fake tatts behind the shed at recess?
We gets heaps of “coloring in” paper coming home with printing on the back, and we use the back of out of date maps for painting, too. They are lovely and big and glossy and white!
http://the-accidental-housewife.blogspot.com.au/
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My old employer kept their stationary (aside from paper) under LOCK & KEY – and you had to battle with the Keeper for him to unlock it and distribute you only items you could justify you needed, some people used to find it quite stressful!
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Sure, you could describe getting mail delivered to your work address as stealing.
A business that pays for phone calls – per call – is a poorly managed business. Almost all of them would have unlimited caps, so it’s not stealing.
Bandwith is a different issue. Casual browsing (like, um, everyone here is doing) isn’t an offense but a department I once worked with got busted downloaded and distributing thousands of movies.
In both cases – appropriate personal use is key.
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How is it stealing to have mail or packages delivered to your work?
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Its about going small enough.
You’re not working while you get it. You’re probably using someone else’s time to notify you, who therefore isn’t working completely for the company. This could be considered ‘stealing wages’, as some have said outright below.
My point is, it’s not stealing, really, unless you run your import/export business through your work. Appropriateness is the key.
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I am assuming that it would be considered stealing time. After all someone has to take delivery, sign a form and deliver and this takes them away from “real work”.
It probably a theory that had more validity back in the days when time and motion study was more important than the person.
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We get told upon employment that our Internet and email usage is monitored. WE each have a specific login so any dodgy business can easily be traced. I’ve had emails from the IT department because an email I’ve sent has skin tones in it, so I know they’re not kidding. The most personal I get at work online is my banking and online email account. Not everyone cn casually browse at work either.
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I worked at a company that had a cute policy for new staff…on the first they asked your favorite colour…then a few hours later you were presented with that colour pencil case with your name on it in those little windows where you cut out the letters…it was filled with everything you needed. Then when you ran out you would take your pencil case to reception….you could even trade items with your neighbours just like at school. It worked to make people own their stationary and not waste it or steal it.
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Brilliant idea!
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I love this idea!!!!!!
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What I want to know is, where do all the pens go? There not at my place, or fellow workers places (I’m sure we’d notice a tonne of pens). Where is this army of pens we keep losing?
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I’m sure they’re in cahoots with the missing socks from my laundry and are sunning themselves in Barbados or Hawaii, laughing at us…
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Apparently Bradley have them all. See his post above.
Mystery solved.
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Does Bradley also have about 25 single earrings of mine?
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This gets more interesting when you start to calculate the cost in wages paid for ‘time wasted’ in the making of the phone calls. I.e, it’s not only the cost of the phone call itself involved. It’s also the time spent making it when you could be doing something work-related. And being paid for it.
Take that one step further, when you factor in the emotional side of things. A worker who feels taken to task on what they consider to be incidentals compared with their total contribution to the company will start to nitpick in return. ‘I won’t bother to work back late if they’re going to haul me over the coals for a post-it note …’ Treat someone like a child, and they’ll act that way.
I reckon smart companies have worked this out for themselves.
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Exactly. If my company started to be nit-picky about the times I’ve taken a pen home (which I do all the time, but they generally end up back at the office in the end) or transacted some personal business at work, then I would feel inclined to be a clockwatcher and arrive and leave at my exact times, never answer a work email from my phone, etc etc. There’s got to be a bit of give and take, and trust.
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It’s called “white collar crime”.
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White collar crime is actually stuff like fraud, embezzlement, property and economic crime and is done by someone who holds a high and respectable place in the company/community.
I don’t think stealing office supplies would fall under blue collar crime but it’d be closer to blue collar than white collar.
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I know what you mean, Miss V. When I was at uni a billion years ago we had a sociology textbook with that title and included that as well as other things you mentioned. I think it was a bit of a shock to discover that things we may never have considered crimes actually were.
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Also, traditionally, blue collar jobs weren’t office workers, they were usually physical jobs or ones that required protective clothing.
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Talk about sweating the small stuff! The place I work at has one of the most motivated and most satisfied staff in Australia. They don’t care if you take a pen home. They don’t worry if you make a personal phone call, check your facebook, go out for a coffee. In fact, we often have meetings in coffee shops, there are games, TVs, pool table, free food, unlimited sick and careers leave. If you trust people they don’t abuse it. And they are grateful for being treated as people. Yes, I have work pens at home. But I also have home pens at work and I make work phonecalls from home or my mobile. Or work after hours. It’s all about trust and honesty.
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I want to work where you work! (Which is where??)
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I work for Seek
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. People are more productive if they aren’t constantly bitched at about minor, minor shit.
I believe it’s easier to get a ten million dollar project approved at work places than ten thousand dollar projects, because people can’t conceptualise ten million dollars but everyone knows the value of ten thousand.
It’s the same here – ‘oh the pens add up’ – add up to sweet fuck all compared to a motivated competent worker.
That’s why Maternity pay is so popular – give an employee money FOR DOING NOTHING FOR THE BUSINESS – because you recongnise that money is well spent keeping them. It’s the same for personal calls, mail, bandwith, etc…
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Wish it was a two way street so here is the employers perspective …
I love training people and encouraging them to fulfil their potential so what do you call it when you not only do so but pay for the very expensive course and provide very generous paid study leave knowing long term that the employee will outgrow your business but that is ok bc that is a good thing and then they fail to return to work after Easter and don’t phone text it email to resign – apart from the staggering lack of manners I consider the thousands of dollars I have paid in uni fees for this person to have been stolen the upshot being it will be a long time before a future employee is shown the same generosity
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Usually this is called a good investment.
I am sorry that in this instance it didn’t pay off for you but one bad apple …
I worked for 20 years for the employer who invested in me and I gave them back way more in unpaid overtime. On second thoughts, maybe I didn’t think this through properly.
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Surely you’ll have a contract covering this? Every employer I know that has paid for expensive education has required that the employee stays at their job a minimum number of years or else they have to pay the costs back
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Yes but tell me what you do if they just don’t show up and don’t respond to calls texts or emails
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Follow the legal guidelines around abandonment of employment….
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Managing corporate services in a community services not-for-profit organisation, this is a big issue for me… we have adopted a zero tolerance to all theft and corruption (including stationery, photocopying and bandwidth)… if for no other reason than to get the message across that it is never ok. All fraudsters start small (pens, petty cash) but its amazing how many escalate to big dollar fraud.
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My bosses were always generous- if I needed a bit of paper they would give it to me and personal calls- they would tell me to use the work phone.
But I do not condone helping your self- that is stealing but at the same time a good boss would allow his staff the odd post it note.
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30 years ago and I can still remember it….going to dads office as a 10 year old for the first time and declaring loudly “dad, can I see the stationary cupboard, I need a new ruler, I love love the stationary cupboard, please please please”. My dad was quite senior and I can remember his face going red as he shuffled me away from his colleagues.
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I think its stealing 100%.
I cant deny I have accidentally taken the odd pen home (although it usually comes straight back!) but never ever anything else. Goody two shoes maybe, but I’d rather be that than a thief.
I remember working with a lady who at the end of her first week announced she needed several rolls of packing tape because she was making a banner. I was so shocked I couldnt even say something!
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I’m a nursing student and have seen a few nurses pilfer the odd sheet of panadol to take home, courtesy of Q Health. But if you don’t have your own pen on the ward you’re fucked, I can never find spare pens ANYWHERE! I always lose pens so I buy a whole pack to keep in my bag before every prac. To be honest, I can understand small businesses getting really pissed, but I feel like big corporations should maybe just accept the odd book of post-it notes might go astray…
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We got a memo years ago (Qld health) outlining what was acceptable for us to take. They had realised that some pilfering will go on regardless and wanted to let us all know what they were prepared to accept. Panadol (occasional) was acceptable. The odd personal phone call and now limited personal internet use. Surprisingly sensible for a govt department.
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I’ve accidentally taken pens home ( yes, it was honestly an accident) and I have made personal calls off the office phone but it was usually asking my brother to bring me something for work (I work at a karate centre which my brother and I train at).
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I remember my Dad telling me once that during a time of austerity, staff were required to hand in the old used up pen in order to get a new usable pen.
Needless to say, productivity slowed down and staff retention was low.
Strategy abandoned very quickly. Something about forest and trees?
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when I was a nursing student and we took a patients temperature with a glass thermometer, we used to smash them all the time while we flicked them. I can remember clearly having to take the smashed thermometer to Sister and beg for another one. ridiculous.
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We have recycling collections at work including one for mobile phones to go to charity. I get really upset when people employed here think they can help themselves to the phones. I was stunned the other day to see 1 guy take 3 phones …….. what do other people think?
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WRONG!!!
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In my opinion that is definitely wrong. I see it as stealing from the charity you were collecting for.
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Look at it this way – if you were raising money for a charity and he took out 10 bucks for his lunch would you think it was wrong?? Definitely wrong wrong wrong!
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I run my own business and I’m pretty flexible about this kind of stuff. I’m very lucky though, I have exceptional staff and none of them are the type to stash a ream of A4 paper in their bag before going home of a night time. If I lost a few packets of posties or pens over the years then in return I’ve got their loyalty and they do work hard. As for personal phone calls, it’s about give and take. If they were constantly on the phone taking personal calls and it was interrupting their work then I’d have an issue but again, my staff work hard and are certainly not clock watchers so I have absolutely no concern if they need to make calls. Our only rule is that there are no personal calls at Reception.
As for stealing stationery from myself, I buy boring office works stationery for work but for home it’s all Typo stuff – so much cooler.
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My husband owns his own business and I buy our A4 paper for home at Coles. I would never dream of asking him to bring some home
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Just from an accounting/tax perspective, it would be more cost effective for you get your husband to bring the stationery home.
You are not doing him any favours keeping these things separate.
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It all adds up.
We solved this problem once and for all by tracking what people take from the stationary cupboard and we reduced stationary consumption by 80%. Here is our case study.
http://sierragroup.com.au/oss.php
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Gawd, these days I can barely keep enough paper/pens etc on the go IN the office, let alone enough to take home. And that is the public service!
Our budgets are so tight that there isn’t enough left over so nobody is stealing. Except from each other.
I have a pen losing problem so perhaps our budget would be more balanced if every pen I touched didn’t evaporate into thin air within minutes.
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And personal phone calls…don’t make them on my work phone. Not out of any sense of ‘stealing’ but out of privacy. Don’t want my personal calls and who they are too showing up on my work bill.
So I’ve always carried two phones. One personal, one work.
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Always used to happen in the navy kitchen too – even though we were supposed to all have a pen on us every day. I used to get the charity pens, as they stand out because they’re usually really bright colours, and have stuff written on them. So you can see when someone’s buggered off with it pretty easily!
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It’s impossible to imagine this happening at my work – I’m in public service too and have to supply my own pens and stationery. My current team isn’t too bad, but my last role was face-to-face with clients and I actually had a client once pocket the entire contents of my pen cup (all paid for by me) into her handbag while I was at the printer! I didn’t know what to say! Our manager ended up authorizing certain tasks being completed in red pen because the red ones seemed to be the only ones the clients wouldn’t help themselves to!
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I take a couple of pens to a meeting – I chuck them in my handbag, kid needs a pen at home and takes one from my handbag… But on the other hand, my pen pot at work is full of pens I’ve bought myself (mainly because they changed to crappy wooden ones that are awful to a) write with and b) put in your mouth!)
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Gee, when my dad retired from his job, he went through the house top to bottom and anything that was obviously from work, notepads, pens etc with the logo went into a box, which he took into his boss on his last day. Seems so over the top, but due to the nature of his job he didn’t want anyone to have the chance to say he stole… makes you think…
I also remember grabbing a notepad from his study once for school or uni, and getting in trouble as it was a work one (no logo), he said it was not provided for me, but for his work… again made me think…
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When I was cleaning I may have pocketed a roll of bags or a box of gloves.. Naughty I know, but in that job especially I felt unsatisfied and underappreciated so I guess that may have been my reasoning. However since moving up in the world I haven’t took anything from work.
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I may have also helped myself to a bickie or mintie if there was an open packet somewhere in my cleaning routine.
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I went to my local branch of the National Australia Bank the other week and they were encouraging people to take their pens home with them. I guess they are trying to get their branding out there.
As a business owner, I can say that we had to change the brand of individually packaged biscuits that we offer, to a cheaper brand, because the previous ones were so nice that customers were taking handfuls away with them. It adds up to many $$$ each month.
I buy my own stationery for home, but have at times been caught out and taken a packet of A4 paper home with me! Stealing from myself!
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One of the guys who collects our banking (I work retail) always has a NAB pen on him! He does drop offs there and always grabs a couple because he says he’s always losing them. We have a couple of NAB pens now, too….
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