1:54 p.m. - 2002-09-08
Deja Vu
The breaking news in our area right now is a bank scandal. Seems two employees of the same bank, independent of each other, in two different cities were bilking the bank's customers of nearly $20 million - U.S. that is. Now banks in Canada are very strictly regulated and this is one of the oldest and most prestigious of the bunch. So how could this happen? Lots of blame to go around of course.
First there are the thieves themselves. It doesn't matter what the abuse of power is, the perpetrators usually have "alcoholics' disease" - it just displays itself in different forms. What do I mean by that? Well alcoholics (I was married to one so I know the whole song and dance) will always try to shift the blame for their behavior onto anyone else around. Generally their favorite target is their victim or anyone else who can't defend themselves. You know, the drunk driver who says "Well, they should have seen me coming and got out of my way - I couldn't help myself". I actually heard this come out of one guy's mouth when I was working at the hospital. He had killed a little boy and crippled the child's Mom. Several other people were injured too. This guy gets off with a couple of broken teeth and a sore shoulder. He also said that his lawyer said he could probably get him off because it was the first "recorded offense" and besides he was temporarily unable to understand the consequences of his actions. In the industry I work in, one thief said "Well if they're dumb enough to let me have access to their assets then they deserve to lose them." This person had lied about their qualifications to do the work but it was still the employers fault - they asked for it.
Then there is the bank. Like most big corporations, they have cut their staff to the bone and cut wages. There is no job security. Loyalty cuts both ways. Employees who raise the alarm or ask questions can be disciplined or fired - their work record blackened, or their names blackballed in the industry. The checks and balances set up by law appear to be ignored. Of course, the reasoning seems to be "everyone else is doing it" so they must too in order to stay competitve - you understand. When asked how they were going to repay the clients who were victimized by their negligence, bank officials replied it was not their fault, that they hadn't been responsible for their employees' behavior, and that the victims would have to take responsibility for trusting the bank and their representatives.
Then there are the legislators. They create the laws, often very good ones by the way, and then choose not to enforce them. Why? Because monitoring and enforcement are expensive - don't want to tick off the taxpayers/voters. Besides that, the biggest contributors to any elections campaigns are - guess who - the same big corporations. .
So you see we have our own share of Arthur Andersens and Enrons. I think the disease permeates the whole corporate structure. In the industry I work in, part of my job has been to go in and find out what has happened to a company's assets because, for whatever reason, they have lost track. Usually this happens after some internal crisis has occurred and the problem is finally exposed. I am simply there to help find and protect their resources. Loss of control over a corporations' data has many factors of course, but choose any of the above scenarios and you could find part of the answer.
So why is this my topic today? Well remember how crabby I was on Friday? The work we did on Friday seemed to confirm a lot of the observations that I had made in the past several months. A couple of hours of number crunching yesterday verified the data we had gathered. I don't know who but I do know what and how much. Maybe there are reasons that we haven`t seen the material. Maybe some of it was sold. We aren`t privy to that data.
But, starting about six years ago in October I was working for another employer holding a somewhat different position - similar scenario. I kept asking questions about what I was seeing, reporting the observations to more senior levels of management, and trying to get someone to listen or to investigate. Instead, I was either ingnored or threatened with a number of things. I probably should have moved on, but the company had allowed me to keep food on the table and pay my bills so my sons and I could survive - I felt I owed them something in return. About three years ago, one of the managers I reported to kept trying to force me into a confrontation and I wasn't sure why. One of the males who reported to her also kept bothering me, so I asked her to make him leave me alone and I cc'd HR. Lucky I did, because the two of them hauled me into a boardroom and yelled at and threatened me for about two hours - they wouldn't let me leave. She, the manager, tried to use my request as grounds to fire me. A lawyer working pro bono(recommended by one of the lawyers I volunteered with) made certain, through their HR department, that didn't happen and I stayed with the company. Problem was even though the manager left, her network of friends and the male who was originally involved were still there. I still couldn't prove much - It just seemed, from my observations, that it appeared assets were going missing or being hidden. After the confrontation, things didn't get better although HR tried to protect me. My belongings were damaged, I was assaulted, and threatened. I didn`t report anything because it was difficult to prove. Also I knew that a Federal election was imminent so it didn't make sense to try to get another job nor was I in any shape to do so. So I toughed it out until the election was called.
Now I feel like I'm reliving the same scenario. Even though my supervisor has always been good to me, the fact he wasn`t listening to me for the past three months and was angry for much of the time has me worried. Maybe there were reasons I`m not aware of. I will be giving him the data on Monday and I hope we can figure out what the problem is.
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