Depression Era tactics in the office It seems that our COO/CFO is taking our office back to the Dust Bowl days in her efforts to shore up costs around the office. In retail sales there is the concept of managing product loss (i.e., people stealing), which includes things like radio tags, ink tags, etc. that will hopefully deter or at the worst render a garment unusable if stolen. My company is not a retail outlet. We don't sell those types of hard goods. However, I have discovered that we do have a system in place to stop internal loss of other goods such as toilet paper. The COO/CFO has issued a directive that these items are to be hidden outside of the bathroom.

I discovered this nifty little bit of corporate management when I recently visited the bathroom and noticed that there was no toilet paper on the roll. I searched about the bathroom to find a replacement, but to no avail. From there I took my search (which was by now a complaint - and for those of you who are curious, no I did not use the toilet first and then realize that there was no TP. That would have been a royal disaster ...) to the Director of Special Projects who is basically the Renaissance Man of the office. You need something done he can do it or find the person who can do it.

DSP takes me into the big conference room and begins routing around in one of the back cabinets. He emerges holding four rolls of white two-ply and smiles as he hands them to me. "XXXXXX hides it in here so that people won't steal it out of the bathroom." "Oh," I say and turn around and walk to the bathroom. I guess its gotten kind of bad when we can't afford to lose a few rolls of TP to the occassional office sticky fingers. Then again, what kind of employees do we have when they grab thigns like TP? Pens, notepads, I can understand. Maybe even a stapler, but TP? Man, people are strange.
  ¶ 9:07 AM