A number of years ago, when I was working for the government, we received a memo stating that any gratuity we received while on official business was the property of the government and not to be used for personal gain.
This was about the time the airlines were beginning their “frequent flyer” programs that included points that could be used for free tickets, etc.
Most of us traveled quite a bit and some people were upset that they wouldn’t be getting what they were “entitled to.” My personal view was, and is, that the government was paying for the ticket, so any benefits should go to them. Those rules changed so often over the years, I have no idea what the policy might be today.
Anyhow, a few days after receiving the memo, I flew to San Francisco and rented a car from National Car Rental. At the time National was having a promotion to increase business by offering free gifts with each transaction. After checking in at the rental counter and completing the paperwork, they handed me my rental agreement — and an umbrella. It was bright green with the National emblem on it. I pushed it back and told them that I couldn’t accept the gift because I was traveling on official business using government funds. They pushed it back to me and said that that didn’t matter to them and they were under instructions to give one to everyone that rented a car. We repeated that routine a few times and finally I gave up and left with the umbrella.
When I returned from my trip, I filled out all my accounting paperwork and sent it to the travel people — with the umbrella attached.
Within a few days I got a phone call asking why there was an umbrella included with my travel accounting paperwork. I explained that I was following the directions in the memo that we all received that indicated to me that the umbrella belonged to the government. The travel people told me they had no mechanism to handle umbrellas and that I should just keep it. I once again explained that I couldn’t — the memo I received clearly stated that it belonged to the government.
Over the next couple of weeks I received numerous phone calls from offices that I never even knew existed, asking why the umbrella was being sent to them and what I expected them to do with it. I always responded that I was just complying with the memo, which by this time I had almost committed to memory in its entirety, including the originating office, date, who signed it, etc.
Three or four months after submitting the umbrella to the “government” it came back to me via inter-office mail. It must have had 30 or 40 “routing slips” attached to it… most of them said, “what is this and why it being sent to me?” or, “why and I getting this?” or, “what am I supposed to do with this?”
Well, you get the idea — there obviously was no mechanism in place to support gratuities we received while on official business that rightly belonged to the government.
I just gave up on the umbrella and hung it in the coat room to become the “office umbrella” in case anyone got stuck and needed one. The umbrella was there a couple of days before someone stole it.
The point is that there is no point… when you write a blog about nothing, you don’t need a point
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