Message #39295

[andream]

Let me tell you a little story about an Admin type who got so good at signing her boss' name for him that she did it for nearly everything.  There were no processes in place and it was always for very innocent things, like our friend Lioness, she let the legal stuff wait and just signed for him the things that didn't matter.

A year or two went by and the formerly wonderful bossie developed a serious drinking problem, which had an impact on his job, and lots of other things.

The day the police arrived at Sue's desk with a warrant for HER arrest she was beside herself with confusion , there had been several secret meetings going on, she had known something was up,,, but what she had no way of knowing was that the company accounts has been seriously compromised and the funds her employer responsible for had been tapped for nbearly thirty grand.  Now our Admin friend had just bought a new car, and apparently when Bossie was questioned about his accounts, he feigned innocence, citing his long years of service to the company and pointed the finger at... you guessed it,, that Admin who had been signing his name for him for all kinds of innocent things.  It took her weeks to get things sorted out and though eventually she was vinidicated, there was a horrible day when she had to go into the office where everyone had called her a theif, and clean out her desk.

Needless to say she was eventually offered her job back, (she passed on it ) and when she got done suing everyone involved, she had enough money to live on without working.... Good thing too cause no one cared that she was innocent in the end, they cared that she had been involved at all, and she was nearly at the end of her rope job hunting, and being furious and trying to deal with the aftermath of an accusation when the settlement came in.

One of the things we try to do here is point out "best practices" and best practice says,,,, don't sign for bossie unless you've used a standard indicator.  Not for the lunch bill, not the receipt for his wife's birthday present, not for anything,, because one never knows when an innocent act can have far from innocent repercussions.

If you think it can't happen to you, would never be something you could be exposed to,, think again.   It could happen to any of us, it's just better to err on the side of being professional in some cases than to err on the side of "making life easier for Bossie" there are other ways of making things easy for him/her than compromising either your personal ethics or the ethics of the profession.

Nuff said.

Andrea