Almost everyone is looking for something for nothing

People are evidently stretching their household budgets by pilfering at work

SO MUCH for the paperless office. Paper cuts are still one of the biggest hazards at work, “or so we’re led to believe,” said a supplier of first aid kits to offices who I got talking to the other day. In case you didn’t know, employers are legally obliged to provide first aid kits to their staff. Employees, on the other hand, seem blithely to ignore the legal prohibition on pilfering the kits supplied. Theft is on the up and up, says the supplier. “It’s a lot worse this year than last year. Everyone is looking for something for nothing.”

Plasters and burn gels are walking, even from the most genteel workplaces. The higher up you go, the faster the kits get emptied, he says. Bankers, he says, are some of the worst. Apparently they’re particularly partial to those instant ice packs that are meant to bring down swellings. Maybe the effort of covering their own posteriors causes painful muscle wrenching but it’s far more likely that the packs are disappearing into kit bags, or into the Marks Spencer shopping to keep the cheese cool.

Meanwhile, a contact who’s secretary of a tennis club, complains that grown men have been seen recently decanting shampoo from the large bottles attached to the shower stalls, into smaller bottles to take home with them and management have had to stop the nice gentlemanly custom of giving out free combs as they were being taken in handfuls. Elsewhere, people are evidently stretching their household budget by shopping at work. An MD of a small company which shares a building with several others says it’s a case of everyone now bringing in their loo roll, as the stuff disappears fast from the communal bathroom. And, with Christmas on the horizon, she’s keeping a close eye on the Selotape supply.

My deep throat in a Dublin hospital tells me that Halloween is actually the worst time for pilfering. The whole surgical gown, mask and gloves combo is a fancy-dress favourite, while the creative ones steal industrial quantities of bandages to dress up as mummies. Bring back the nuns, he says, while not wishing to be quoted. They wouldn’t let you near the stuff.

Stealing from employers is nothing new. Anyone who’s ever worked in an office will know the adrenaline rush of discovering the stationery cupboard unlocked. Post it notes! Highlighter pens! Bulldog clips! Large brown envelopes very useful for wrapping parcels! Those roller ball pens that only people in Marketing are allowed to have! All there for the taking. I covet the odd ream of A4 paper myself. The paper is there, loads of it, beside the photocopier, and I know for a fact that others have stood for hours at those machines copying their tax returns or their partners’ theses. Is that permissible theft? No, it is just plain theft.

Over the years they’ve been lectured a lot about stealing. Early on there was the case of the powder puff stolen from a gift shop – the felon aged two at the time. To our shame the powder puff was never returned, and so we missed an important opportunity to deliver a life lesson. More recently there was an incident with a bottle of water hidden under a jacket in a corner shop, the whole shameful business caught on CCTV camera followed by a steward’s inquiry at the school. So far, though we’ve not been exposed to the cool-as-a-cucumber theft that a colleague tells me is rife at his teenagers’ school, with iPods, mobile phones, money, jewellery and entire rucksacks disappearing, mostly from free “Gaffs” – houses where hoards descend when the parents are not at home.

“Do you know people who steal things?” I ask my eldest.

“Lord yes,” he says.

“What sort of things?”

“Dunno, money, phones, hoodies. Anything.”

“Do you know who these people are?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

End of conversation, but a friend with a houseful of teenagers knows all about it. After a recent party for 17 year olds, where over €1,000 worth of phones and gadgets went missing, she called every parent in the class and sent word on the bush telegraph that she was going to the police if the stuff wasn’t returned. Most of it was stuffed into her front hedge the following day.

There’s plenty of information in parenting blogs about children who steal, with advice ranging from the passive – it’s a phase, say nothing; to the extremely worried – it’s a cry for help, take them to a therapist, quick – my son stole all around him at school, now he’s married with a good job and doing his bit for the community.

It’s something new to fret about. Teens who will rob a pal’s mobile phone, or the contents of a rucksack, may simply be indulging in rite-of-passage theft in an affluent age. Trouble is, when they start working, plundering the first aid kit may not be enough of a thrill.