I'm not talking about common pilferage of office supplies and other valuables. That is plain stealing--and, as should be obvious, wins you nothing but a very small, short-term gain at the risk of a large, long-term loss.
What I'm referring to is a kind of unauthorized taking that seems less serious than stealing because there is little or no direct loss to the company.
The phone is probably the most often abused company facility. Nearly all but the very smallest companies have telephone contracts that allow unlimited calling within certain areas or under certain restrictions. Employees think, "We can make all the calls we want.
It won't cost the company a dime!" I remember sitting in a reception area once while the receptionist at the desk spent forty-five minutes on the phone with a friend. Having finally ended that personal conversation, the receptionist immediately called somebody else and said it was time for lunch.
Office copying machines are also widely abused. I know one man who used company equipment--on company time--to make several hundred copies of a newsletter for his college alumni group. A woman similarly used an office machine to make a thousand copies of a political funding appeal. Mailing privileges are abused in the same way.
This kind of behavior reflects a less-than-professional attitude toward the job. It looks bad. It is the kind of thing that can be used against you. It indicates that you have only a loose fix on the dividing line between your job and personal worlds.
Again, be guided by common sense. I know of no company that would object if you were to make or receive a few brief personal phone calls of genuine importance in a week. Top executives have personal lives too; they are aware that they can't expect you to be shut off from all outside contacts like a prisoner in a concentration camp. But practice moderation. Forty-five-minute personal calls on company time are excessive and ridiculous. As a rule of thumb, I'd set five minutes as the limit. If you are the one placing the call, state the gist of your message as succinctly as you can and then say good-bye. If you are receiving the call, speak pleasantly but also briskly, to indicate you lack time for chitchat. Save the chitchat for later.
And don't allow your office phone to become a message center for free-time groups you may belong to--political-activist organizations, hobby clubs, civic groups, and so on. It is all too easy to get into this trap. Other people in a group may not be easy to reach at all times, but your office phone is covered solidly and efficiently every weekday in business hours. If you don't answer it, a secretary or your office-mate or somebody else will. Knowing this, the members of the Westville Historical Preservation Society will quickly take advantage of it if you let them. "We'll meet for a drink before the meeting," one member will tell a group of others. "If there's a change of plan I'll call Joe's office." Nip it in the bud.
Also use common sense in your approach to other company facilities. Probably nobody is going to care very much if you use the office machine to make a copy of your youngster's latest school essay to send to his grandmother. But all except the very smallest personal copying jobs should be done outside the office. Similarly, don't get into the habit of using office machines to type personal letters.
If you have a secretary or share in the services of one, be very careful about assigning her to handle personal chores for you. Don't send her out shopping for your youngster's birthday present. Don't ask her to address and stuff envelopes for your college class reunion.
In more affluent times some companies tolerated such improper uses of secretarial personnel. Some bosses abused the tolerance quite flagrantly. But those days are just about gone. A few top executives in your company may still send secretaries out gift-shopping or put them to work paying personal bills, but you should not assume you have such privileges. Except at the highest management levels, most companies today have cut secretarial and clerical support staffs to an efficient minimum. A secretary's time is too valuable to give to you. If she gets thirty-five hours' pay a week, she is supposed to spend all thirty-five of those hours working productively for the company.
Personal Rights
A large number of federal and state laws pertaining to employees' personal rights have been added to the books in recent years. These laws grant you certain rights having to do with your religious beliefs and practices, health, pregnancy, and a variety of other personal matters. You can demand these rights; nobody is allowed to take them away from you.
But if you want my advice, you won't demand them.
Instead, you should ask for them in a pleasant tone, as if they were not rights but privileges. Furthermore, you should go out of your way to make it easy for your boss and the company to grant them.
Let's consider the issue of time off for childbearing--one of the most troublesome personal issues in the business world during the past several years. Under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which amends Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you are guaranteed certain rights as an employed woman if you become pregnant. The law says, in essence, that your pregnancy is to be treated like any temporary disability. In granting you the needed time off for the birth and recovery, and in welcoming you back to your job afterward, the company is supposed to treat you exactly as it would treat a man, for example, going into a hospital for an eye operation.
That is the law. The company must obey it. But you make a serious mistake if you act as though you take this right for granted.
Avoid an attitude that says you don't greatly care whether others are going to be inconvenienced, that you care little about the job or the group. Sure, you are entirely within your rights. The law doesn't say you have to care. But bear in mind a few other things the law doesn't say. It doesn't say your boss must put your name on the next list for raises or promotions. Nor does it forbid your boss to abolish your job the next time the department's budget gets cut.
To protect your job, show that you care about it and about the department. When you know you will need a pregnancy leave, give your boss as much advance notice as you can. Offer to train your temporary replacement. If you are troubled by morning sickness in a pregnancy and must sometimes arrive at work late, show a willingness to make up the lost time at other hours. Don't wait to be prodded into this; do it on your own initiative, and do it with a smile.
The same advice applies to a man taking sick leave or time off for religious observance. It even applies to your vacation. Don't just vanish for weeks, leaving half-finished projects and jumbled files that nobody else can sort out. Go out of your way to make sure your absence won't inconvenience people or hold up the group's work. Do this even though it means extra work and time.
Never become the kind of employee who is obviously out to milk the company for everything it is legally required to give. That kind of employee is always among the first laid off and the last promoted. Instead, act as if you care.
You don't have to fly the company flag from your rooftop, but if you show loyalty through practical acts of concern and consideration, you aren't likely to go unrewarded in the long run.
Planning
Finally, I would urge you to plan your own preferred mixture of job and personal worlds as carefully as you can. Don't just let it happen. Decide how you want it to be and then work to make sure it all runs smoothly.
This advice applies particularly to young women starting careers in this complicated world of the 1980s. Ask yourself: what is my adult life for? What do I want to dedicate it to? The three most common choices today are a career, a family, or some combination of career and family. Women in increasing numbers are opting for the combination. Some are finding ways to make it work. Others get into assorted difficulties and end with feelings of failure in either the job or home sphere-or, as often as not, both.
Careless planning often turns out to be at the root of the difficulty. If you are a young woman with a promising job and are thinking of getting married, be sure your prospective husband understands what kind of future you envision. Discuss it with this man until it is clarified for both of you in detail. Do you want to live in a city? Do you look forward to more schooling?
Or suppose you are already married and your husband suggests it would be nice to have a baby. Before drifting into that adventure, be sure he understands how you envision it. Does he grasp clearly that you don't see the beginning of parenthood as the end of your career? Does he know you expect him to take over an honest half of the parenting burden? Is he prepared to do that willingly? Does he understand that you intend to devote full time to your job on business days--that the child must be cared for by others much of the time?
Sort all these questions out before you make the decision. If you find that you and your husband cannot talk about the questions without getting into arguments, then it is obvious that a lot more discussion and thinking are required. You may decide in the end that, in your particular case, a baby would be a disaster rather than a blessing.
It may be painful to make this discovery--but not nearly as painful as to make it after the baby is born.
Meanwhile, you should be just as foresighted in the office. If you and your husband do decide a baby is what you want, start paving the way. Don't allow your pregnancy to take your boss by surprise. Let him or her know your plans as soon as you know them: "My husband and I hope to have a baby someday, but I'm planning to go on working..."
While waiting for the happy process to begin, put just a little extra time and energy into your job. Knowing that you will eventually need a childbearing leave and may be troubled by morning sickness or fatigue, prepare for that future by showing a willingness to do extra work now.
With a little bit of advance planning like this, you will avoid the sour kind of reaction that I heard recently from a woman executive. She ran a fairly large billing department, and in that department was a young woman whose philosophy was to do as little work as possible. The young woman came in one day and hit her boss with the surprise announcement that she was pregnant.
"I know just how this pregnancy is going to be," the woman executive told me gloomily. "Three mornings a week she'll come in late, and the other two days she'll go home early. And at the end of it she'll ask for the maximum allowable leave. She's got the company where she wants us: she has a legal reason for goofing off."
I can see that young woman's future quite plainly. The company will give her the childbearing leave, of course, as is her legal right. But at some time in the not too distant future, her boss will find an equally legal reason to give her walking papers.
