B:Has any one seen Dave? G: Yeah he's sick, bedbound even. B: thats funny, ive just seen him at the post office

Have you ever taken an extra sneaky half an hour at lunch, pulled a few sickies to have a slob day, accidentally borrowed a pen and forgot to give it back or written down your hours wrong on a time sheet? Do you think ah,  everyone does it, Jane was late all last week and no one said any thing, or the boss has been getting on my nerves all week, so i'm going to pull a sickie even though he's short staffed.

The "scientific" term for this is counter productive workplace behaviour, in other words doing bad stuff which doesn't help the organisation. This includes: thieving, taking unauthorised absences; extending you half an hour lunch to 2 hours for a shopping spree; and being just a meany that doesn't contribute to any thing. Figures from  1985 show that apparently 50 hours per employee per year are lost to unauthorised extensions of break, 50 hours! Apparently also $50 million is lost to businesses who thieve, so next time you steal that pen or take a sneaky extra 20 minutes at lunch, think twice about it, the next thing you know you could be out of a job.