The "Free Phone"

It started out with embezzlement, and comes around to larceny, or maybe just the “free phone”.

In the 70’s our institution’s President discovered some embezzlement going on. Perhaps it was only regular theft, but the other sounds so much more elegant. Also, as I have no knowledge beyond hearsay, it may have been a continuing problem indicating embezzlement.

Anyway, the idea was that the President was required to sign checks. He was presented these checks by the V.P. for Finance, a good guy. The checks were developed by his staff.

As the President was signing checks, he noticed a very large check to Sears. He bothered to look at the backup, usually attached, and go through the Sears bills attached. One of the items, a very expensive one, was a new lawn tractor. As an urban institution with no lawn, his curiosity was peaked. It seems an employee of the finance department needed a home lawn tractor.

This brief incident in my life taught me a great lesson, before signing a check always look at the backup. For sure, you may never be able to look at every one, but when you have no idea what it is or who the company is or what those charges are for, look! It never hurts to ask the question.

OK, so how does this get us to the free phone?

In Alberta we had lots of bills and lots of checks, but with many years experience, I looked pretty hard. With tons of employees, there were always large phone bills and I never bothered to look through them. It’s just phone, a part of doing business. Then, someone in the business office mentioned long international calls, like a very long call to Germany.

“Who called?” I asked, but no one knew. I looked at the bill and it then came out that there were often long world-wide calls on our bills. Calls made way beyond a normal admissions office call. Who made them? Whose phone was used?
I began to look at the bills.

It seems that there have been years of mysterious calls. Recently, long calls to the Bahamas. There were many of them over several months. I looked at the dates as the phones could not be traced to individuals. Most of these long Bahamas calls were made on the weekend when the office is usually closed!

I checked with the guards and no one unusual was in and no one had entered our offices. I checked with the student government office and they had only the usual suspects come in. It made no sense!

In desperation, and in order to obtain an answer, I sent out a memo asking for help. I promised if the culprit came forward we would not charge them with anything, but that we needed to end years of phone abuse, and solve an old problem just come to light! Who was in the building, on the phone and below our radar!

A week later a sheepish student with a boyfriend in the Bahamas appeared and admitted her guilt. It seems the student government lived in an office that used to be an administration office, and when the change over occurred, somewhere lost in time, a phone was left behind, unknown to us or the phone company. It was considered the”free phone” by the student government, because they were never charged for using it, and we never noticed the bill!

So, in the end, after years of abuse, the “free phone” was removed and thousands of dollars of unknown “free calls’ never happened again.