The Honor Box

It's been a long time since I've seen one, but at a couple of the places I've worked there was something known as an "honor box". This was a cardboard dispenser that held snacks such as cookies, candies and gum. There was a price marked for each set of snacks, and a slot into which you put the money for the items you took. There was no enforcement mechanism, it relied on your honor to pay for what you chose. When the box was restocked and the proceeds totalled, it was hoped that the payments matched the missing items. If it was missing money, a warning was displayed, and if this was a regular event the honor box would be removed from the workplace.

Sadly, I've never worked anywhere that was able to host an honor box for very long. What does that say about our society? Theoretically, your co-workers should be evolved enough to realize that if they took snacks without paying, they would lose the convenenience of having them available, and that they were guilty of stealing. This doesn't seem to be the case. I've decided that honor box customers fall into one of the following categories:

• The honest. This customer always pays for what they take. Why can't everyone be like this?



• The altruist. This customer not only pays for what they take, they pay extra to help ensure that the privilege of having an honor box is maintained.



• The flake. The flake takes a snack with the intent of paying later, but forgets or neglects to actually reimburse the box.



• The thief. An un-evolved person who takes snacks with no intention of paying for their pick.

The honor box is the divining rod of the industrial age, revealing the true inner self of those who use it. Rather than let an abused honor box be removed, a company should monitor its box and determine which of its employees are taking without giving, thereby robbing their co-workers of their ease of snacking. Those employees caught cheating should be branded and fired. If every workplace did this, they would end up with an honorable workforce. Why do companies tolerate petty theft?

The world continues to deteriorate.


Blog Tag: Opinion