Do You Follow The Rules?

As most of you know, there’s a saying that says, “Rules are made to be broken.”

But which ones?

Parking in a Handicapped parking space because you have to run into the store for a minute? Speeding? Driving after a few cocktails when you probably shouldn’t have? Didn’t tell the cashier she gave you too much change? Bring a pen home from the office? Printed out personal documents at work? Almost everybody does some of these things but the bottom line is, are these breaking the rules and / or stealing?

Years ago I was a checker at a grocery store. Occasionally there were meetings and in one of the meetings it was mentioned that if we see someone eat so much as a grape from the produce department before paying for the grapes, it was stealing and should be reported. Even prior to that I have never eaten anything while shopping until after I was checked out and in my car. But I see people do it all the time.

From little on I had the fear of God instilled in me. My parents sent my sister and I to a parochial grade school. Church every morning at 8am. Everything we learned was religious-based.

There are Ten Commandments and probably almost everyone has broken at least one. But to this day, as old as I am, I still try to follow the rules, dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.

What prompted this subject is something that happened yesterday. It’s not the first time this has happened but since it was fresh in my mind, I wanted to talk about it.

My husband smokes. Never in our house or anybody else’s. He smokes in his car but after all, it’s his car.

We’re on vacation and have a rental car. There are two stickers in the car that say No Smoking. And until yesterday he hasn’t.

Yesterday morning we left our vacation rental to drive three hours to my son’s house to visit for a couple of days. Three times he smoked and I reminded him that it specifically says ‘No Smoking’. He said he didn’t care. I mentioned that when he returns the car, they may smell the smoke in there and charge him extra for that. He didn’t care.

Him not caring about a potential extra charge also surprises me because he is very conservative with his money.

For those of you who are concerned about my health in the car while he’s smoking, I used to smoke, grew up in a household where both parents smoked, and I crack my window to get fresher air.

There have been times in the past where we were driving somewhere and I had a headache or wasn’t feeling well and asked him not to smoke…and he wouldn’t.

I think most of the things I’ve mentioned are just so common that we don’t think about it. And besides, everybody does it, right?

I’m just wondering where we draw the line, what do we report to management, or is it ok because everybody does it?

Take a moment and think about something you may be doing that would be considered stealing or breaking the rules.