What Happens In Cabo Doesn’t Stay In Cabo, Apparently

I have a coworker who used to be pretty good but has now decided that things are still the way they were when he started working.

Our employer, like most, forbids alcohol on company premises — totally forbids it — because they’ve learned the hard way that many people will drink on the job and lie about it. Proving they’ve been drinking is a bit tricky, but simple possession is easy enough in most cases.

[Coworker] goes to Cabo San Lucas and brings our manager a bottle of a kind of booze that’s not available locally but is readily available in Cabo.

This is ethically questionable in the first place since it creates the appearance of trying to exert an undue influence on the manager; we’ve all had to take ethics training about things like this every year for at least ten years.

So, [Coworker] brings the bottle into work and hands it to our manager, completely unwrapped. The boss carefully explains that he can’t possess booze on company property, but he’ll let it slide this once, just don’t do it again.

[Coworker] complains to several of us. We all tell him that you can’t do that, reminding him of the ethics issues, and suggest that if he wants to ring the manager booze, he needs to meet the boss offsite and give him the bottle there. [Coworker]’s response is, “That’s stupid!” We all remind him that those are the rules, and the manager should have written him up for it.

Guess what [Coworker] does the next time he goes to Cabo? Yep, exactly the same thing. This time, the boss gives [Coworker] an official verbal warning, and [Coworker] whines mightily about it.

Some months later, [Coworker] goes back to Cabo. Lather, rinse, repeat. This time, he gets a formal write-up, and oh, the whining! This time, he gets very little sympathy, and only from people who don’t know the backstory.

After a couple more self-inflicted issues, [Coworker] retires.