So - as is normal in these situations - his supervisor asks for a piss test. But by the time someone locates a cup the man has disappeared.
A search of his room finds drug paraphernalia and other evidence of his using.
But within hours a new manager, another addict, is doing his job and business moves on as usual.
In the early days when a manager stole from us and relapsed it affected me more.
"How could he do this after we trusted him with our money?"
"How could someone be so ungrateful?"
"We should have noticed sooner."
The internal chatter and resentment went on and on.
But years ago I put this into perspective. After all, large corporations lose more to theft that we do. I heard recently that Walmart loses more to employee theft than to customer theft. And that Safeway loses something like 3% to theft.
The other thing is that when we're helping troubled people we're never surprised when they revert to old behavior.
That just comes with the territory.
