Scared Workless

Like most people who sit in front of a computer all day, we at WG have been following the murder case of Yale graduate student Annie Le closely (pictured on the right). How could someone stuff her into a wall and not expect to be caught? Who was the murderer? And the question that has really been bothering us, what was the motive?

According to New Haven Police Chief, James Lewis, the grad student's death was one that resulted from workplace violence. "It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country," Lewis said during a news conference today.

The suspect in the case is a lab technician named Raymond Clark III that worked in the same building as Le on campus. Numerous news reports say he served in a custodial role at the university campus overseeing the lab mice that Le worked with while pursuing her doctoral degree.

Just in case you don't know the details - Clark has been charged in the death of the 24-year-old Annie Le, who disappeared on September 8th. Her body was discovered five days later (on what was supposed to be her wedding day!). The body was found stuffed into a utility compartment behind a wall in the basement of the research building where she and Clark both worked.

Various news reports are now painting a portrait of Clark that depicts an angry employee who gave workers a hard time for not handling the lab mice or lab tools correctly. In fact, ABC News reported that Clark sent a text message to Le the day she disappeared requesting that they meet to discuss the cleanliness of the mouse cages she had been using. [ABC News]

As details still emerge, the talk of workplace violence has begun circulating. An American human resources firm stated that office suicides jumped 28% in 2008 from the previous year, which many attribute to the recession. [National Post]

According to the United States Department of Labor, violence in the workplace is "a serious safety and health issue" that in its most extreme form leads to homicide. Homicide is the 4th leading cause of fatal occupational injury and in 2005, there were 564 workplace homicides out a total of 5,702 workplace injuries.

Can I Keep It?

The summer before our senior year, WG1 and I were interns in NYC at magazines. Mine may have been a tad bit smaller than hers (and by that I mean we had about 6 employees including myself and we worked out of the owner's apartment).

That summer I wrote lots and lots of articles, did tons of research, and also did way too many personal tasks for the owner (not fun lemme tell ya). But because I did so much extra work for them (and because the magazine was teeny tiny), they often let me take home free stuff they had received from companies asking them to write about their products.

I once got my hair cut for free at the Butterfly Studio (which was super out of my price range). I took home a lot of this stuff. And got offered a lot of free dinners at places like this for writing about their restaurant.

And then I went back to school and took some journalism courses and realized that accepting these gifts might not have been such an honest and upstanding thing to do as a journalist.

At work recently I had to take a small online course about what is considered proper and improper acceptance of gifts. It's such a fine line!

In the video they made us watch, a guy received golf clubs (very expensive ones) from a client who wanted his business. And of course he sent them back because it wasn't ethical to accept them even though he was going to do business with him before he received the gift.

In my new position, I've received some gifts but mostly they are after we have done business and I view these as "thank you" gifts. And when I say gifts I don't mean golf clubs. I usually mean champagne, or candy, and one time someone sent me a cooler. And in those instances I don't think it is improper to accept the gift.

I have become a recent fan of the show Parks and Recreation and in one of the most recent episodes, Amy Poehler's character Leslie Knope accepts a wine basket and then feels super guilty about it and turns herself in to her boss. Clip is below and it's hilarious. Please watch.

What do you think is okay to accept and not accept? What does your company's ethics guidelines say about accepting gifts ?