A conversation among some of my book-blogging buddies on Twitter clued me in to Shelf Awareness, a daily e-mail newsletter about the book business. This item in the January 8 e-mail caught my attention:
On Tuesday, local police arrested a woman who between 2006 and 2008 was a bookkeeper at Page and Palette bookstore, Fairhope, Ala., and charged her with embezzling about $50,000 from the store, the Press-Register reported. The former bookkeeper, Theresa Canavan Lyda, allegedly wrote a series of checks to pay for personal expenses. Owner Karin Wilson told the paper that she and others on staff had noticed unexplained and misleadingly recorded expenditures. Wilson then notified Fairhope police, who investigated. Only last month (Shelf Awareness, December 21, 2008), a former bookkeeper for Quail Ridge Books & Music, Raleigh, N.C., was arrested and charged with embezzling almost $350,000 from that store over a longer period than Lyda’s activities.
Good grief. As an avid reader and book buyer who pays her way through life as an accountant, I feel the need to apologize on behalf of my profession.
This kind of thing ticks me off generally, because it’s such a violation of professional trust, let alone professional ethics. When you’re responsible for someone else’s money, I believe you have to treat it even more responsibly than you would your own. Your mistakes – even favorable ones – impact other people to varying degrees, and actual mishandling of funds could compromise a business’ ability to operate. Of course, there are also the moral and criminal-law aspects of theft to consider too…
I’m especially bothered by this story because bookstores are involved, though. I suspect I’m not alone among book lovers in idealizing bookstores just a bit, and perhaps even dreaming of working in or owning one of our own. We may be guilty of a “free read” every now and then – reading part or all of a book during a bookstore visit, and then not buying it – but we don’t think of it as “stealing,” since we’re leaving the book for someone else to buy. For the most part, though, we want to keep our favorite bookstores around, and that means buying from them. When we do that, we’d like to think that the money is going into the business to keep it in business – to buy more book inventory, to pay staff, to keep the building open and well-lit – and not being pocketed for someone’s car payment or trip to Vegas.
Independent bookstores are struggling enough these days already, and having someone who is responsible for monitoring a store’s financial health to threaten it by siphoning off its money certainly does not help matters.
Embezzlers will sometimes plead that they got into serious financial difficulties – a family member out of work, big medical bills – and they just desperately needed the money. Sometimes, as in the cases noted here, it’s not even a huge sum of money, especially if it’s been taken a little at a time over a fairly long period; for example, in the Fairhope story quoted, it works out to under $500 per week over two years. That’s a rationalization and not a justification, in my opinion. I sympathize with the hardship situation, but not with the response. It’s taking unfair advantage of confidential access and opportunity, for one thing. For another, I’m not sure I understand how criminal activity is ever supposed to improve a situation.
On the scale of the world’s problems today, I realize that this is not a very big one. But as someone who appreciates that “bookkeeping” has a double meaning in her life, it just irritated me. What do you think about this?
How SAD! Makes you want to just shake your head.
Janssen – Same here – and then I had to rant about it a little :-).
I am appalled; as a person in financial difficulties, even, it owuld never occur to me to embezzle money from anywhere! Because, you know, it is morally, leagally, ethically wwrong….and from a BOOKstore! Gah! That should triple the punishment! To me, bookstores and libraries both are sacred places, so this does bother me on a very fundamental level.
Ugh, I know how you feel – we recently learned of an office manager who was stealing from the Boys & Girls Club!!
Mo, it’s not cool to steal from the place you work. Unfortunately, some people in a financial position like that, and working the books, will try to get away with it. Usually they end up getting caught and are in even more trouble. It’s not worth it.
Kori – That was pretty much my response as well; and, therefore, we have this post. The fact that a bookstore was the victim just made it worse, in my opinion.
April – One of my former employers was embezzled from ($1.2 million over 5 years). When it hits that close, it’s hard not to take it personally.
Mike – One reason this hits me the way it does is that I DO work in a position like that – and I DO assume I’d get caught. That’s actually way down the list of reasons I wouldn’t do it, though.
my goodness…what is wrong with these people. There are no scruples in the world these days…
Serena – Sometimes it seems that way, doesn’t it?
As if those poor independent bookstores didn’t have enough to worry about, now they have deal with thieves on their payrolls? Too unfair.
Vanessa (ChefDruck) – And in this case, odds are the thief is the one who processed the payroll, too. Wrong in SO many ways…
I agree, this is appalling that someone would take advantage of their position like this. Regardless of the reasons behind it, as you said, it isn’t enough to justify it. How many of us could come up with a long list of sob stories all our own and yet we don’t resort to stealing money.
Wendy (Literary Feline) – I think there’s a mindset that they’ll be able to get away with it, or their needs are special, or – something. I don’t know. But when it’s someone who knows the system well enough to play it like that, it especially disturbs me.