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Corporate ethics training loves a spotless PowerPoint.

Meanwhile, real-world business can get much messier.

One engineer was forced into a mandatory anti-bribery meeting.

But OOPS. He happened to have receipts.

See where the presentation went off-script.

This Company doesn’t offer bribes! (until it does)

This happened a year or 2 ago. I had just returned from a long mission for my company in Indonesia.

As soon as I could finish the paperwork I could go on leave. I had about 3 days of report writing left to do.

I had been ‘invited’ to a nonsense meeting on ‘the company Ethos’ which I had declined.

The H.R. underling sent an email saying it was obligatory, which I ignored.

H.R. insisted that he had to attend.

Anyway the meeting started without me.

Then the H.R. person came out and said I had to attend. (room is full of techies, engineers and anyone else who was in the office at the time.)

PowerPoint display went on and on, ‘company ethos’, other stuff and then, H.R. ‘What to do if you are offered a bribe’. Which made me smile. Anyway…

The H.R. person insisted on knowing why he smiled.

‘What’s funny?’, H.R.

‘Oh nothing’, me.

‘No go on”, H.R.

So I asked her if WE were supposed to offer ‘incentives’ in order to complete missions.

‘Never, if you remember the PowerPoint we just worked through?’, H.R.

So I quickly copy/pasted a section of my WhatsApp conversation with the Missions officer (about 4 levels above H.R. underling) and sent it to H.R. underling’s email.

The H.R. person read the email.

‘I just sent you something’, me.

She opened it and began to read.

*Missions manager was a sound guy who understands that in some countries a little cash is only way to make things function. Anyway, the email stated the case. I had a hire car but I didn’t have access to a driver all the time and I was stuck in the hotel at weekends.

*Theoretically you can use your home driving licence to obtain an Indonesian driving licence and it should be straight forward. In reality they see it as an opportunity to make some money and will happily make you wait a year and do a driving test – unless you give a fat wad of banknotes in an envelope (2 Million Indonesian Rupiah, about $130, but it’s a lot to them).

Missions manager said ‘Fine.’

Here’s how he was told to expense it.

I asked him ‘How can I put it through expenses?’

‘Team building exercise, get a receipt.’, Missions manager. (code for make a fake one)

Which I did. *Google ‘fake receipt generator’ – there are hundreds of sites.

So I made one for 4 steak dinners with wine and loads of beer. I printed it out, screwed it up and then scanned it. It looked legit.

Missions manager ‘Looks good to me – approved’.

Everyone in the meeting saw the email.

She was reading this on her laptop – but it was shared with the 70″ screen behind her.

She looked up and everyone was smiling.

‘OK, we’ll break for coffee.’, H.R. underling.

I didn’t come back. She didn’t come looking for me.

I went on vacation 2 days later.

The H.R. person probably regrets forcing them to attend that meeting.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Was telling HR really a good idea?

This person shares some advice for mandatory meetings like this.

Sometimes bribery is the only way.

This person has a question.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got the perfect revenge after being told he can’t work from home.

Perhaps it’s not always a bribe.

Forced into anti-bribery training, OP displayed messages showing a senior manager approving a payment disguised through a fake receipt.

With the contradiction projected behind her, HR called a coffee break and apparently never invited OP to another pointless session.

That PowerPoint came with live-action hypocrisy.