The word “crook” is used a lot. It is widespread and common. Crooks are people who cheat. People denounce crooks. But it seems that if we take a long look in the mirror, we might discover something unpleasant about human nature: It seems that everyone is a crook.
If there is a car accident, some of us might use a friend to exaggerate the cost of damage to a car in order to get more money in an insurance claim. If we have business expenses, we comp meals that we know we shouldn’t. Some of us might take something of value (like a plane ticket voucher), convert that item into cash (like selling the plane ticket voucher), buy a cheaper item (a bus ticket) and pocket the difference without a sense of guilt. Some of us call in sick when we aren’t. Others will take advantage of people’s ignorance to make extra money, like sell a defective car for less than it is really worth.
A police program in New York’s subway system (used by people from all over the world) places handbags and wallets on benches to catch thieves. While the police only arrest those who are witnessed specifically trying to separate money from the handbag or wallet, they found that most people had a tendency to walk away with the handbag or wallet rather than try to find its owner. More often than not the police have to stop the people and recover the bait, even if they don’t arrest them because the suspects didn’t specifically try to immediately remove the money.
In Saudi Arabia, people create ghost companies in order to obtain visas for foreign workers (in order to skirt Saudization quotas). At our schools and universities, the problem of cheating is profound, and as a result there are students with high marks but pretty low skills.
We see bosses cheating employees and vice versa. The problem of employers not paying their workers on time (or at all) is more common than it should be. Recently a group of construction workers in Yanbu was caught with copper cables wrapped around their legs and under their clothing; they were stealing the metal to sell.
Are we crooks by nature, by circumstance, or both?
