I was bribed once. By a former congressman. The store I work in does custom work…we tell the customer it will be ready in one hour. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes, sometimes an hour. Really depends on how much is ahead of you, how complicated, and how many other customers show up needing their hands held to make a simple decision…but I digress.
The former congressman asks if there is anything he can do to get it done in 15 minutes. I reply (in jest, of course) that I can always be bribed by Malley’s French Mint candy bars. He leaves and returns with not one, but two (milk and dark) candy bars, then leaves again, saying he’ll be back in 15. His order is ready in 5 minutes, not because of the candy, but because there was no other orders due and no customers and an easy job.
Does he come back in 15? No. 30? No. One hour? No.
One hour, forty minutes later, he returns…got tied up talking to someone. Now I think I have a clue why he’s a former congressman. No sense of responsibility. If you’re gonna shell out for a bribe, at least keep your end of the deal.
When stopped for speeding, and asked for their license, a relative of mine liked to hand the police officer their license wrapped in a $50 bill. My relative would then be handed back their license and go on their merry way.
A kid once tried to bribe me. I used to be a basketball ref, and this kid who must have been about 3 came up and offered me his half eaten biscuit if I would be “nicer” to his brother. I turned him down, not least because a half chewed biscuit that had been squeezed in his little fist just wasn’t that apealling.
Lunch, dinner, drinks and tickets to events are common enough gratuities in the business world that it would be hard to think of them as bribes, especially when you consider that they come with no strings attached.
But I did once have such made a condition for consumating a deal. The guy who would make the decision on this transaction finally said, “OK, we’ll do it, but it’ll cost you four tickets to Clint Black (or whoever the headliner was at the Rodeo that year) and dinner at XXXXXXX.” Well, that all cost $800, which seriously nipped my $8K commission on the deal. But I did it. That’s the only time I remember the gratuities being specifically mentioned as a condition for doing business.
Another time, a broker who was arranging the sale of a license to some data proprietary to the company I worked for suggested that she handle the billing, as she knew her client would willingly pay 20% more than my company was asking, and she and I could split the difference. I don’t think that’s so much a bribe - probably something more like, what, embezzlement? I kicked her out.
I did go to Mexico once, and as I was going into the interior and staying for a bit, I needed a visa (yes, I know you can enter a border town without). As I’d forgotten my voter’s registration, I paper clipped 100 pesos to the back of my driver’s license and handed it to the guy at the immigration station. That was about 25¢ (old pesos). I got my visa.
I used to do all the computer purchasing for my dept in a fiarly large company. When I took over, there was this real slimeball of a salesman who was suppling all the parts we used for upgrades etc. I immediately set us up with much cheaper suppliers of computer parts(having worked in retail computer stores, I had contacts). I get a call from the salesman inviting me out to lunch. we eat lunch, he picks up the check, then turns to me and says whats it gonna take to get your parts buisness back?
I reply “give us a lower quote than the people I am buying from now”. That wasnt the answer he was looking for. I then gave him some examples of what I was paying for monitors, for sound cards(we were buying them in lots of several hundred), etc. He wasnt getting them as cheap as we were. I almost felt bad for him…Almost.