Globalization: The Concept, Causes, and Consequences

by John Williamson, The World Bank

http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/paper.cfm?ResearchID=330
 

Corruption: just a tip of the iceberg?

A few minutes ago I went to one of my favorites restaurants. Lately I become a regular customer of this restaurant, first of all because it is cheap and secondly I liked its deeply fried chicken and of course it is cheap. I used to go there earlier, thirty minutes before the lunch time in order to avoid a long queue.

Today was a different day.
 

After ordered my usual "nasi ayam", I proceded to the counter to pay for my take away lunch. I had to queue as two lovely ladies were in front of me. They had also ordered boxes of their take away lunches, I suspected for their colleagues. These ladies were no ordinary ladies from not an ordinary institution as well. I think their lunches costed around $25. The cashier calculated, using an Indonesia made calculator, three times in order to convince both of them that the price charged was the right amount. Finally and reluctantly they paid $25.

 

What surprised me most was that the cashier pulled out a new empty receipt from her drawer, put the stamp "lunas" or "paid" on it and said to these two lovely ladies: "I leave the receipt empty and you guys fill it up by yourself". She said it twice. They then took the empty receipt and left.

 

When came my turn to pay, I just looked at the cashier and laughingly said "you shouldn't do that", and she just laughed back at me without saying a word. That's all. The cashier offered  an illegal offer confidently without any hesitation and the two customers accepted the officer knowingly and willingly.

 

What lessons can we learn from this incident?

(1). Corruption, even in a small size as this one, is a crime and should be heavily punished.

(2). Both parties, cashier and two ladies, are guility. As the former induced the other two into illegal act, while the other two knowingly and willingly accepted the offer.

(3). Both parties should be heavily penalished for their acts.

 

What happened here is just a tip of an iceberg and I have heard rumours of the similar type of activity happened on the grand scale in a more sophisticated way.