The 32nd-Story Men

Wanted: Wallets, purses, jewelry, valuables. Please leave them on your desk, in nearby cabinets or other accessible places when you leave your office. We will slip by to pick them up. Thanks for past favors.

Thus did the house organ of one Manhattan firm warn its employees to guard against outbreaks of office thievery, highlighting the petty-crime wave that has been plaguing office buildings from coast to coast. It would seem that few targets appear more attractive than a big-city tower of commerce: lots of victims, lots of loot, with floor after anonymous floor piled up like layer cake. Trouble is, a hard-working secretary too often finds her take-home pay going home in somebody else's pocket.

A Clean Haul. "The women are our biggest problem," complains one Washington, D.C., police inspector. "They will hide their purses under their desks, in typewriter wells and desk drawers. These are the first places a professional office thief looks." A female Washington employee of Air France was robbed twice in one day. Purses, wallets, postage stamps and petty cash are fair game, with office machines and TV sets running a bulky second. Occasionally, of course, the theft is an inside job, though most experts believe that the kleptomaniac junior exec and the light-fingered charwoman (a much-maligned breed) are the exceptions. Guido Mattei, Chicago manager of the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, says: "Sneak thieves do a thorough job of hitting downtown office buildings, and we have found that a good 40% of these prowlers are narcotics addicts. Office thievery is the source of their next fix."

Gaining entry presents no problem to the skyscraper sneak. All he has to do is mingle with lunch-hour throngs, or wander through the halls affecting that where-is-the-personnel-department look, until he finds what he is really after. Thieves masquerade as job seekers, repairmen, delivery boys, messengers. And some manage to clean up simply by walking around with a mop.

The Untouchables. In its 21-story Houston headquarters, the Prudential Insurance Co. of America has reduced losses to almost nil by providing a locker with a key for every employee. But that smacks a bit of the gymnasium. Manhattan's Bankers Trust Building has four closed-circuit TV cameras scanning entrances and exits, and the new Pan Am building will soon have 15. Security measures elsewhere include everything from platoons of uniformed guards and plainclothes detectives to hidden still cameras, electric-eye alarm systems, fluorescent dusting powder (guilty fingers glow under fluorescent lamps after dipping into petty cash), identification passes, and stiff regulations about signing in and out during off-hours.

Despite such devices, few culprits are picked up by police. Many firms hesitate to report a theft, perhaps fearful that the thief they catch just may be one of their own. What's more, efficiency experts say that exposing employees to the strain of a perpetual manhunt is bad for morale. There is also the bad publicity to consider. Best advice, then, for the white-collar worker, as well as for his boss down the hall, is: Keep purses in locked drawers, wallets in pockets--and hang onto your hats.

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