I occasionally hear the local refugees from Corporateworld reflect on the big people/little people rule. As in, a number of them violated it, and that's how they became refugees.

Case in point: a former internal auditor at a major downstate corporation. She found a shenanigan by the vice president of marketing. The VP wanted to take eighty strategic customers to the Masters Tournament in Georgia. He dilly-dallied before securing the tickets, and discovered the Masters was sold out. So he had a couple staffers seek out scalpers, and bought the tickets from them. At scalper prices, naturally. Irresponsible, but legal. Then the VP directed the Tax Department to claim the tickets as a business expense. Still legal - IF the claim was backed up by the scalpers' government-issued business IDs or their Social Security Numbers. This being a scalping transaction, the scalpers wouldn't have supplied such information even if they'd been asked. The auditor encountered the claim during an audit, and cited it in a formal audit report, along with the recommendation that the expenses not be claimed. The company followed her advice. But since she'd openly embarrassed the VP, he used his influence to prevent her from getting further promotions and caused her to get crappy assignments. In time, she saw that there was no hope for her career, and took early retirement. The moral of the story: don't apply little people rules to big people.