At the meeting employees initial a form summarizing their production in the previous month and their goals for the next month. Gateway contended the old forms its employees initialed also contained this warning. Yet it had purged all its old records, so Gateway was unable to produce any forms initialed by Abild or Connelly, and both denied ever having seen a form with this warning. The employee handbook simply provided that honesty is expected of all employees and employees are not to falsify company records. When put on hold, customers listen to music.
Sales representatives have three phone lines at their workstations.
In July 1994, Gateway conducted a ten-day audit of its phone lines to learn whether employees were using the phone system to falsify sales records. Employees were required to check voice mail messages periodically each day. To check for messages they dialed a four digit in-house extension number, but by dialing an outside number to access messages, employees improved their statistics. Ten employees were eventually discharged. Abild and Connelly denied using the telephone to manipulate their statistics.