What would you do?

[Android Kaeli]

I just want honest opinions and any debates on this type of situation if it ever so happens to arise in any work place. I also thought it would be a bit safer to post this thread here instead of CS, so yeah.

In this situation say that you, the reader, are a store manager of any type of retail store [ doesn't really matter what type of store it, be it fast food, department store, or any place has has a register in public view ]. You are working over one particular weekend, it's a Sunday, and you're the opening manager on duty [ MOD to shorten it up for any later referrences in this thread ].

You find out from the closing manager that same morning that there's around $200 missing from one of the tills the previous day. You get information from other employees working the registers that day and more information from Saturday's closing MOD and find out that on the register in question, one of the employees had a customer reach into the open register to try and grab some money out of the till. This employee said that no money was taken out of the register by this customer and the register drawer was closed quickly. The till had not been used at any other time during the day and was closed down right after the first and only employee on the register was supposed to go home.

No other register was short/over by that much in the rest of the store, the safe and cash drawer[s] balance out correctly, and no one else was on the shortaged till. There was only one person on the register all day.

Now this situation gets a bit more complicated at this point. You, as SM, find out that the employee in question had NOT reported the incident to ANY MOD or anyone else at the time it had happened, the first anyone had heard of it was told to a Front-End Supervisor [ FES ] several hours after the attempted money grabbing incident happened. Saturday's closing MOD wasn't informed of the incident until the register was shut down for the day.

$200 is missing from a till that had been supposedly only touched by a single employee. This employee in question is female thats between the ages of 40 and 45, has a primary full-time job Monday-Friday, is married, has one child that is around ten years old, and works at this secondary job three nights a week that includes weekends. The employee has never had more then a few cents off from her till before, she is always on time, has been working in her secondary job for a year a half, and, when possible, will come in for extra night shifts. As far as anyone knows she has no previous records of being that much short in a till before and no known criminal history.

As Store Manager, you have the task of trying to proceed from this point. You have an employee that is missing a good deal of money from a till that she was on and had not told anyone of the attempted mony-grabbing incident until hours later. What would you do?

[protege]

As Store Manager, you have the task of trying to proceed from this point. You have an employee that is missing a good deal of money from a till that she was on and had not told anyone of the attempted mony-grabbing incident until hours later. What would you do?

I'd probably look through the security tapes, and keep it quiet until I was sure I knew who did it. No sense in playing your trump card unless you have to. But, if she's guilty of theft, you can be damn sure she'd be losing her job and getting busted for it. Even if she was innocent, she'd still get a write-up for not telling anyone.

I work in the financial industry--they do not tolerate things like that. Not only can you get in some serious shit with the Feds, but also with clients, and the company itself. Screw up badly enough, and it can prevent you from getting another job. How? Well, when you sign on with a brokerage...they take your fingerprints. Also, there's always a paper trail--trading systems keep track of everything.

[Greenday]

I think the cashier in this situation MAJORLY fouled up. Any time someone tries to reach for your money, there is no reason why you shouldn't report it immediately. ASAP doesn't even cover it. Do not do any further transactions and immediately notify a superior. By not telling anyone, it cannot be proven that the customer really did grab money. In fact, by saying the customer grabbed no money, it just hurts the cashier's credibility. Now the cashier is either a thief or incompetent.

Regardless, this is an incident that cannot be left to "shit happens". It's too large a mistake to let by.

[Fryk]

Well, one of the FIRST things I wold do is have a little chat with Front-End Security, and ask them why they didn't think it was worth bringing up to the front end manager until after the register was closed. The word security is right there in their name, and they did nothing about a security breach like that? Fail.

Then, like someone else said, I would go to the tapes and have a look see, and see what I could find out. If I could see the customer pull back from the till with bills in hand, then the employee gets off with a write-up. Why a write-up? Because that was something serious that happened, and she failed to inform anyone about it until hours after the incident. I would assume that's a breach of policy.
If, however, I can see no evidence of any money in the customer's hands, then all I am left to go on with that is the testimony of the employee, who said they didn't get any money. That places the blame for the shortage solely on her. Given her record, I doubt i would fire her for that, although I would be watching her FAR more closely in the future. But in this case, I would probably suspend her for a week or so.

[elsporko]

If there are no security tapes to show what happened then I would straight up fire her. She either stole or screwed up majorly. Neither one is acceptable.

[Android Kaeli]

This thread was inspired by actual events at my work not too long ago and, no, I'm not the employee in question but it happened to a co-worker. I wanted to see what a few people would do it if they were the SM of the store. Any information in the OP HAD happened according to one manager. We knew what had happened because the SM made sure to tell us to keep an eye out for any customers that may try to put their hands into the till and that a till had been short a good amount.

There's no security cameras in my store, so it's really the employees's word against the till. I don't know what her punishment actually was but she is still employed at my work.

[elsporko]

If I were in charge she would have to be pretty amazing in some way to stay after that. There are alot of people looking for jobs these days who are good workers so keeping one that loses the store large amounts of money, possibly by taking it, sounds like a bad idea.

[Boozy]

There are alot of people looking for jobs these days who are good workers so keeping one that loses the store large amounts of money, possibly by taking it, sounds like a bad idea.

It depends on where she works. You're assuming that they can grab some random job applicant off the street and get them up and running with very little time investment. Most jobs don't work like that.

Part of my job is running a cash register, but that's a very small part of my training. My company invests nearly 120 hours of training time in each employee, and with ongoing training throughout the first two years.

As a result, my company probably would not fire this employee straight away, although they'd get watched. It's too costly to replace a fully-trained employee unless you know for sure that they're a thief.

[McDreidel09]

See there could also be another problem.

I dunno how it is for other kinds of stores, but where I work, only one employee can use the till, but any manager could. Then at the end of the employee's shift, a manager would count up the tills. We once had a manager who would take from the people's tills he was counting and then the blame would be on the employee.

Just kind of looking at everything from all angles.