Robbed on the job? YOU'RE FIRED!!

[Rageaholic]

This story caught my eye.

Armed robber breaks into this Popeye's franchise and demands that the woman at the counter give her money. He ends up getting away with 400 dollars and the management of the place want to make up the money... so they demand that the woman who just had a frickin' gun pointed at her pay them the 400. They blame her because she left too much money in the till, but she didn't have enough time during the rush to empty the till into the safe. .

The thing is, this isn't the first time I've heard of something like this happening. I remember hearing about a pizza delivery guy who was robbed while delivering and was forced to pay them back the money to keep the job. I also recall a few stories on CS involving managers coming down hard on employees after they've been robbed.

What the hell?

[Aragarthiel]

A quick view of the security footage (and possibly a look at the last several transactions in the computer and their time stamps) from just before the robbery should show if she had time to do a drop, and then the matter could be easily settled. My issue with this is, what if one single person had ordered $400 in food, then the next person in line happened to be the robber? Where would she have gotten the time to do a drop? Until we see that she was being lazy about emptying her till, I have to say, she doesn't deserve this.

Anyone want to bet some sort of fundraiser has been started for her already, especially considering that she's pregnant?

[Herebecause]

I read that the fundraiser started for her was dropped - don't know if it was by the organizers or the website, though.

[Rageaholic]

I read that the fundraiser started for her was dropped - don't know if it was by the organizers or the website, though.

It might have been a fraud.

[Anthony K. S.]

"We deeply regret the way this matter was handled. We are committed to continuing to work with Ms. Holcomb, and we apologize to her, our employees, the public and other franchise operators of the Popeyes system. We have let them down and are committed to do better."

Translation : We got caught being assholes to our employees, and we're scrambling to avoid any more bad publicity.

Well, at least they've offered her her job back.


If it's like most customer service positions, the management schedules only the bare minimum of employees most of the time.

So if Ms. Holcomb didn't empty out her register, it was probably management's fault for leaving them short-handed and not having enough time to get those tasks done.

(Yes, it's pretty much my go to policy to blame management for stuff like this. And the thing is, I have very rarely been wrong about it.)


I have always heard that the best course of action when you're being robbed is to cooperate and give the robbers whatever they want. It's your best chance of emerging from the situation unharmed.

And now we're punishing people for doing that. That is ****ing brilliant.

[Tama]

Perhaps they offered her "an undisclosed sum" to close up the fundraiser...

[Aragarthiel]

I have always heard that the best course of action when you're being robbed is to cooperate and give the robbers whatever they want. It's your best chance of emerging from the situation unharmed.

And now we're punishing people for doing that. That is ****ing brilliant.

But if you try to defend yourself or your customers and come out a hero, you'll get fired as well. If you don't come out a hero, well, they can't really fire you in that case...

[Food Lady]

I wouldn't want the job back.

[Racket_Man]

Welcome to the wonderful world of retail.

I wish this was the exception to the rule but sadly it is the norm.

throw the employee under the bus and tramatize them twice.

[Shangri-laschild]

I'm not saying management was being completely fair about this one. However when I was trained for the gas station, it was drilled into our heads that it doesn't matter how busy you are, you stop serving people if you need to drop. You have them wait and you take care of the money first. If a customer has a transaction that is for an amount like several hundred, it got automatically dropped and never even went into the register. Granted, I don't know how various locations are set up for some of this stuff. I don't think she should have been expected to pay back the money, but I can understand why she was fired. It sucks but everywhere I worked that required you to drop money made it clear that it was a fireable offense to not drop money when you should, especially if you got robbed. If you got robbed and had been doing money drops, then you wouldn't get into trouble. Usually you wouldn't get fired for the first offense (so long as there was no robbery), but there would definitely be write ups. The fact that she had been supposedly talked to about this kind of thing before makes me wonder if there were already write ups on the matter as well which kind of changes the story from "busy employee was robbed at just the wrong time" to "employee once again violated policy that's in place for safety reasons and this time also got robbed."

[Gravekeeper]

Translation : We got caught being assholes to our employees, and we're scrambling to avoid any more bad publicity.

Well, at least they've offered her her job back.

To be clear here, the problem here is the franchise owner. Its corporate that got wind of it and stepped in. So no its not them being sorry they got caught. Its corporate realizing theres some dickery going on under their brand name and stepping in.

The franchise owner and his brother operate 90 Popeyes and almost 500 Burger King locations. They've been buying them up at an alarming rate in Texas over the last few years. I don't imagine someone that buys 300 Burger King locations in a single year is overly concerned about management quality. -.-

[BlaqueKatt]

I'm not saying management was being completely fair about this one. However when I was trained for the gas station, it was drilled into our heads that it doesn't matter how busy you are, you stop serving people if you need to drop. You have them wait and you take care of the money first.

Until the first complaint about someone having to wait, and you get written up for "poor customer service".

Yes I have had that happen, when asking management "do I serve the customers or make the drop?" I was told "both" even though it was PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, I'd be written up either way.

My mom got written up because a MANAGER* didn't take a drop 5 times and her register froze.

*at a certain amount the register would request a drop, which could be overriden but ONLY with a manager's login.

[Shangri-laschild]

Until the first complaint about someone having to wait, and you get written up for "poor customer service".

It's a fair point that sometimes management doesn't stick to their own rules. I got lucky and my bosses did stick to it. Customers could wait and if there were complaints about it, they weren't listened to. They were instead used to point out that people did notice that safe drops were being done and so it was important and it was even mentioned in training that even if they were irritated, they could still wait. I do get that not all places are like that which is a problem. I don't know if this place is, I just know that the reasoning she gave was that she didn't have time rather than that she was instructed to not make the customers wait and this being a previous issue with her was mentioned so that's what I'm going off of.

[Anthony K. S.]

To be clear here, the problem here is the franchise owner.

I know that.

The statement I quoted was not from the Popeye's corporate office.

It was from Amin Dhanani, the owner of Z&H Foods, which is the Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen franchisee involved here.

[Gravekeeper]

It was from Amin Dhanani, the owner of Z&H Foods, which is the Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen franchisee involved here.

Ah, you're right, sorry. My misreading the article. Carry on pointing out that these people are jackholes. >.>