It was a customer who first noticed that an employee in a newsagency was short changing sales by ten or twenty cents. Some careful detective work soon revealed that it was being done in the morning, up to the lunch break.
When confronted, the employee protested that they weren’t stealing from the business. They withheld ten or twenty cents from enough sales to get to the $8.00 a day they spent on lunch.
We’re saving for a house and I can’t afford to buy my lunch is what I am told the employee said in justification for their action. And yes, they did say I never stole from you when they admitted short-changing customers. Oh and they never took more than $8.00 a day – they fought that made it okay.
It took a while to get the money shot on the security system, evidence of the employee removing cash from the register and putting it in their pocket – in time for lunch. Breathtaking!
While this is not theft on the scale I have often seen in newsagencies it is as serious and as damaging of the business and its customers.
Newsagents need a zero tolerance approach to theft. One way of driving this involved proper use of your software when it comes to transacting sales and managing change to be given.