It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove

It can be very exciting to uncover a case of employee theft. For some, it can be so exciting that logic and common sense can be replaced by a case of tunnel vision.

Let me give you an example…

Back in the day, I had a cash register with a hundred dollar shortage. It was pretty uncommon to be short more than five dollars in a day. We didn’t even bother keeping an over/ short tracking log for less than five dollars just for that reason. So when I saw a hundred dollar shortage, my heart sank.

My heart sank at such a huge loss, and then I took a breath and decided it must have just been an error and I could find it with a little research.

So off I went to disprove this as an employee theft case. It didn’t take me long to realize how wrong I was. The first cash transaction showed a very clear case of employee theft, at least that’s what I thought.

The employee rang up a low dollar transaction for a customer. He handed her a hundred dollar bill. She tendered the transaction, and handed him his change and very clearly, the hundred-dollar bill back.

When I went to my manager to open up an employee theft investigation, I was shocked that she didn’t want to interview right away. The video was so clear and we had suffered a big loss.

I needed to take a step back and realize that even though the employee had incurred a loss, it didn’t mean that she was intentionally stealing. That was the difference. If we couldn’t prove that intent, we had no case of employee theft.

I watched her like a hawk for months. Not even a single penny short. Maybe she did give intend to give that hundred back, or maybe she just had a bad moment. Either way, we could never prove it was a case of employee theft.

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