She Was Given a Chance

There are never enough words to describe the betrayal of trust from an employee who is stealing from you. I recently concluded an employee theft investigation regarding one of my store managers. This one was pretty rough considering all we had done for her.

I am convinced that this employee’s theft did not begin until about a month ago, when her husband lost his job. She started out great as an assistant. She talked all the time about how much better she could be as a store manager. She would give examples of how she could improve a store. So we let her have her chance.

After a few months, her new store’s performance started to slide. After many conversations, she was finally put on an action plan. I guess about three weeks later her husband lost his job. Maybe that was the last straw. She was clearly over her head.

We started to notice a severe lack in following procedure in her store. An associate was eating a snack at the register. When asked if it was paid for, they told us that the manager said to go ahead and eat she’d ring it up whenever she had the chance. This was a common practice.

We then started our employee theft investigation. Turns out that the associates were eating, a lot, and not much of it was being rung up. The manager was also carrying a new BIG purse. We started to run our reports, and sure enough there she was. This wasn’t just a case of employee theft; she was also doing fraudulent refunds.

The end result was that she thought that she could take advantage of the trust we had given her. When times were tough, she just helped herself. She gave the rest of her store loose reigns, so they wouldn’t notice her own violations.

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