Over the 30 plus years the thousands of employees I caught during retail loss prevention theft investigations told me the reasons why they stole from their employers. One of the very most common reasons has been something like: “as a favor to help a friend out”. All of us refer to this as peer pressure. What still amazes me to this day is that an employee commits a serious felony that will potentially cause the loss of their freedom and civil penalties to help someone else out.
Many of us loss prevention and security professionals have heard this same reason over and over so many times. Why do they do it? There are several interesting factors. The main one being their age. We hear this a lot from 16 to 22 year olds. I feel this is because they think that fitting in with these so-called “buddies” is more important to them. That thought process is pretty strange to the rest of us until you think back to your own life when you were at that age. You may have started drinking or did something else that you now look back and say, “What in the world was I thinking?” All of this in order to “be friends”.
People in that age bracket also seem to feel like they are immune and they will not get caught. In that situation I always chuckle about the loss prevention investigations I conducted where a younger employee thought that they were the only one that ever thought of void or refund fraud, cash theft or some other retail theft that I had already put 500 people prior to them in jail for.
One retail loss prevention investigation I conducted is a particularly good example. Two 18 year old employees, female and male who had were girlfriend and boyfriend made the decision to steal cash and merchandise in the thousands of dollars. Their belief was that no one knew what they were doing. They thought that they were smarter that the rest of us including the manager.
The manager contacted me to start a loss prevention investigation after she noticed discrepancies in both merchandise and cash. I put the evidence together and it became very clear that it was the girlfriend/boyfriend. During the interviews with each of them I discovered the reason, they were stealing for each other (isn’t love great?) and they didn’t think anyone else would figure it out. They got to spend the next several years on probation paying back the retailer with interest and many hours of community service. They were put into separate community service programs since the Judge thought their love needed a little break.
Your loss prevention program should take these types of reasons into account if you want to keep your merchandise, assets and cash on YOUR bottom line. Make it clear to ALL employees that you will not tolerate any loss or theft. The only thing they are allowed to leave the store with that they did not bring in is the air in their lungs. The rest does not belong to them.
For more information on loss prevention security, retail loss prevention or loss prevention in general please contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
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