Employee Theft

I remember the first time I was ever exposed to employee theft. I was a teenager in high school, and working during the summer at an amusement park. My first day there I was partnered up with another kid, about my age, and we worked an ice cream cart together selling ice cream sandwiches, popsicles and that kind of stuff.

The problem was inventory control and I realized it right away. When we left the walk-in freezer to go out and sell, nobody verified how much product we had in the ice cream cart. And no one verified what we came back with, either. The kid I was working with had some kind of a cash bank, but that wasn't counted in or out either. And it was a general rule that by the time you got done with an hour or two of selling ice cream in the hot sun some of it would be melted at the bottom of the container. Nobody kept track of that either.

So basically this kid was going out there, making all cash sales with zero inventory controls or monetary controls. If he came back in after selling a hundred units at a dollar apiece he could just as easily say that he only sold eighty. And he could claim twenty units melted and got thrown away when it was really only ten.  Of course, he was pocketing the difference. I worked with him for 3 days and I know he shorted the company at least $150, maybe more.  Being young, I didn't way anything.

Today, without proper inventory controls, the exact same thing could be happening anywhere and anytime a cashier accepts cash.  Now no business owner or manager wants to do a complete inventory at the end of every shift, that wouldn't be very practical, so business use some high, and low tech methods to keep their workers honest. We'll go in to those in my next post.

BTW, I need to mention our sponsor, Zoom Benefits, again. They really offer some great discounts, check out the image below for some of the companies you can get discounts at.  Click here to learn more.