Monday, February 3, 2014

What Has Chris Been Doing?

I've been fighting crime:



In all my retail years, I've never actually been robbed.  Every now and then, twenty or thirty dollars will disappear, but more often than not it somehow finds it's way back.  In fact, I'm not so worried about it that when we were $300 short my action was to send a text to the person who went to the bank reminding her to lock her doors because she went home with a bag of change and I'll see you in the morning.

Day two: the cover up begins.
Big oops.  The next day no one has the money but I've already reported us coming up even.  This is a problem because if we report to loss prevention like we should have, I get put under the spotlight.  We'll have to solve this ourselves.

Day three: discovery.
I spent the next day combing through videotape.  I notice one of the checkers is acting suspiciously and take detailed notes. ( 14:35:21 suspect looks around suspiciously for no reason is a suspicious manner. There is a whole notebook like this.)  Odd thing happens though: we are another $300 short, and it's only happened in the last hour, after I've started counting money in the office.  Therefore I roll back the office tape and see the above.  Geoffery no!  Why did it have to be the black guy?
The back office has a security door, but as in many cases, the door doesn't fit the frame very well and the frame itself is held on by a few finishing nails.  Heck, the whole office is a Sheetrock shack with a two foot gap at the top.  All you have to do is give the handle a sharp tug and it pops right open.
That kind of let me know he's done this sort of thing before.  He knows the weaknesses of doors, and he had the skill to grab an even amount of money.  Like most criminals, he lacks smarts in certain areas, like looking up and seeing himself grabbing money on that security monitor in the upper left.

Day four: resolution.
The only thing that saved the situation is that it was now Sunday and he was sleeping in rather than out and spending company money.  I was able to wake him up and get him to bring the money back with a combination of threat (Police will be there in ten minutes if you aren't here in that time.) and dealmaking (Bring it back and we say nothing to anyone.)  The only sweat situation was that like all of them, he insists that he didn't do it and demands to see the tape.  Doing so puts me in a position that sets me up for the perfect sucker punch if he chooses to do so, but he didn't, so whew.

3 comments:

  1. And hopefully he is no longer an employee...

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  2. Back in the bad old days when Rio Airlines was romping around Texas, I actually saw one of the baggage handlers going through suitcases and taking whatever appealed to him. I reported it to the manager, who said, "Oh, my God! Don't say anything! I'll have to fire him and I'll have a hard time getting a new person."
    Fact.

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  3. Good catch! I hate to say it, but never lie about money. I used to do investigations at an amusement park, and about half of the staff got fired because they screwed up the till and then lied about it. (Just dumb kids making a mistake and then compounding it by not telling the truth.)

    I'm happy to hear that you caught the perp, and I'm also happy to know that you didn't get in trouble for fudging the money numbers. There's no need for you to get in trouble by helping someone out when someone else is making it hard for everyone else.

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