We are working on an article about employee theft and would like to provide some common way employees have been caught stealing from a pizzeria. If you have caught employee theft, post a few notes about what happened and how you caught them. If you would like your name and pizzeria mentioned in the article, list it with the comments…but you don’t have to.
I recieved an email a while back about a pizza manager inputing the wrong credit card total into the POS when reconciling their till at the end of the night. Pocket $50 cash at end of night, increase cc total by $50 and your POS report doesn’t tell you you are short. Many people don’t check credit card deposits often so this may very well slip past an owner too busy to pay close attention to bank account.
caught mines stealing on camera best thing i bought for this place
Before I had my cameras in there was an employee that every shift she worked other staff had smokes missing. One day she came by the office while i was looking at cameras on the net and asked what i was doing. When I told her I was looking to add MORE cameras she said OH! She resigned the next day.
I have something unordinary, I had an employee steal my license plate off my car, seems he didnt want to re-registar his car, so he took mine.
never knew what happened to it so I went and got replacement plates time went by and one busy friday an officer stops in to tell me they arrested my driver for driving on stolen plates…MINE.
Coupon Clipping
I used to work for a pizza shop that tracked their coupons by applying the discounts when the pizza was delivered. Then at the end of the shift when the driver was checked out for the orders, the discounts were applied.
Example… Customer states they have a coupon for $2 off a large pizza. They are quoted the regular price (the ticket was marked about the discount) and when the pizza is delivered, the driver discounts the $2 off of the total.
Of course you always had somebody trying to get some extra cash. They would get an advo in their mailbox and soon after that, you would see extra coupons coming in. They were never smart enough to spread them out. So all you had to do is connect the coupons and say thanks for effort, but your terminated.
This can be tracked by your coupon % or by doing customer call backs
Voids
Another one that I have caught mngrs doing is voiding orders or partially voiding them. Some would just void out the whole order and others would void of a side item. Either way, it’s stealing.
I keep extensive stats at my place, so I can tell when a % is a little out of whack. Of course they always start out small and let it grow, so you need to keep your eye on it the whole time
A simple way to check on it is to do call backs to the customers.
Not entering orders
I have caught employee’s taking orders down on paper and never entering them into the computers. This of course is kind of difficult to catch unless you have somebody that isn’t to smart. I’ve caught them when they toss the paper in the trash and never throw out that garbage at night.
I’m sure I can come up with more, 16yrs in the field I always say I’ve seen it all… but people get wiser by the day!
Just last week I posted this about a waitress who was not entering beverages on her orders and got caught.
Just fired an assistant manager last week.
A. Clocked himself in and out for hours he did not work using the manager override on the POS.
B. Took cash for cigarettes and balanced the till by not ringing up slices.
C. Did carryout orders without entering them in the till, pocketed the cash.
D. Added coupons to completed orders that did not have them at closing, pocketed the cash.
E. Used store charge account a local copy/shipping store to ship personal packages.
Then there was the fact that he presented himself to other business owners and people in the community as the GM rather than as assistant manager. He tried that on the other assistant managers too… which is probably why they turned him in for stealing.
Please do not list anything about our store info (if you have any). This is a very small place.
One of the easiest ways for drivers to steal - add tips in on credit card slips.
Don’t give the slip to the customer to sign (many customers won’t even realize there was a slip to sign in the first place) - then sign the slip yourself and put in a few $ tip.
Or the customer just signs the slip and doesn’t mark out the tip area or total the slip. Again, write in whatever tip you want.
Amazingly, I’ve never had a customer notice this and call about it - all the while I’ve caught at least 3 drivers doing this. One admitted he had been doing it for more than a year.
There is really no way to prevent it - other than depending on the thief being stupid - like putting $2 on every slip in exactly the same writing…etc. lol.
I have no cameras or POS. Caught someone who seems to be original… He went and bought guest checks that are just like mine. Wrote orders up, the drivers didnt notice a difference, then he just pocketed the money and got rid of the tickets. He was also re-using old sub cards where people had already recieved their free sub, just claim another free sub. Now he is in prison. 4 months after I fired him he did a armed robbery at subway. Crack kills!
Do you really think that it’s a good idea to write an article including the different ways that our employees have ripped us off? The reason I am asking this is because quite often our PMQ is at our store or in the restroom and if someone reads the inventive ways that others have ripped off their employers, might get the “bright” idea to try out one of these clever ways on us. I think it’s okay for us to list the ways we have been ripped off in this forum so that we can all watch for the signs in our own stores, but to have it published in a magazine might be setting ourselves up for possible another theft. Just my opinion.