Friday, January 27, 2006

Missing $50

LAG was main cashier. At a busy time of day I was forced to use her register for a few transactions, including one large one which the customer paid in cash. At the end of the shift the register was exactly $50 short. Refusing to accept any responsibility whatsoever, she blamed the shortage on me (despite her register being off frequently and mine rarely being even a cent off). Realizing it MAY have been my fault, I offered to split the amount with her, thinking that was more than fair. She left pissed off, refusing to talk to me.

Overnight I rethought my original offer. Seeing that I make more money than her, should I have covered the entire shortage? It was her register and she was away from the register without proper authorization (leaving a new, slower, employee instead)…..should I charge her for the entire amount? I came back to the original decision, that because it could have been either one of us who made the error, it should be split down the middle.

In my mind I went through the transactions I had done, looking for possible errors or short change artists or anything else weird. I always double-check both the amount I put into the register and the amount of change I give out, so there's little room for error. It made me mad that LAG automatically assumed it was my fault when both our records would suggest otherwise.

The next morning before officially reporting the shortage to the office, I decided to look around a little. You see, in addition to her register being short before, LAG has also lost checks, credit card slips, coupons, etc. through carelessness. What do you know, I reached far back into the drawer, and jammed up in it was the $50 bill. I was relieved, yet still angry about her assuming it was my error.

She was off that day so I told the MOD to inform her that we found the money so she wouldn't be charged. Did she ever apologize to me? No, no mention was made of the incident. You can bet I won't EVER run her register again, regardless of how busy the store is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You said you would have split it -- does that mean you actually put your own money in or it gets deducted from your paycheck? At my store, the shortage gets reported to LP and correction action usually follows. What would happen if you were .50 cents short -- same deal?

Retail Recorder said...

Anything a dollar or more gets deducted from the cashier's paycheck. Less than a dollar and the company takes care of the shortage.

But if a cashier is always short, or develops a pattern of being 50 cents or 90 cents short, then we consider disciplinary action.

PC Disillusioned said...

Seems to be a different policy than here in the UK. I used to be in retail and, while I never got 'pulled up' for register shortages (or having more than I should, for that matter!), I did get told about my register being 34GBP ($60 USD?) short one day.. just got told to be 'more careful'! Was bizarre though, I prided myself on accuracy.