Ask a Manager: My Employee Fell For A Scam

[minoanmiss]

2. My employee fell for a scam

I run a small retail business and while I was out this afternoon, someone came in and scammed one of my employees into giving him $300 in cash from the register. He told my employee that I was buying some furniture from him and we had spoken about, so she handed him the cash, then realized what she’d done and called me.

How do I proceed from here? I know that confidence tricksters are professionals, but handing over $300 without checking with the boss — I’m good at telling my team when changes are happening and would never ask anyone other than me to pay someone — seems like a big lapse in judgment. That is not an insignificant sum to the business — it’s an average day’s takings.

Any advice on how to handle this with this employee would be appreciated.

The business should cover the expense, just like you would if she made a totally different type of error in her work that cost you money. Absorbing the cost of errors is part of the cost of doing business. You shouldn’t ask an employee to pay for something that happened while they were performing their job in good faith.

But take this as impetus to train all your staff on spotting scams and handling similar situations that could come up in the future.

Comments

The second comment:

[minoanmiss]

The second comment was this:

I worked retail for years as an employee and manager, and scams and con artists were a thing. IMO Alison’s advice here is a bit naive. Chalking this up to “cost of doing business” is basically Shrugging your shoulders and going “oh well” . In six month this small business will be OUT of business. Yes, train your staff, but really? She didn’t call the boss who supposedly ordered this? She didn’t get an invoice? Someone just tells her the manager ordered this and she hands them cash out of the register? That is just DUMB. The employee should not be on the register, and if the business is small, well, if she can’t be trusted to run the register then she probably needs to be let go.

Small retail businesses operate on small margins, especially now. they don’t have a “whoops!” account on the ledger to absorb idiotic expenses.

Aaaand... we were off to the races. The comments seem about split between "this employee is obviously so stupid that she should be immediately fired," and "con artists are good at what they do, you should retrain her and maybe the whole staff." Being me you can probably guess where I stand.

Re: The second comment:

[topaz_eyes]

Small retail businesses operate on small margins, especially now. they don’t have a “whoops!” account on the ledger to absorb idiotic expenses.

If the second commenter does not know that this can be claimed as a business loss on taxes, then perhaps the second commenter shouldn't be involved in running a business either.

[melannen]

Everything else aside, if your response to an employee fucking up, realizing it almost immediately, and then calling the boss to let them know is to fire them for it, then what you will be getting is a bunch of mistakes that happen without you ever knowing about it until they have snowballed into something huge.

The giving up $300 was a lapse in judgement; the calling you right away was both good judgement & evidence that the employee has some loyalty to you. Don't waste those!

[gingicat]

This!

[melannen]

Also since it didn't come up until pretty far down in the ask a manager comments: it may not even be a question of "bad judgement". This sounds like it was a small business with a single low-level employee working alone in the store. I am pretty untrusting in general but if somebody comes in when I don't have backup, tells me that the store owes them money, and doesn't take a couple of firm "no"s for an answer? I'm giving them the money. I may not even realize it's because I was scared until they're gone, but that's going to be a huge factor.

If you're running a store with only one employee on site at a time, you had better be willing to eat a certain amount of loss as a result.

[heavenscalyx]

Just want to chime in to agree with this. One of my relatives is an investment assistant and in 20+ years of working for one of the firms made one (quite small for investments) error (in part because they'd lost a bunch of people and they were doing 3 people's jobs), self-reported, and was not only fired but lost their license despite the affected client asking them not to take any such action because they'd worked with my relative for years. That firm lost an incredibly experienced and loyal employee because of a ridiculous kneejerk, and just taught all the other staffers to never self-report.

[conuly]

Right. ONE mistake is probably nothing to get too worked up about - just, as suggested, invest in better training.

[jamoche]

"Why should I fire you, I just spent $300 on your training?"

[tielan]

I recall an anecdote about a programmer who fucked something up in his company to the tune of $10m, couldn't fix the issue, that $10m was gone.

Management calls him in, sits him down, he already has his resignation letter. Management tears it up: "We just invested $10m into your education; you're not leaving us now."

Anecdotal, but the lesson is pertinent. This was $300 invested into an education for all the staff - and the business owner.

[torachan]

Write them up and keep an eye on them. Some people never learn no matter how many times they make stupid mistakes, but hopefully this employee won't let that sort of thing happen again. (But in case they are the type who never learns to be more careful, they for sure need a written warning.)

[mommy]

Does this business have a history of paying for things in cash taken directly from the register? If yes, then the employee was just complying with the store practices as they were taught.

[minoanmiss]

The LW says she would never ask her employees to pay someone like this... but has she told the employees that?

[ioplokon]

Also, don't keep $300 in the register??? Esp if it's ~ a day's takings? Drop some at the bank at lunch so there's not that much cash available. You only need enough in there to be able to reasonably make change.

[thedivinegoat]

So in the late 80s, when he was 17 my husband worked for a Merchant bank in London as an IT trainee. On his second week he was left over night on the nightshift on his own. One of the jobs he had was to dismount one of the drives that the previous days trading had been recorded on. Only the drive he dismounted was the still spinning drive that THAT days trading was been written to. They lost all of that days trading. Millions of pounds lost.

It was found not to be his fault as he'd not had sufficient training, (I believe someone further up the chain lost their job though) got thrown onto lots of courses, and within 6 months had been promoted.

Mistakes happen, but if someone hasn't had the training it is doubly not their fault.