Has anyone worked with someone who was stealing ?

I used to take a neighbour shopping that would shoplift. She could easily afford the items she stole, her attitude was why not as if she got caught would play the confused old lady card, she is in her 80s.

I said if it continued I would not take her again, it seemed fine for a while, and then the security alarm went off as we were leaving a store. There was no security guard and other people around just looked at the young people that were near the door.

I haven't offered to take her again and she has not asked.

Having said all that. No, I have not worked with anyone that was stealing.

I remember when I was very young I used to arrive early to work as there was a gap between ending school and starting work. I would sit in the staffroom to do homework.

At some point the supervisors purse went missing and I was heavily questioned. Everyone thought it was me. I had an unhappy homelife and was so used to being blamed for things i was literally searching my own head wondering if i could have done it.

Then the culprit was caught red handed stealing from another locker...

This is a horrible thing to do and impacts a whole workplace.

I understand it can be mental illness or a cry for help but people are still responsible for the harm they cause

I have and the big joke was they were taking the supplies to their local church sunday school. What do you say? I'm afraid I just kept quiet.

Yes, I was a Saturday junior and had to take parcels to the post office, pay for them and get a receipt. Once a year the account books were checked and it was found that the figures on the receipts were often changed, it was very obvious.
I was questioned, I knew it was my boss but I said nothing, it would have been their word against mine.
I wasn’t accused nor threatened and no one left.

This lady's husband wouldn't have a leg to stand on, if he made his protest's public. All that would happen is that his wife would end up in papers, labelled a thief.

I had a colleague who almost certainly 'stole' hours off.
Because of the nature of our jobs, we would be very busy during parts of the year, working more than our contracted number of hours each week, but very quiet at others. We were responsible for entering the hours we had worked on a worksheet, and they were rarely, if ever, checked.

We were allowed to use the surplus hours as time off during the quiet periods.
This particular person was always the last to arrive (some were there hours earlier), and never left after the rest of us , yet come the quiet times, she would mysteriously have more hours off due than the rest of us!

I strongly suspect that she helped herself to office items too, such as postage stamps, though I could not have proved it.

When I was a student I hd a summer holiday job as a cashier in a posh country hotel.
I cashed up each night and there was always a few £s short. so I put it back out of my pocket.
In my naivete at first I thought I had just made a msitake. But then reported it to the manager and he found that the head waiter was somehow regularly nicking some cash.

I had staff who thought anything in work wa stheirs to take.Thy'd do homers and use our equipment and materials on one occassion even brought their customer into the studio to give a slide show and pick frames ..thats when we called him out on it .He said it was justa few prints .mounts frames..but how many tmes had it happened ?
He took us to a trabunal whe we fired him ...he won!

A couple of instances. One where we had a "hot desk" where you could use the computer and desk space if you were on a particular project; anyone could use them. One of my colleagues was sat at the desk, took his jacket off and put it over the back of the chair. He left his jacket there when he went back to his own desk. Another colleague used the "hot desk" and took his wallet out of his pocket. He didn't find out until he was on his way home. The thief was never caught, although we all had strong suspicions.

The other involved a young woman who had recently got engaged; she was very proud of her beautiful engagement ring. She went to the ladies and before washing her hands, slipped the ring off and put it at the side of the washbasin. And forgot to put it back on. Immediately ran back to the ladies toilets but the ring had gone. It could have been anyone of 4 or 5 women who used the loos but nothing was ever proved. That one left a nasty atmosphere in the workplace for a very long time.

I worked part time in a wine bar many moons ago, and was accused of stealing cash from the till, and had to leave. Staff would often come to my till saying they needed 'change' for the till upstairs.

A few months later two of the full time staff were caught on CCTV loading crates of champagne into their car round the back, and the manager rang me to apologise.

Yes when I worked in retail. All very awkward as I was called as a witness when management were gathering enough evidence to sack the person.

When I worked in a supermarket a young lad in the warehouse lost his job after he ate a sausage roll from a broken package.

It's all theft!

My 90y old stepfather told me he was in his local mini mart on Friday afternoon and saw another customer brazenly unzip his back pack and load items into it straight from the shelves. He watched covertly in amazement and decided at his advanced age, discretion was the better part of valour. As my stepfather made his way to the till, the man calmly walked out of the shop.
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At least 3 times ... all in a bank I worked in. Cut long stories very short ... 1 . Mysterious odd £5 notes went missing in bundles of notes that has customers name on ... I had a word with my manager had a straight swop with someone else at another branch ... didn't stop ... even a full bundle went missing ... glad it didn't stop as no doubt would have suspected me ... spoke to the inspectors at the time ... she had told lies etc when having time off aswell . 2. When people had to pay for a service, I checked this customer had paid ... didn't have to but I did ... I said you haven't paid hence she said I have a cash receipt which she showed me , I spoke to my manager later about it ! Cashier even implicated me & another girl as we wrote out credit slips, but had the cashier stamp on it who accepted it, quite a lot of money, did it across loads of customers . 3. I took over a till & it was a bungle short of money, as I had no one by me when I took it over , I was partly to blame , even took it to the union ... so my name was on the short, I remember someone saying to me she trusted me ! A few years later I spoke to someone on the phone & asked how this person was ... his reply got the sack, her till was over, she had money then customer came back a few weeks later not gone into his business account ... to me I am most certain this was the person took the money when I worked with her , at the end of day have to check no money is left in the tills ... I know of others aswell ... even people you class as friends!

I left school at fifteen I had to get a job so I worked in a shoe shop down town. Two girls I worked with stole from the business in different ways very craftily I thought.
I told the then manager who wouldn’t do anything about it as one of the girls was from a very tough family who lived locally. I looked for another job and left not the sort of people I wanted to be around let alone work with.

Keep anyone you suspect of being dishonest at arms length, get yourself transferred away from them, tell management why, and let them deal with it.
It’s so difficult with unfair dismissal claims, getting evidence to convict is so hard, often it’s easier just to make them redundant and pay any compensation.

My brother left his jacket over the back of his office chair when he went for lunch, came back to find the other man in the room with his wallet in one hand and a couple of notes in the other. Instant dismissal took place.
When I was very young I was amazed at how much stationery was pinched for personal use.

Many years ago had a p/t job in a local pub. One day we were all called to a meeting to say that we had all been under suspicion as the takings had been short. Even the landlord was under suspicion! The brewery had sent some undercover "customers" in to see what was going on. It turned out that one of the barmaids was giving her friends free drinks, or putting half a pint through the till while serving a full pint etc!

Many years ago, and it caused so much distress for all the rest of us. Small office (little craft Trades Union). Two Officers and two of us Administrator staff.

Back then the TU used to pay out sick pay to any of its members who submitted a Doctors note. This was paid weekly and by postal orders. I tended to work mainly for the General Secretary and she for the Officer who was in charge of these payments.

Each Friday she would do these, then get the Officer to purchase the requires P.Orders. She lived close by and each week would put all these folders in her shopping bag saying she would complete them at home during her lunch break.

All went through Audit twice. Then she went on holiday one year for a couple of weeks. She said not to bother with them as she would just catch up when she returned. Towards end of first week, I had about half an hour spare so thought that at least I could send out the Reminder notes to those who had not returned their receipts for these payments, and did this. Monday morning one of these people phoned me to say, he had not had that payment as his sick note and leave had well expired. I went to the file to get out that folder, took out the GP Sick Note - and then got a sick feeling in my own stomach as saw it had been carefully altered, and I recognised the handwriting of the new dates.

She had been doing this for eighteen months. Changing these Dr's notes, and claiming more money each week and keeping that - keeping careful personal notes as to how much on each claimant. Amounted to about eight hundred pounds (which back in the mid-60's was a lot of money).

Accountants called in, police called in - they met her and her hubbie off the plane on their return from holiday. It was suggested that a private agreement with her would give us a better chance of getting at least some of that money repaid rather than her being prosecuted. We never got the full amount repaid though.

Our very happy and so pleasant to work in office was horrible for several months, as all accounts had to be searched to see if anything else was going on. Everyone blaming everyone else for not spotting this. We all felt tainted by her action.s

Back in the 1980s when I was at uni I did a placement with a charity who let out hostel rooms. A giro belonging to one of the residents went missing and the DSS had to replace it. Big enquiry. One of the charity workers was suspected by his team mates who all became "lay detectives" in coluding to build a case against him. There was a very uncomfortable atmosphere for a couple of weeks. The worker was allowed to resign with no comeback.

I used it as a case study for my social psychology course.

I used to work for Lloyds, and it was back in the day when each individual cashier would cash up at night, and be accountable for their till. I was trained by a lovely girl, very friendly, who I became friends with. I'd been to her home and supported her a lot when she had a miscarriage.

My till was constantly wrong. I was convinced I was bad at the job and just accepted that I made mistakes. A customer complained that I'd taken money out of their account, which they hadn't authorised, and the withdrawal slip (as well as all of that day's paperwork) had mysteriously disappeared. I didn't think that anyone would suspect me of anything other than being a poor cash handler.

Anyway, the girl who'd trained me left and my cash handling errors stopped. I moved between branches and no more errors. I just thought I'd got better at the job.

Then there was a big reveal. The girl was found to have ordered a lot of cheque books to be sent to herself and her husband (they'd moved house by the time this came out) and they'd written hundreds of cheques which had bounced. Two and two were put together and it became obvious that she'd been stealing out of my till.

All of this disappeared from view. To be honest, I'd forgotten about it. Until I looked in my employee file one day. There was a note in there from the branch manager which showed that the bank thought I'd been stealing! It had never been removed when the fraud came to light, so I'd moved from branch to branch, with this judgement hanging over my head.

Ironically, it had never stopped anyone from letting me have the keys to the safe!

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Reported

In a past job two chaps 'up the corridor' printed out false invoices for fictitious companies so money could go into their back accounts - this was when we sent cheques out by post, long before computers became so commonplace.

At the very same firm the boss who interviewed me for the job was subsequently found to be 'cooking the books'. One department, three people, what are the chances? But then security systems weren't so sophisticated then.