Employee Theft
ray a
5,703 Posts
Well, it's happening to use twice now within a 1 year time period. An ee ripping us off big time. This guy has been taking solder bars out of the facility and selling to a local scrap metal dealer. The investigating deputy just called me to say they are confiscating over 1300lbs of solder from the dealer. This should be an easy case. We obtained a copy of the receipt from the dealer with the ee's signature and showed him a copy of his badge picture which he quickly identified. This is well above the felony threshold. Yes, we will terminate today as soon as the T's are dotted and I's are crossed.
Comments
Right now, our community is overrun with AC thefts. Thieves are stealing them for the copper coils and then selling them to scrap dealers. Can you imagine coming home one day and your air conditioner is gone? In GA, that is not a good thing, especially in July.
I think it will only get worse. We did not give raises this year, yet gas is up, milk is up, everything is more expensive. Oh yeah, there's no OT either. Our morale really stinks. I'm supposed to plan an employee appreciation day this fall, but I'm having a hard time spending so much money on a big party, when we can't even give a raise.
"HR Strange But True!
Office Thefts: The Rich Get Richer
You probably aren't shocked that 20% of workers steal office supplies, as a new Spherion® Workplace Snapshot Survey reports, but you may be shocked by some of the other findings. How about this one: Employees earning more than $75,000 per year steal more than those making less than $35,000!
The most items most likely to be pilfered are pens and pencils, rulers, paper, file folders, and Post-Its®.
Reasons given for the workplace thievery included "because I needed it" (41%), "because the boss/manager said it was OK to do it" (32%), and the ever-popular "the company will never miss it" (15%).
Younger workers (18 to 25) were more than twice as likely to steal (25%) than workers 65 and over (9%). Older workers were also most likely to feel it is wrong to take company items for personal use, with 83% expressing that sentiment.
And financial need doesn't seem to play a part. As mentioned, 23% of respondents earning more than $75,000 a year reported taking things, while only 11% of those earning $15,000 to $34,000 annually have stolen from their workplace.
Source: Spherion"
So, ray, how much are YOU stealing? x;-)
I steal time by hanging out with people like you on this forum.
I happen to consider time spent on the Forum worthwhile, even the HR de har har time. I'd argue that the company gains more from my participation than it loses.
He had been seen loading boxes of solder bars into a rolling garbage bin the week before and when questioned seemed to have a plausible answer, but the more the group leader thought about it, it seemed strange so he reported it to higher-ups. There is a scrap metal dealer in town so we sent a supervisor down to ask them if anyone had sold them any bars of solder. They showed our supervisor several buckets of bars and gave him a copy of the receipt with the ee's signature on it. We showed the scrap metal guy the ee's badge picture and he ID'd him as the seller. We called the sheriff's department, which is right next door to us, and it was all downhill from there for this ex-ee. He has been charged with a felony since it involved $6500 worth of metal.
Now anyone who takes boxes to the trash will be eyeballed because of this guy.
I worked in a hotel in my past life, with a restaurant on the 5th floor. The restaurant had a clear view of the back parking lot, housekeeping building, and dumpster cage. Behind housekeeping or the dumpsters were popular spots for thieving employees to stash stuff until it could be taken home later. We caught people a few times.
Our Chief Maintenance Engineer quickly learned that if he had "stuff" that needed to go to the dump, he could save the trip by just placing it next to the dumpsters. It was gone within hours.
Which isn't to say that Ray shouldn't tell us how much he's stealing.
I am sure he has boxes of HR forms around his house. He completes them for entertainment, in the same way others do crosswords or Sudoku puzzles. He's proud that he only does them in pen, not pencil.