"Dave Smith" > wrote in message
...
> On 2016-08-07 9:19 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
>
>> Don't know. I've heard a lot of horror stories from people working
>> retail that it would not surprise me. Some are run by incompetent
>> managers afraid they will lose their own jobs if someone breaks a dumb
>> rule. As bad a sweat shops in India.
>
>
> My sister in law has run a number of women's clothing store and was fired
> from her previous job. At first they accused her of stealing but then it
> changed to failure to follow store policies. The odd thing was that the
> owner got one of her staff to rat her out. That staff member was a friend
> of our neighbour and was a complete idiot. SIL's bigges mistake while
> running that store was probably failing to fire the woman, but she thought
> she was a friend of ours, and she felt sorry for her. The rat's reward was
> that they gave her a promotion and transfer. Aside from having to drive 50
> miles to the new store, she likely failed.
>
> SiL had never got along with her regional supervisor and thought the woman
> was afraid that she was after her job. That was ridiculous because SiL had
> been offered the job and turned it down. She had been the highest paid
> manager in the chain and also had the highest sales. Apparently they
> wanted to get rid of her and replace her with someone cheaper.

My first retail job was at Jafco. It was a catalog store. I was surprised
when I got hired to see two department managers that I'd gone to high school
with. They were my age. Not sure what happened to the one but the other is
now quite well off and owns a seafood condiment company. He still lives in
the city where I grew up.

That company would tend to keep people until the day before they were due
for a raise. We'd be laid off and told that we'd be the first they'd call
back if they needed help. That was a big lie. We were never called back.
They did seem to keep the management, perhaps because they didn't want to
have to retrain people or some such thing.

It was also very easy at least in those days to set people up. Someone in
the cash office had been stealing from my till. I caught on to the fact that
something was wrong and went to management first and we were able to catch
her red handed. But... More often than not, I saw people fired who very
likely were set up just like this. One was a *** man who worked there part
time. He also worked with my brother. I believe they got rid of him because
he was ***. I overheard two of the cash office employees snickering about
it. They'd been stealing money from his till to make him look like he'd been
stealing.

When I was in high school, my friend worked at a donut shop. The cash
registers in those days were not sophisticated and the one there didn't even
have a lock on it. Long story short there, a regular customer requested
something special and he knew that my friend would have to go to the back
room to get it. While he was back there, the guy stole money from the
register. My friend was fired for stealing. He protested but got nowhere at
first. But within the week, the culprit confessed to the theft.

When I was working at the golf course, my coworker stole about $2,000 from
my till. We had no camera set up so not sure how she did it although we did
have a very wonky safe. It could sometimes take a very long time for the
money to go down inside. It had some sort of mechanism like a wheel that fed
them bag of money inside but it was discovered that sometimes the bags got
hung up and didn't fully go inside. But on that day I had also left my bag
of money behind the counter for perhaps a minute while I ran to get my boss
for a phone call. I felt that leaving the money behind the counter was safer
than taking it outside.

At any rate, they had already been watching her like a hawk because she had
been stealing money right and left. They knew I didn't take it but I still
had to be written up for it and that made me feel horrible.