How To Quietly Catch A Thief

We’re getting the customers to get on the business side of things. You, the customer, can catch a thief without access to the video surveillance, balancing the cash drawer or actually seeing the cashier put the money in her pocket.

In gas stations, grocery stores, coffee shops and wherever else there is a cash register, there is an under paid person waiting to ring up your purchases.

The customer usually is NOT cheated by getting their credit card information stolen or getting short changed, though this does happen. The biggest form of theft? Short-ringing.

Short-ringing involves stealing from the company, not the customer.

This form of theft is easily caught by the business if the managers are balancing the drawers properly and watching their video surveillance tapes. As a former convenience store manager I must admit I failed to thoroughly check my employees’ performances all of the time. Managers are very busy and tend to trust long-time employees. This may cause a manager to not check surveillence on certain employees’ shifts or check the cash system records. Sometimes, the manager does not know about “short-ringing”, in which case, the employee can steal a lot of money over a long period of time before an upper manager starts to investigate shortages.

In the interest of not feeding the thieves out there with information on how to steal from their company, I will not explain the process of short-ringing. But I WILL tell you how to spot a theif. If you witness any of the following behaviors, please let a manager of the store or notify the store’s corporate offices by phone call or email.

Here’s what customers can do to thwart the thieving cashier’s “get-rich quick” attempts by “short-ringing”.

Short-ringing can only be done during a CASH transaction. They can’t do it with credit cards.

1. Make sure that ALL of your items you just purchased are on the receipt.
2. Look at the TOTAL and make sure that is the amount you paid.
3. Look for “VOID” on the receipt, anywhere, next to items that you actually purchased and are taking out of the store.
4. If the cashier DENIES you a receipt
5. If the cashier needs to “re-scan” your items in order to give you a receipt and your receipt then shows “Void” or “Void All Items” or “Voided Ticket”.

If you experience any of these above situations, please contact the company…this person is a thief. A great help to the company's loss prevention team or store owner is adding a description of what YOU were wearing, about what time of day and some items you purchased to your correspondence. It makes it easier to find the transaction on tape.

Employee theft translates into higher retail prices at this store to compensate for losses if this person is not caught sooner than later.

Customer theft is rarely a cause for a business to raise their retail prices. There just isn't enough of it.

All you need to do is look at the receipt. It is in your best interest to keep these cashiers accountable, especially if you frequent that location. I would not advise confronting the cashier about “short-ringing”. If they are morally able to steal, who knows what else they are capable of.

Thank you for your participation. In this economic crisis, we will see more of this “short-ringing”. Please do your part to help our local economies and businessess by catching those theives!