When I was working minimum wage at a gas station many eons ago, we would have ‘2 for $x’ specials where x is less than 2 times the individual price of whatever item.
People would often not want to buy 2, but I would ring up 2 in the till for the special price and charge them for the single. Then when the next person did the same, I would charge them for the other single.
So over the day, I would sell 10 energy drinks at say $4, but ring them up as 5 ‘2 for $6’ specials. This would put the till up by $10, and then I would use that $10 to have a free meal.
Anyone else do anything like that?
🤯
The other job perk I created was when I was suddenly made redundant and the whole business went under the day before payday, I left with $30 worth of tools in my pocket and a mug.
Uhhhhh honey what you’re describing is called “theft”. Also known as “fraud” if you want a different name.
But to answer your question, I usually shit during working hours, so I get paid to shit. It’s a great feeling.
Is it?? I get it might be bending the rules slightly, but I can hardly believe it counts as theft
It’s a very valid reason to fire you. You’ll most likely get caught when the inventory starts to be way off.
It won’t be off though. Every bottle is accounted for. I sold 10 bottles for $40 but they are added to the till as 10 bottles for $30 at the special price.
Why would the inventory be off?
Maybe OP didn’t explain it well, but I would imagine that:
- This only happened with people who paid cash
- If we imagine that every person in line has one drink and is paying with cash, OP would be ringing up 2 drinks for every other customer.
For the purposes of inventory, 1 drink per person is the same as 2 for every other person.
Yeah, the $2 for X deal is a gimmic to increase sales. It’s the company saying “I am willing to sell these cheaper if it gives me an extra sale.” But by applying that sale price to customers it didn’t apply to, essentially you just stole a dollar from your employer every time you sold an energy drink.
I’m personally pretty forgiving of something this petty when done by someone making an unlivable wage, but it’s still theft.
Those deals are usually at the manufacturer-level, so the employer would likely be getting the same amount of money. The manufacturer would still be selling the same amount of the product, but would get less than if the items were rang up correctly.
So, for me at least, I give even less of a shit. Oh no, OP cost Nestle or whomever literally nothing but non-existent “opportunity cost”… how will they ever recover?
It might be more obvious if you increase the volume.
Immagine that your employer has instructed you to sell 1 bottle for $3, but you can sell a whole pallet containing 500 bottles for $1000 (coming out at $2 per bottle). So you ring up the whole pallet and pay it off over the next few days by adding $2 to the cash register and keep $1 for each sale. Over those days, you have made one single sale of a pallet, while pocketing $500.
The work hours which was meant for you to generate sales of $3 bottles has been reduced to effectively selling $2 bottles, while the remaining expected value ended in your pocket.
As others have said, I don’t really care about big corporations losing out on some money, but you are 100% stealing when you reduce the expected sales value and pocket the difference during your work hours.
Per https://solink.com/resources/top-types-employee-theft/ it’s basically “Skimming”:
This popular POS employee theft scam occurs when an employee charges a customer full price but takes a little cash out of the total for themselves. This may result in telltale cash register imbalances, or, it can be more complex, like using coupon codes on a customer’s purchase while still charging them full price and then pocketing the difference.
Your implementation sounds pretty close to the coupon version.
Are your bosses ever going to notice? Unlikely. And if they did they’d probably fire you at worst, rather than press charges.
Now, that said, if your manager or employee handbook or any other source of authority at your job says it’s okay, then it is (excepting, of course, if they explicitly tell you it isn’t) - but that’s because it’s a benefit your employer has given you rather than one you’ve taken.
The shop is getting the correct amount of money, nobody loses, nobody cares.
I guarantee some busybody middle manager would care, especially if they wanted to fire someone and were trying to find a reason.
@PeachMan wasn’t saying this because they have some ethical problem with what OP is doing, they are saying this because this is technically what OP is doing, and could be held liable for if it was ever brought to the wrong persons attention.
God, this is genius. When I worked at my hometown grocery store, I would take the prepackaged deli salads as payment for not taking my legally required lunch and eating over my 15 minute break. We’d also have to destroy any product that was damaged, so on Sunday’s at the slowest point in the morning, we’d “find” damaged cinnamon roll dough and cook them in the pizza oven.
When I worked at Aldi, I’d “forget” to pay for the coffee creamer when we needed more. At the peak of the pandemic, we very happily used the store purchase perk for our groceries, even though they were meant for break time meals.
Someone I worked with did something similar. This was close to 25 years ago, at a popular drive thru corporate coffee chain. I took no part in these shenanigans myself, but I got a cut each night we worked together just for looking away as it happened.
Basically, her whole hustle revolved around the fact that the cash register at the drive thru window had been broken and not working for ages. She had memorized the prices for every single item sold there. So when someone ordered at the drive thru, she would tally up their whole order in her head, but then go around to the main counter’s register and ring the entire order up as just a small coffee. She’d then take their money, give them the change that was due, but put the difference into the tip cup.
This went on for about a month until I just couldn’t stand the overall work environment. It’s still to this day the only service industry “job” I’ve ever had. I hated it so much that even all that extra free money couldn’t keep me there.
Hating that one month so much is also the reason I tip service workers as best I can, still to this day.
If you need to rely on tips to survive, I’m fully in support of this tactic.
