Good morning… What can I get for you?
Welcome back. As promised, today I’m going to relay my experience about the partner(s) that tried to steal 40K from a store using only a tip jar.
Now you’re all familiar with the XBR process. Exceptional activity on the register is flagged and reported to a field specialist who then follows up on the matter. In short… they shop the store.
Well, it seems that a pair of partners (one former, one current) came up with a plan to funnel Starbucks funds through the tip jar. I kind of laundering scheme. Partner “A” would take the money from customers who gave exact change AND customers who gave just enough to “throw the rest in the jar”, and give them what they ordered. The only catch was she was not ringing in the sales. Soon she realized that the jar filled up quite quickly. She then enlisted the help of former partner “B”, who would come in, buy a coffee and switch out the full jar with one that had a lot less money in it. They did this for months… sucking the labor, the sales and partner tips right out of the store.
The manager finally caught on and started to wonder why Partner A always had a till that was less than the others. It took so long to discover it because the partner gradually did it and the manager was struggling with labor and hours so hard they didn’t have time to look at the root cause. So now, P&AP sends a person out to shop the register few times and BINGO! You have your thief.
I just happened to be delivering the 15lbs of Espresso they needed when I witnessed the “cuffing of the partner”. Not a word spoken… the store was silent. The partners that worked there had no idea… they were speechless… that is, until they figured out that Partner A was had been stealing their tips as well as store sales.
The judge made Partner A pay back all of the estimated 40K they stole. I’m sure they’re still working on it.
Now I’m sure that Partner A thought that stealing from “The Man” was acceptable and never thought twice of the pain other partners experienced by not getting the hours they deserved or needed OR the tips they deserved. You see… Starbucks stores are small families with all of the characteristics therein.
Hope you enjoyed… We’ll see you tomorrow for your usual.
Pat Nerr…
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3 users responded in this post
Wow. Incredible.
How’d they get the $40,000 figure?
Were you a manger when that happened?
Not sure… I guess they asked how long they’d been doing it and estimated it based on the daily take. They probably used some post-getting caught sales numbers too.
Yes… I was a peer of that manager. Funny part was that the partner caught subbed in my store the week before… we didn’t give her a till.
That’s very interesting. My wife is a police officer and she just read this and was speechless as well.
She wasn’t as surprised at it as I was, she was shocked that it took so long to get caught.
Just curious, what does “shop the store” refer to?
I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
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