Example of Unethical Opportunistic Behavior
I worked Riot Fest last weekend. Riot Fest is a multi-day music festival that features music genres including rock, punk, alternative rock and hip hop. It first started in Chicago, Il in 2005 and has now expanded to Denver and Toronto.
My job was to take care of all of the cash for the beer tent that me and my friend Gus, were assigned to. There were around 15-20 bartenders taking the drink orders and money but all of the money (besides tips) had to end up in our teller boxes. This job was one of the most fast-paced jobs I had ever worked, and having thousands of dollars in my teller box also added to the stress of not wanting to mess up. After the first day, I learned the ropes and began to create a system that worked.
The second day, a nice kid named Juan joined our tent because it was getting to be too much for only two tellers (my friend Gus and I). He was a nice kid but there was just something off about him. After a long day's work, the chaos finally died down and we went to count up our money. We had to match the amount of beer we sold to the amount of money that was in our tills. Gus and I both came out even but Juan came out $63 over. We felt bad because it was his first day so we helped him count his money just to double check. It ended up still being $63 over.
When the runner (man who collects the money) came around to collect our tills, he wrote down exactly how much money that was in our tills and compared it to the number beers that were sold. When he went around to Juan, I heard the runner say "Perfect, right on the money." I was confused, I thought that he had been over. Not really caring and having other things to do before I left, I ignored it and went on with my closing duties.
Later on, Gus and I left and started to make our way back to the car. On our walk, Juan caught up to us and began to converse about the day of work. After awhile of talking and getting to know us a little better, Juan then asks us if we want to see something. As you might've guessed, he pulled the $63 out of his pocket and went on to criticizing the system of Riot Fest and how easy it is to give the wrong change and come out with some extra cash. Gus and I both looked at each other with the same look on our face, the look of distrust for this person who we barely even know.
I don't know why, but that really bugged me. We were trusted by the company that hired us to take care of our tills and make sure that even if we were over or under, to be trusting and write exactly how much our drawer was off by and because of our honesty, we would not suffer any consequences. We were already getting paid $600 for two days of working, which I thought was a really good gig. But it was not about the money, it was more about that this one person was going against the system when someone else who was actually trusting could've done the job right. This job is a really good gig, which makes it really hard to get, so the fact that Juan took advantage of the company by taking the $63 extra dollars really did not sit well with me.
Let me know what you guys think? Would you take the money and risk losing your job making $600 just for a measly $63? I personally think it is not worth it, but maybe some people, like Juan, think that it's worth the risk and internal guilt.
First a comment about titling your posts. There is a Post Title bar above the box for your post. You don't seem to be using it. I encourage you to do so in the future.
ReplyDeleteOn the substance of what you wrote - cash transactions are ripe for the type of malfeasance you describe, precisely because there is no record made at the time of the transaction. So if you are a baby sitter or mow lawns as a side business, do you report that income to the IRS? Of course we don't know that answer to that with any precision, but one can guess that it happens a fair amount.
More generally, employee theft can be a significant problem for certain organizations, whether that is cash theft or merchandize theft.
In the particular case you describe, if I'm understanding what happened was giving change back that was less than what was due. One might guess that some of this would result in lower tips, so the net was probably lower than the $63. On the risk versus the reward, ignoring the ethics of the situation, it depends on how slick this guy was in concealing what he was doing. I would also note that petty crime is endemic to urban life. If you grow up in a poor neighborhood, you probably see a fair amount of that happening. Imitating what you see is normal. But as I tried to indicate above, white collar crime also happens, probably more than we care to admit.
On a humorous front, there is a funny scam in Superman III where Richard Pryor funnels the roundoff from everyone's paycheck into his account and makes millions that way. It otherwise wasn't a great movie, but I liked that one.
I watched the scam in Superman III, did not have the patience to see the entire movie but actually found the link on YouTube, seemed a little far fetched but it was definitely cool. Kind of reminds me of the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street," where Jordan Belford sells 1000s of penny stocks to suckers who have absolutely no idea that they are being scammed, makes it worse that was actually a true story.
DeleteAnd yeah you're right, it all comes down to how sneaky this person was when committing this small crime. He actually did not even have to be that sneaky because the cash tips were all being made directly from the customers while the money in the drawers was being compared against the inventory that was left. I did not think it was a good system because if even one drink was not accounted for, the numbers would be completely off, and in doing that, Juan could get away with taking the extra $63 because the people counting the money at the end of the night would probably just shrug it off as human error.