Is it Stealing?

My rule is:

Tell them they gave you too much change.

a) they take it back with a thank you

b) they tell me I am wrong, and I KEEP IT.


Hey, I try, although I will not argue with them about it.
 
I too consider it stealing. I worked at a dollar store at one time. If you were over or short you would be watched and if it continued fired. Even if it was accidental. I had an incident where a man came in and somehow confused me so bad I ended up giving him an extra 50.00. There is a word for that but I can not remember. I have worked with the public all my life and I had never had that happen before or scince than. I felt horrible. A few weeks before this I had seen some money folded in half on the floor. Went and picked it up and it was a 100.00 bill. I turned it in to my manager. It sat in the safe for 2 weeks and noone came and got it. So one of the other managers said we will take the 50.00 out of that. The district manager said no. It belonged to the store scince noone claimed it. I got in trouble for both incidents. They did deposit the 100.00 into their account.
 
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That was just wrong!
smack.gif

I will go back and give the change back. I look at it this way-if they charged me too much, I would want them to make it right, so why shouldn't I do the same? I bought a bottle of peppermint extract a few weeks ago at Kroger. I had my 6-year-old daughter with me and she was carrying it. She put it in her pocket and didn't find it until we got home. I wasn't driving 10 miles back to the store right then (I didn't have time to go anyway!), but the next time I went in and took a bottle to the cashier, told him I needed to pay for it and then they needed to put it back on the shelf. He was confused-even when I tried to explain what had happened. Another cashier finally stepped in and handled it. It was an honest mistake that we made right-and my daughter learned a valuable lesson.
 
I find that cashiers are always amazed when I return money to them, always.

I'm surprised at making cashiers pay a shortage themselves; actually I don't think this is legal. When I was young (many, many years ago) I lost job because my shortages were enough to exceed their limit; evidently people didn't always return too much change then, either. The subject of my paying shortages did not come up, and even back then I was under the impression they could not do this.
 
I don't cheat and I don't steal.

Habit, I generally always count my change. I can usually tell you within a
dollar or so what I've got in my pocket.

If a cashier makes a mistake, I really try to catch it. If it isn't mine, I don't want it.
 
I was working the register at our feed store one Saturday and one of our older cantankerous Hispanic customers comes in to get chicken feed. Our receipts were hand written and not computer generated since our register was from 1919. Anyway, I start to write out his receipt in my left hand since I'm left handed and he starts to whack my hand and tells me "Stop that! Stop that!" I said " Stop what!?!!" He replies: "Your writting with your devils hand!" He then hands me a $100 and I'm so flustered I shorted changed him $68. He looks at me, then at my husband and then at me and says" What's this? I didn't get my money back!" I said "Well, that's what you get for hitting my hand!!" I got him the change and I was always Meja after that.
 
No ifs and or buts, It's stealing. She can try to convince herself it's not but it is. I wonder what other dishonest things she does.


It's happened to me, I just point it out and give it back. We all make mistakes. Such is life.

Rancher
 
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A lot of businesses will write up cashiers for being short, so I always give it back. It's not the best job, but I don't have to make it worse for them. Having worked in retail before, I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me, so I don't do that to them. When you're busy and flustered, it's easy to make a simple mistake.
 
'they tell me I'm wrong, and I keep it'.

Also stealing. Actually even if they INSIST they are right, I go over it with them. Their mistake is no reason for me to keep it. People nearly always take a moment to see their error, so whatever they first say in response, I could care less, what matters is is the calculation correct or not - it's very, very simple. It always takes a moment to carefully go over the numbers and identify the error.

It is stealing - out of the store's pocket and the cashier's hide, and perhaps for the cashier, it can mean losing far, far more than the amount of the change.

In general, short comes out of the chashier's pay.

And in some places, a cashier will get fired if he closes short.

Say in her time at that store, she is allowed three short cashouts before she gets fired.

Say she's already made two errors. Just honest errors. Mistakes.

Say this is her first. If she can't explain it, she may not only get fired, she could get prosecuted.

Your friend's 'not stealing' could lose the cashier his/her job or more.

And in this market, she won't get another job for a long time. She could lose her house, everything.

I would like to emphasize that that practice is not typical of people who gross near 100K annually.

I made within a few k of that amount, and I would return a ball of lint or a penny, if it wasn't mine.

Big corporation, mom and pop store, kid's lemonade stand, I don't care. Employees of the big corporations usually have their feet held to the fire far quicker than the small businesses.

And I would do the same when I was making 80k, 60k, 50k, 20k, or 10k a year, or nothing at all. So would most of the people I know, janitor to CEO.

Your friend is dishonest. It's very simple.

I could never do that to anyone. My father and mother would roll over in their graves if I ever let anyone give me even a penny that I wasn't owed.

The money belongs to the store. But whose hide it will come out of - that's the cashier.
 
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