Boss wants me to take blame for stolen items

Dear Mrs Macaulay,

I am employed at a company as a cashier. The retail shop that I have responsibility for is relatively small, but at times we will have anywhere between one to 15 persons within the shop at any given time. From time to time when doing our stock reconciliation we will find variances. Please keep in mind that individuals enter the shop and make their selections and then take them to the cashier. I am now being informed by management that I am to be held financially responsible for these variances. They have asked me to sign a document to the effect that if they deem that procedures were not followed, then they will be withdrawing same from my salary. I have refused to sign such a document because the items being sold are not within my direct control and have outside influence, and I don’t believe that I should be charged if a guest steals from the establishment.

The set-up of the shop gives visitors access to the items and they are able to take them up without hindrance from point A to point B. I seek your guidance in whatever way you can assist.

Let me start be congratulating you for refusing to sign the document prepared for you by which they would be able to deduct from your salary the costs of items stolen by customers on the grounds that you did not follow procedures. I say this because from what you stated, this was not a condition which existed at the time you were offered the employment position as cashier and which you accepted, which put your employment in place. They seem now to be seeking to impose this condition on you after the fact, and you were absolutely correct to refuse to sign the document. By your refusal you gave them no grounds for dismissal and any attempt by them to dismiss you because you refused to sign would be wrongful.

In fact, they were trying to vary your contract of employment and you have the right to refuse any such variation in the course of your employment. You also have the additional reason for rightly refusing to sign, that is that the conditions which occasion the thefts were not set up by you, and are not and cannot be under your control. The set-up you describe, with the customers having direct access to the items on sale and the responsibility to bring them over to you to pay for them, cannot create in you the responsibility to watch them throughout — in essence policing what each customer is about. That would be an impossible requirement and burden.

You would, as cashier, be responsible for mistakes you make in your substantive job — the actual process of cashiering — for example, mis-entries of prices for items.

The management of the shop ought, with the input of the staff, to reconsider the way they have set up the process of the selling of their items as safely as can be achieved.

It has been said that no system is ‘thief-proof”, but efforts should be made to make it as difficult as they can for thieves to get away with their thievery. That responsibility is not yours, it is the management’s, and they cannot pass that on to you. Stick to your decision, but you can offer to work with them and the other staff to devise a better system.

Remember, if you do not stick to your decision and sign the document or any of its kind, then you would have agreed with the variation of your employment contract and that would be an additional term of your employment. So, my dear, stand fast.

Be the cashier, that is what you were employed to do, and that is what you owe your employer to discharge. You were not employed to perform any security services in addition and, if you were, something would suffer as a result. I must repeat that from the description of the establishment and its set-up, there is no way that you can be an efficient cashier and an efficient ‘security guard’ tracking the items on sale at all times.

Just continue doing an efficient job as a cashier, and I wish you all the best of luck in the future. Keep thinking as clearly as you did and requiring respect for your human rights from others.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.DISCLAIMER:The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.

DISCLAIMER:

The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.