stealing

[mtatum4496]

I guess when I first started reading this thread, I was thinking in terms of paper clips and pens that seem to find their way from office to home. But I see we are talking more about consciously nabbing items that would actually be sold to make money for the company. Having never worked in retail, I have no point of reference for that sort of thing. But I do know that it is very easy to slip a pen into your pocket and have it show up at home - whether one is an admin, a manager, or an owner. I don't know anyone who gets upset if they arrive at home and find they have a pen from the office in their pocket. It seems we have become de-sensitized to that sort of thing.

[vicki2]

Yes, we have and a lot of offices probably do look the other way because it is so minor, but I read some stats once about what it costs corporations yearly in these little thefts ....it's millions!

[mtatum4496]

Yes, no doubt it does. I think we have a group mentaility that tells us that a twenty cent pen is not going to break the company, so even if we did not mean to carry it home, we don't go to any real effort to take it back to work the next day. But the point is that if you work at a company where a thousand people happen to take a pen home that day, the lot of you have cost the company $200.00 that day. If that happens once a month, you end up costing the company $2,400.00 a year, just on this one little item.

[vicki2]

Exactly. I was once talking to a restauranteur about his yearly losses due to theft. He's owned a number of large restaurants and often counsels people who want to open their first one. The biggest loss, oddly enough or so I thought, was in silverware and cutlery. Customers take steak knives and waiters tend to put things in their pockets.

[mtatum4496]

You know, that reminds me of someone I knew years ago, who had a collection of salt and pepper shakers she had "collected" from various restaurants. None of them were all that remarkable in design, just plain old shakers. But she thought nothing of sticking a pair she liked into her purse.

[jemoelle]

People don't realize that taking a towel from a hotel or salt and pepper shakers from a restaraunt may seem small to them ...but they aren't the only ones doing it. This so called small theft which no one will miss ends up us paying more for a hotel room and dinner because they need to raise the cost to buy more of the "little" things

[vicki2]

I can remember people who had huge collections of ash trays from every hotel, club, restaurant and bar they'd ever been in. I understood some of the unusual ones, but it also caused places to stop investing in unusual designs and stick to plain old no name ones. How many of those did you need? LOL.

[mtatum4496]

That is true. Why have customized ash trays lying around for people to take for free, when you can put generic ones in the rooms and common areas and feature the ones embossed with the hotel name in the gift shop? Of course, most people would probably pass on starting a collection if they had to pay for these small items.

[vicki2]

Exactly! It's why some companies buy cheap writing pens too ...no more Bics even ...just those blue ball points that you lose the cap from the first time you use it lol.

[mtatum4496]

LOL yeah, the ones you can pick up in a pack of twelve at the local dollar store. At least it cuts the loss when they start to sprout legs and walk out of the building.