I had to fire an employee for theft. This employee was a trusted and valued member of the team and had been with us since we opened. I had made this person an Assistant Manager and trusted this person with the theatre while I was gone. I would have trusted this person with my car, house and even my money.

What was the scam?

The theatre's computerized ticketing system is very simple but it does have all the proper accounting and tracking features. Someone told me that this employee made a refund to the computer and then pocketed the refund. So I pulled all the transaction journals and started the audit. I noticed that most refunds were for one or two tickets and that there was the refund ticket in the bag like always. But on the shifts this Assistant Manager worked there were always a block of refunds like 6 or 10 to one film that didn’t correspond to any block of tickets sold. Also the refunded tickets weren’t in the bag. These refunds were done sometimes hours after that particular show had ended. If you added up the amount of tickets sold plus the refunded tickets, there were more than were in the bag.

On shifts where this Assistant Manager didn’t work, there were never any missing refunds. Also, there weren’t any blocks of refunds that didn’t correspond to a block of tickets punched out. And all refunds were done shortly after the tickets were punched out.

The total amount stolen for the first 15 days of the month is $450, which is roughly equal to this person’s hourly wages for the same period. I have not audited any farther back than this month. I’m not sure I want to know. If this has been going on since this person has been an Assistant Manager, then the theatre could be missing thousands of dollars.

It was sad and emotionally painful to have to fire someone that we had considered part of the family. But I did it swiftly as possible. This person was in last night verifying a print, while I was doing the audit. After the film ended at around 2 AM, I called this person in to the office, told them of the problem, I asked for an explanation and then took this person’s keys and told this person that they were fired. This person looked so pathetic, and claimed that I was mistaken that that this person had never ripped us off. And even begged for their job back if I discovered that I was wrong.

Now, I will check refunds after each rack of shows. And I will verify that the number of refunds matches the number on the hourly report for each day. Now the I have to cover a considerable number of shifts that this employee ran. So I am back on a 7-day workweek for the foreseeable future.

Stealing from the till and concession scams are the oldest tricks in the book. Have any of you had similar experiences? What are some of the scams you have heard of? Have you ever had to fire anyone like this? Have you ever called the cops on an employee that was stealing?

The ticketing system I designed does not let you refund a ticket that is outside of the ticket series sold for the day, and the person doing the refunding has to log in with their password. Whether the logs are audited or not is up to the owner. You might want to consider upgrading your software to mine, and following my suggested security procedures. Usually, if there is one bad apple in a barrel, you'll find others. I won't rant why my system is better, because I don't think it appropriate to the forum, but it is a better tool for curtailing theft than most other systems. Email me atTheOgre@TheatreSupport.com if you want to know more about why it is superior.

Have I had similar situations? Sure. I've fired more cashiers, assistants, and managers than I care to recall. By following paperwork properly, I was usually able to nip most theft before it got beyond a few bucks. I won't post exact methods here, but by following figures and employee logs most theft can even be caught remotely.

One of the sadder times I had firing an assistant took place a number of years ago. This person was taking change money from the safe at odd hours, as well as little bits of cash from various cashiers, who were adament that they were not "short". The projectionist and I narrowed the field of suspects down, and when the assistant came into the booth and hid some money in their street clothes, the projectionist found it and we had the confrontation.

The person totally broke down when confronted with the irrefuatble evidence. As this assistant was the offspring of a cop from a neighboring town, I suggested use of the phone in my office to contact our police station and make a clean breast of it. The person did, got a light sentence and had to pay restitution, and then moved on with life to more honest pursuits. Most kids today would laugh at doing this, plead not-guilty and try to beat the rap.

Absolutely. In my experience, they will teach each other how to do it. For a good amount of time, I was the one called in to "clean up a mess" for the DM and have caught groups from 2 to 20 embezzling. From cashiers all the way up to general managers.

Another was a Concessionist, who was a math genius and would give customers acurate totals, but would only ring in about a quarter of the merchandise, and pocket the rest. Again caught on film.

At the same theatre, there was a long running scam where with a few exceptions only student tickets were printed up, but the appropriate monies were collected. I am poroud to say that as an usher I busted the scam when a group of 4 older patrons handed me student tickets.

For example, my theatre hires for around $6.00 an hour for floor positions. Compared to most theatres, thats pretty good... However, the sporting goods store next to us hires at $7.50... The Arbys down the street hires at $9.00. With those differences, it becomes very hard to get employees, and we end up, frequently, hiring people that the other places wouldn't...

For example, at the end of last summer wewere short on concessionists.. Since we were not getting many good applicants, the concession manager basically started hiring anyone with a pulse... Concession shortages went as high at 10% of sales.

Now, we have stopped hiring everyone with a pulse (and are extremely short staffed)... Concession shortages are around one third of one percent now.. Concession lines on a Saturday night, however, frequently have a 30 minitue wait.. (and per caps are off as much as 40 cents).

They didn't believe in such a small townt that such a thing could happen....(I'm sure as time goes, they will learn).

I feel the issue is a good part of being a CASH business...as credit cards become more common place it will be harder to "pocket" the money.

In the 80s, the company I worked for had contests for the patrons on their popcorn cups/tubs...there was a pull tab and if you won you got some passes or concessions or something...the real goal behind it was not customer good-will (god forbid!) but to get the customers in on the act of damaging the popcorn containers so they couldn't be resold. I mean, why pay your employees to do such a thing when customers will do it for you! ;-)

Steve

She was caught red-handed with her fingers in the cash drawer. Basically, what she did was ring up the sale, put the money in the drawer, and when nobody was looking (so she thought) she voided the sale and took the money out of the drawer and put it in her pocket.

Because of her resume, we were shocked! But actually, if you ask yourself, "What is the best way to beat the system", you will probably find the answer is to study the system to see how it works.