The directors of a wholesale business regularly received reports that company products were being stolen, both for personal use and onward sale. The business had a clear rule on this: on discovery of fraud or theft, the culprit would be immediately dismissed.

Our investigation eventually centred on the manager of the Stores and Dispatch Department. We believed that at the end of the working day he regularly took company goods home with him. This was not an unreasonable suspicion because of the access he had to the stores. Moreover, it seemed from our investigation that the administrative system in operation in the stores made theft rather easy.

The Stores and Dispatch Department manager was also involved in the Staff Sales Service. At the beginning of the week staff placed their order with another department. At the end of the week they could collect their purchases from him. He was very popular with his colleagues because he regularly had special offers. Unfortunately the directors knew nothing about these, and his service to the staff was less noble than it at first might appear. His generosity had an ulterior motive. His special offers were along the lines of ‘pay for one, get four’ but it could not be ascertained that he ever collected any money at all for these goods. The employees who got boxes of groceries free of charge could not complain if they saw him taking goods for his own use.

Of course, the manager could not control his staff either. If they followed his example and helped themselves to company goods he was helpless to do anything about it.

Eventually there arose a strange situation. Employees who sometimes, via the Staff Sales Service, bought more than one box of an article but declined to receive ‘gifts’ were so worried that they limited themselves to purchasing one box per article to ensure that they were not associated with the receivers of ‘special offers’. 

Of course some relatives of employees were interested in the groceries. NFF meaning ‘nice for family’ and ‘nice for nothing’ became a catchphrase in the company. The manager went so far that on a Saturday morning just before Christmas he visited the stores with his brother. Together they loaded a large number of boxes of various products into the manager’s vehicle and drove to his house. There his brother transferred his half into his own car and took them home. 

The manager spent a ‘Merry Christmas’ but there was no question of ‘Happy New Year’ for him. When our investigators finally caught up with him he admitted that for years he had been taking goods for himself, his family and his friends, and that the ‘special offers’ for the staff had indeed been intended to keep them quiet. Now that our investigation had brought this to an end tongues were loosened. The manager was dismissed. We hoped that not only he but also the other employees who had been helping themselves had learned their lesson. But not all. We have come across one or two of them in other similar cases since!

| Prevention Guide | Volume 6 | No: 5 | article 4 |

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