Chapter 1
We sometimes have close calls in business and don’t even know it is happening, and at that time it’s a good idea to check your drawers. Desk drawers that is!
Have you ever heard someone say this? “What’s that? It smells like something died in there!”
When you were a little kid, your parents probably said something like that as they grabbed you by your diaper and checked your drawers. You probably don’t remember. It’s pretty embarrassing, isn’t it? For some reason this seems to automatically invoke a sense of humor in people, I know I can’t help but thinking it’s funny myself sometimes when somebody says that I had a real close call in my car. I felt like I needed to stop and check my drawers after a such a close call. This can and has probably happened to you in business too!
During the last 30 years I have had several unfortunate occasions to terminate someone in an office position or management position who worked from a desk. Most of these times I found that when I went to that person’s desk and started sorting through their desk drawers after they left, I usually found some incriminating items.
My first occasion with this situation was when I terminated an office manager when she left, I went to her desk and began to take everything out of the drawer’s one at a time to make sure that we didn’t have something left undone that she was in the middle of doing. As I began to go through the desk drawers, I started seeing checks that were made out to our company for bills that were owed. On this particular occasion that I’m thinking of. (Over the years this has happened more than once) I found a total of approximately $8000 in checks that had not been deposited to our account. That was back in 1990 and that is probably equal to $16,000 in today’s money. Can you imagine finding $16,000 of your money in someone’s desk drawer?
On another occasion, I came to one of our automotive shops, and the manager had not made his bank deposit for the day. It was our policy to always have the deposit in the bank by noon. So, when I asked the manager if he had made his deposit he said no, I said go ahead and take it to the bank and I will watch the store for you while you’re gone. Now we used bundles of numbered invoices that were hand written for each work order. While he was gone, I began to look through the drawers and through the stack of work that he had for that day. I noticed that he had two stacks with different sequences of serial numbers working at the same time in his pile of daily invoices. As I looked through the desk drawers, I found an open package. The bottom drawer had a separate bundle of invoices that he had managed to secretly stash and he would pull one out and use it on a cash customer and at the end of the day. The ones he would have pulled from the secret stash he could deduct that cash from the days business, put it in his pocket, and no one would know that he had done that business and kept the money.
While he was gone, I looked through the stack of the day’s business and noticed that about every third invoice was from the secret stash. When he got back from the bank, I confronted him about this and he confessed that he had been stealing. Ironically, this manager had taken our sales at that store from about $1400 a day to over $2000 a day. So, we would’ve never suspected that he was stealing. I will talk about that later in another chapter. “Sometimes your top performers are thieves”
On another occasion, way back when I was a young assistant manager at a Fast-Food restaurant, I noticed an employee who was constantly moving her cash register back and forth on the counter. I would look up and see her scooting it forward and backwards. So, out of curiosity, while she was on break, I went up and I pushed it forward to see what was underneath, and she had pencil writing of numbers, dollar amounts that she was ringing up as no sales on the cash register and then giving the food out to the customers. Before the end of the shift, she would make sure to deduct out of her drawer the amount of money that she had rang up as no sales and pocket it.
So the next day I just watched her, and when she was getting ready to go on break. I told her we were going to check her cash drawer. We pulled the cash drawer and took her and the cash drawer in the back with her tape from the register, and sure enough it was 15 or $20 over what was supposed to be in there, I can’t remember the amount but it matched exactly with the amount of no sales on her register tape.
The most serious example was a daycare that I was managing a turnaround for the owner. I explained to him the principle behind checking desk drawers. Now they had been losing money for years and I suggested that we get in to the Director’s desk when she was gone for the day. She left on a Friday at 3:00 so we started going through her desk and one of the very first papers I pulled out was a letter from the group insurance carrier. The letter stated that as of midnight (that very Friday night) they were cancelling coverage for non-payment of premiums. I asked the owner ” do the employee’s pay any of the premium? ” He replied that they do pay 50% so then I explained that if coverage lapsed, he would be personally responsible for any premiums and each deduction from their paychecks could be a separate charge of wire fraud. He could lose everything and go to jail. So, we contacted the agent who contacted the carrier on behalf of the client. The carrier agreed to keep the coverage in force till Monday midnight based on us writing a check to pay the bill, copy and scan the check with number to them immediately. Then FedEx the check for early delivery Monday am. As long as they got the check he would be covered. So we did exactly that and literally saved the owner and his business.
What I’m trying to tell you is that on multiple occasions more than these three, I have found money receipts, invoices, checks, and even incriminating notes and letters that were a source of problems within our operation. I strongly suggest that you on occasion find an opportunity to go through the desk drawers in your
offices to make sure that nothing improper is going on. You will want to check with your Human Resource manager or Attorney as to the proper way to go about this. To avoid any appearance of impropriety, or invasion of privacy.
I also suggest that you have in your employee policy manual a section that explains that the desks and drawers and all the contents that are contained therein are subject to inspection at any time by management.
The phrase “Check your drawers” may sound odd or even comical to you, but I assure you that it is a good practice to do this for the benefit of your company!