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?

I've heard of such a scam occuring on more than one occasion. With our theatre chain there are internal auditors who check and re-check every void and/or refund up against the receipts and files at the close of the business day. This is to obviously stop such theft from happening, but it does not always work. What I found happening was a group of assistants were making the safe "correct." Since money at the theatre was never handled by just one or two people per shift (a security flaw I've pointed out on more than one occasion) there sometimes tends to be a closing discrepancy from the start/mid-shift safe counts. This could be from manager error while giving out change or just theft by the management personnel. Anyhow, to make the safe even at the end of the night, they would get ahold of ticket stubs and refund the money back into the safe. One way of doing this would be to enter an auditorium and search for stubs while another is to simply ask for the stubs back while the patrons are exiting the theatre. Someone is getting the money and it isn't the theatre. It's an unfortunate situation... one that I don't care to hear about because I simply don't want to believe people actually do this. I've notified my superior and its up to them as to which direction to take it... if they're not bothered, then I will go on doing my own business of being honest and leave the dishonest to get what they deserve.
 

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.

When dealing with money, you cannot trust anyone. Period. It is a hard lesson, but one most of us learn it. I don't mean to be harsh, but if this much money walked away, you have been very lax in your cash control.

 

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.

Ack. I'm glad I don't do that job anymore.

 

The theft rings last for at least a year, as well. Often the employees stealing are school age, they tell their friends, and those friends apply for work later, hoping to skim off a few bucks. It pays to have at least one employee who knows the cliques at the local school.

 

Oh, well, keep your enemies closer!

 

------------------

 

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.

And the list goes on and on . . .
 

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

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

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.

Naturally, she was fired on the spot!
 

One of the Box Office manageresses (we have two) had taken to borrowing money from the till for lunch, and paying it back when she returned from lunch having got money out of the bank whilst at lunch.
Because she was doing this, it encouraged the other Box Office staff to do the same.

At a three monthly cash audit of the Box Office by our external auditors, the petty cash float was found to be down, as was the float for the Box Office.

As the Box office was understaffed, the excuse was used that there were a lot of ticket refunds unaccounted for for a three week run of a Pantomime at a local community theatre that our Cinema printed tickets for, and also provided a City Centre & Telephone Box Office for.

The auditors weren't happy with this, and wanted all sales to be reconciled before their next visit. They also suggested that Petty Cash be handled in future by my department (Building Operations) as we were the major users of it. I think at this time it was suspected that someone in the Box Office was stealing.

Anyway, about a month before the next audit was due, two of the Box Office assistants informally reported to our administrator that they thought money was going missing from the till. Refunds had been attributed to their shift, and yet they had not made any refunds.
All Box Office staff were reminded of the forthcoming audit, and told informally that if they had borrowed any money from the till in the past, that they were not to do so in future.

Anyway, I'm screening the last night of Almondovar's 'All about my Mother' to about a third full house on a Sunday night, finish the screening, break the film down, and start two days off. When I return on the Wednesday afternoon I am asked by our Administrator if there was a problem with the Film on the Sunday - not that I know of I reply, and tell her that some of the staff were in watching that screening, and had complimented it in the Centre's Bar.
It turns out that all of the tickets for this screening had been refunded, as a result of technical difficulties with the film and projection equipment - but that this was done on the following Tuesday, when the Box Office Manageress was working.
Now we have a computerised box office system, so were able to trace who the tickets had allegedly been refunded to, after a couple of calls to customers asking if they had enjoyed the film, and would they be interested in joining our frequent attender scheme 'Screensaver' we discovered that it appeared that no customer had received a refund, which suggested that it had to be a member of staff.
As it appeared to be the Box Office Manageress, she was called into the office, and suspended on full pay whilst further investigations continued.
Two weeks later she was due to be interviewed by the investigating panel, but was too ill to attend - she had had a breakdown.
It was three months before she was fit to be questioned by the panel - and then unable to remember her actions. She was given a written warning, and permitted to return to work, but not at our premises - she was to be redeployed elsewhere in the organisation, but no other department would take her, so she resigned.

The auditors would not report how much they thought had gone astray, and in view of the persons breakdown decided that it would not be appropriate at this late stage to prosecute.
 

When I was managing, if someone put "studying to be a police officer" on a job application, red rockets and bells went off in my mind, and that person was usually steered to a non-cash job until I could get a better feel for their character.

At one theatre where we had a back door entrance problem, we found from an undercover operative that the guard from the security company was the ringleader of the group of thieves. The owner of the security company was not pleased. I won't go into the details of the time that I strongly suspected an undercover operative of stealing...

 

Paul Goulet