It all started spiralling, ever downward, towards the abyss when SEARS elminated the Replenishment Crew. Also I will never forget the day when we had an A.M. store meeting and our Store Manager blamed store losses at the time on employee theft. I also will never forget being followed by a lurking Op. Manger one day when I went to fetch the cashier bags that were stored in a remote corner of the second floor warehouse. Pfft SEARS is just a toilet bowl remnant that needs to be flushed... forever.
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Heck, the old District Manager would demand Markdowns for stuff he wanted to buy for himself and not bat an eye .
We had a store manager who stayed in his office most of the time, When he displayed any type of energy on the job , you knew either a store visit or a full timer getting fired were going to happen.
Sadly, it was more the latter most of the time. We took more pride in pursuing his hand picked staff for major policy violations and outright theft, until it was figured out that the Store Manager was totally incompetent and was finally marched out himself .
@inc - The same at my store. The really significant thefts have been perpetrated by a store manager, an operations manager, a sales manager and an asset protection lead. In most of these cases the total amount of money and/or merchandise taken was never determined. They just stopped adding it up when they reached an amount that warranted prosecution and/or a defendable/legal termination. Even at that point the losses were substantial.
Management usually was good for one or two good busts a year in the store I worked . One of them was overheard bragging to his buddies that he could spot an operating camera by its red indicator light being either on or off.
True to form, the red bulb was painted over with black paint in one area of the store he was suspected of visiting early in the morning .A long career came screeching to a halt .
Years ago we had an AP manager stealing at our store by creating false returns on big ticket items. I happened to "catch" her but had to involve a manager to catch her and make it stick. They got an Asset protection manager from a neighboring store to come over and strategically place cameras which finally nailed her. They estimated she stole hundreds of thousands over the years. The worst part was she was using other people's associate numbers and some of them got fired. I had the pleasure of seeing her walked out of the store in handcuffs after some lady bigwig AP person from Chicago came in and confronted her with their evidence. AP changed alot of procedures after the bust and I got a measly $125 gift card.
In my store it has been the management stealing throughout the years. 1 SGM, 2 Ops and 1 CAC Lead caught on camera stealing. Cashiers sometimes get fired for stealing points but the others stole racks of clothes and hundreds of dollars over time.
The ops manager must've had a lot of time on his or her hands to be concerned with you taking empty cash bags to the cac. But yeah they make it a point to make it known that they don't trust us. I'm fine with simply keeping an eye on everything but it's a morale killer to treat us like common criminals.