Reply #84: "Theft" accounts for $31.5bn in losses; how much are CEOs paid?

[Tansy_Gold]

Retail managers? How much are sit-on-their-asses stockholders paid? hedge fund managers? mortgage brokers?

Let me make this clear from the outset: I don't condone theft. But I also consider, marxist that I am, the obscene profits of corporations, their high-level executives, and the firms that trade in stock of those corporations to be thieves as well.

But they aren't under surveillance. They aren't scrutinized. They aren't threatened with loss of a subsistence-wage job if they're caught STEALING a grape from the produce department.

The Wal-Mart store I worked at in the late 90s serves as an example, and just one out of many I could cite. The store manager -- I won't mention his name even though I'd love to -- routinely sent "associates" out to the parking lot to pick up empty packages, especially toys during the holidays, to be brought back in and recorded as "stolen" to boost store sales and his bonus. As a cashier, I caught several shoplifters, but they weren't stopped or held for the police or anything else, because the "proof" of their theft could be used to improve store profits and the manager's bonus. The attitude of the "associates" shifted from honesty to turning a blind eye. It wasn't that we "didn't want to be bothered." It was that we knew it wouldn't do any good. How did we know? Because we tried. I personally spoke with the district manager twice; he did nothing.

Understand, IdaBriggs, that these were for the most part very honest people. The DIShonesty of management changed them. We all knew the little black balls in the ceiling held cameras that were watching us all the time, and stealing so much as a pack of gum was grounds for firing. We watched as one of us was arrested -- yes, the cops called in to arrest her -- because she put a pair of shoes that had gone on sale in the back room so she could PAY FOR THEM later. This is against Wal-Mart policy: customers/guests always get first crack at merchandise, so an employee who puts something back for him/herself is a thief. This particular employee had not STOLEN anything from Wal-Mart, unless you want to count the 10% discount she'd have gotten on the sale, which a regular retail customer would have had to pay.

What management could do in terms of stealing was never going to show up on the surveillance cameras. They could mark items down that they wanted to buy, and they did. Oh, sometimes customers bought everything and the dept. managers never got to take advantage of their own markdowns, but far more often, they did. I remember one incident in particular: The dept mgr wanted an entertainment center, a cheap piece of crap like everything Wal-Mart sells, but still, he wanted it. So he waited a week or so, and while there were still some in stock he marked the price down 20%. Then he had a friend come in and buy one, at the reduced price, and two or three days later, the friend returned it as "damaged." There was nothing whatsoever wrong with it. After the return had been processed and the store wrote off the "loss," the dept mgr "bought" the "damaged" entertainment center for about 1/3 the original retail price.

I was the cashier who handled both the original sale and the return. The dept mgr was an acquaintance, and I knew his friend as well.

One of the cashiers, a young woman I worked with frequently, was routinely stealing cash. The rest of us cashiers all knew it, to the point that when we went on break we would pointedly ask that she not cover for us because our cash drawers would always come up short if she'd been in them. She stayed out of trouble by not stealing when she was the only person in a drawer, but the shortages when she shared with someone else were just too obvious. But we had reached the point where we didn't care. And we wouldn't report her because it had become our little form of revenge against management and their undetectable thievery.

Eventually she got caught. Management detected the pattern and kept her on a register where the surveillance cameras kept a close eye on her, and they videotaped her putting a ten dollar bill in her pocket. Unlike the associate in the shoe department who was publicly humiliated, the cashier was fired privately after her shift.

We knew many of the various ways customers stole, and we didn't care, because management didn't. They wouldn't go after shoplifters because it would make them look bad. But they had no compunction about going after employees.

I don't condone theft, but I despise this attitude of "we have to spy on them or they'll STEAL FROM US." It's a "guilty until caught" mentality. It presumes that everyone, at one time or another, is going to steal and the bosses have to be there to catch the culprit in the inevitable act, and never mind the huge thefts, the Enronian/WorldComian/GlobalCrossingian/Tyconian megathefts, the "I make $500 million a year as a hedge fund manager and I shouldn't have to pay taxes on it just because" thefts from the public purse.

I've worked for more than one boss who was so incompetent he literally couldn't do the job he was hired to do. In two blatant cases, they lied about their qualifications to get the job, then after being hired they manipulated all the "little people" into doing the work for them. In one other case, he was just a lazy sack of shit who bragged EVEN AFTER HE WAS FINALLY FIRED about how he collected a fat paycheck and did nothing. No surveillance camera is going to spot that kind of theft.

I don't doubt, IdaBriggs, that you've seen lots of theft and you're appalled at the pathetic excuses the thieves give when they're caught. But there are one fucking hell of a lot of "thieves" whose faces and sticky fingers never show up on the surveillance tapes, who never get caught, and who never have to make pathetic excuses or any other kind.

Over the past 30 years, I've lost at least four excellent jobs because I made the mistake of complaining about a boss who was robbing the company through incompetence, laziness, dishonesty, you name it. I've been self-employed since my husband's death two years ago, but rising costs of groceries, gas, utilities, taxes, etc., are pushing me back into the job market. I won't look for a "career" because I don't feel like being taken advantage of by the corporations or their minions in "management." And if I'm kept under surveillance like any other wage slave, I damn sure won't "rat" on my fellows. I may not cheer them on, but I won't protect the corporations either.


Tansy Gold