You’re the one who made the assertion, not I, and so you should provide the proof. I’ve worked for plenty of corporations and in my experience stuff like this is covered backwards and forwards. Have you ever worked for a large corporation? A government job does not count.
Here is what we can reasonably assume:
The policy exists. Employees cannot accept gifts.
The employee accepted a gift in clear violation of the policy.
The employee honestly did not know that she violated the policy.
The manager let her off the hook with a verbal warning but made her give up the gift.
Here is what makes the most sense to me:
Human Resources, experts on the actual law in cases like these, followed the policy on what to do in this situation. I don’t know what that is but donating it to charity, refunding the customer’s charge card, somehow finding the actual customer are probably all options but that’s just speculation on my part.
Again, you have stated what you believe to be an objective fact that something illegal took place. Prove it. I can’t prove a negative.
Given that the policy exists, what should the manager have done? They can’t let her keep it and have her remain an employee. What is to be done in a case like this? Keep in mind that the manager can’t change corporate policy and certainly can’t make an exception for the employee and expect to keep their job if they are found out. What would you do if you were the manager?
I absolutely agree that there can be, should be, almost certainly is a policy against accepting gifts. What I struggle to believe is that the formal remedy is to turn the gift over. The rule is against accepting them–the solution is to return them to the giver, or to destroy them.
I never said it was illegal. That was lawbuff. I said it was a problem, and was making the distinction between “not allowed to accept gift” (absolutely normal)) and “gifts are turned over to the company” (which seems highly unlikely to me). You are the one making the assertion that some shift manager at Target can’t possibly be doing anything but following corporate policy and that his actions are proof of what policy is. I am somewhat more cynical about that: I think it’s entirely possible that a shift manager could also have an imperfect understanding of corporate policy.
For whatever it’s worth, hereis an article that seems to suggest that in CA, at least, you can’t confiscate tips. You can prohibit them, discipline employees for taking them, but you can’t confiscate them.
Several reasons have been stated -
There’s the implication that it could be a bribe to “look the other way”.
There’s the fear that failure to tip results in crappy service.
Cashiers should not be pocketing ANYTHING at the till.
Once a “tipping culture” starts, then people start to resent it. It could drive away customers.
There’s the major tax headache for accounting for tips by the employer.
If you start allowing them to take a handful of cash, put some in the till and the rest in their pocket - or even make change between the till and their wallet - then how do you ensure that cash is being handled correctly?
“The video shows you putting bills in your wallet”
“I was just making change; you just can’t tell the denominations going back and forth”.
Many people hate tips, and do it only not to look cheap. Find a comment thread about tipping the hotel maid and how many people hate this new idea; something I found out about on the internet and thoroughly detest. The “proper” tip has jumped from 10% to 15% and now people are pushing 20% for restaurants; do you think the manager has not reduced wages to compensate? Many states have a lower minimum wage for tipping jobs.
McDonalds takes pride too in “no tips” - what the cash register says is all you have to pay. People like that. Work with any group of waitresses and waiters, and see how much bitching tips cause. Some get a huge amount, some get nothing for working their butts off. It’s not fair for them either. (Groups tend to undertip… “WHAT??! A tip of $40 just because the meal for 8 was over $200? That’s way too much! Here, have $10.” Cheapskates - but it happens.)
A friend of mine from New Zealand relates the story of a waitress tossing the tip back at some American tourists and saying “we don’t want that filthy habit here…” They know once it becomes common, then even the poorer locals will be expected to pay too.
The extreme is in Egypt - many people make most of their living wage from tips, a guy working as a tour guide, or a bellhop at a ritzy tourist hotel, makes more in a day than a teacher does in a month. So the teachers expect “tips” to do their job. And the doctors. and the police…
As for the OP case -
[ul]
[li]She accepted a gift when she was not supposed to; whether she knew or not, it violates terms of employment. Not knowingly violating the policy mitigates the guilt, but does not allow her to violate policy without repercussion.[/li][li]They can either fire her since she violated policy, or ask her to voluntarily give up the gift and keep her job, or give her a stern talking to but let her keep the card, or ask her to give up the card and fire her anyway. (Looks like they picked number two) [/li][li]If they take the card, she has to give it up voluntarily. Many states have rules about tips, and often one is that the employer cannot take them. [/li][li]If they take it, then I hope it is destroyed, donated to a cause, or something. If the manager takes and uses it, that is theft. He is far more at fault than her.[/li][li]If they destroy the card or bury it in a drawer, the money reverts to the issuer (Target?) as expired card balances do. [/li]
[/ul]
Again, have you ever worked for a large corporation? I have and I have seen management manuals. My company of a thousand or so people has a crazily extensive manual for what to do in all kinds of cases where an employee breaks policy. It can’t imagine that a massive corporation like Target doesn’t. My experience is analogous situations is what guides my opinion.
Again, what would you have done if you were the manager and the gifter couldn’t be located? Do you think a policy of “let the employee keep the gift just this once” is a good idea? Should they just have fired her?
I understand that she should use the money, but the fact is she isn’t a waitress. Some jobs require that you not accept gifts/tips, and that’s just how it is. It’s fair to say that if I could add up every gift I’ve had to turn down in the last 25 years I could buy a small house, or a really nice condo.
Another factor is resentment between employees. A hundred dollars is a significant gift. If one random cashier gets a hundred dollars and everyone else gets nothing, there’s going to be bad blood.
She might want to consider that any action to get the gift card back is an admission to breaking the rules. Maybe right now it’s up in the air as to whether she “accepted” anything; maybe the guy forced it in her hand and walked out. But if she tries to get it back, it’s clear that she accepted it, because it’s not her property to get back unless she broke the rules by accepting it.
Exactly - you should see the kvetching in a restaurant… certain “ethnic groups” are known for not tipping as well. Large groups tend to tip poorly. The fussiest most demanding customers usually turn out to be the worst tippers. Young ladies (especially with tight and low cut shirts) get better tips when given male customers. etc, etc. When left up to the customers, the compensation is horribly uneven. The manager I knew for a large franchise restaurant would often “comp out” things like the drinks so the amount could be added to the tip to make things more even.
It’s not unlike bargaining for a car. Why do you think the “here’s the fixed price” car sales have had a moderate success? There’s a decent part of the population who HATE that sort of negotiating; they’ve been told all there lives Scrooge is evil, being cheap and stingy is a vice, haggling over money is uncultured and in poor taste - and then they have to practice the opposite and are intensely uncomfortable. Many people like a fixed, posted price. Heck, companies like Sears made their start on the premise “the posted price is what you pay”, as opposed to haggling.
Have you ever worked retail? I have, in company stores, and the very first line of management can be pretty poorly trained.
I would have given her the option of throwing it away, I suppose. Or I would have let her keep it, but written her up with whatever language they use for major just-short-of-firing offenses. Or I would have followed the manual, but I really doubt the manual says “take the tip from the cashier”.
Home Depot’s policy was that employees could not accept tips or gifts of any kind. If an employee was in a position that they could not refuse the gift it was specified they must turn it over to the store and it would be donated to a charitable cause. The policy didn’t specify which charity. In cases I was involved in we let the employees decide which charity.
Yes the employee could argue it was given to her and hers to keep. She would then be choosing to keep a hundred dollar gift certificate over her job.
So they’re not allowed to accept a gift from another human being (gift and tip are not mutually exclusive) but they are allowed to bug me about taking the phone survey at the bottom of the receipt?
They already have self-scan in retail stores - grocery stores, Home Depot, you name it.
The point is, it was not a gift person to person - it was a gift to whoever was doing a cashier job. She got the gift because of where she was, not who she was. Well intentioned - but misguided.
You seem not to get how things work. They are not allowed to accept gifts and they are required to bug you about the phone survey. They are well aware that it annoys people and would probably be thrilled not to have to do it.
My company has a gift policy. I think most large companies do. Our policy is that we cannot accept a gift or gifts that exceed $50.00 in value per year as an individual and $250.00 a year as a department.
While this rule is barely enforced as a department, it is watched fairly closely on the individual employees.
For example, people can bring donuts, candy or cookies, pizza, flowers, pens, etc., for the department and that is not really totaled up because it goes to everyone.
But, if individuals were to receive, I dunno, a basket of soaps/lotions, a tip or gift card- stuff like that- the individual would be expected to either keep a running total of the value and self regulate and/or decline the offer.
I’m aware of the policy because we all got in trouble many years ago when a vendor offered to take us to a music show. The offer involved riding a bus to the show, a boxed meal on the bus, and the concert. Some of us went on the trip and management was waiting the next day to reprimand the violators because teh value of the show was greater than $50.00. Thankfully, no one got punished. Management assumed we were not knowledgeable about the policy since so many people attended and so have included a review of this policy in our annual classes. (My company has a mandatory class every year to make sure everyone is up-to-date on skills/policies. It’s a pretty good company.)
International comparison alert. In Britain the policies you sign up to when you take a job form your ‘contract of employment’. With the stress on ‘contract’. If this had happened here, assuming a typical contract of employment, the employee could not successfully argue the gift was given to her and was hers to keep, because she would have already signed a contract agreeing that gifts received from customers are the company’s. So she would have the choice of (a) no job and no tip, (b) a job and no tip. Depending on how egregiously she had broken company policy, the company would have the same choice and the binding vote (subject to the full weight of employee protection laws).
I agree it might be a better world if the reverse were true. It might, however, just build a world in which folks regularly trade personal gifts to cashiers for “accidental” scanning errors where, say, everything but the big screen TV gets scanned at check-out.
The retailer’s policies are not there to support a better world scenario in any case, they are there to support a more profitable business transaction.