I live in the Kansas City Mo. area and have worked in the C-store/gas station business most of my life, in fact I served as a Assistant Manager with 2 different companies and later became a Manager with one of those gas stations, now just a part time clerk. My boss informed me yesterday that due to a “honest mistake” that resulted in my drawer being 27.00 short that I had to pay her in cash Monday morning for the shortage!!! Is it legal for my manager to do this??? And if not how should I approach the situation???
Just an FYI: This is in the wrong forum. I’ve notified the moderators to move it to the appropriate one.
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Welcome to the SDMB, smartmoney.
This was posted in our About This Message Board forum, which is for questions about the message board itself. Since this is seeking advice and opinions, it belongs in our In My Humble Opinion forum.
Moving thread from ATMB to IMHO.
If an overage or an underage is divisible evenly by 9, that means someone has transposed a number, 63 instead of 36 for example. Maybe the error is traceable and fixable without it having to come out of your pocket. I don’t know about the legality fro state to star of making employees personally responsible for cash register mistakes but it’s a shitty thing to do to a long term, honest employee.
Does your contract mention cash handling/till balancing at all?
Pay her, and then steal $27 worth of merchandise.
Without showing you any documentation she really just said you have to hand her $27.00 in cash? No paper work, no receipts involved, just gimme the money? I’d insist on an invoice and a receipt to make sure she hasn’t committed a dishonest mistake by shaking down an employee before I paid anything, regardless of whether it was legal to collect. Of course, you might get fired, but shitty part time jobs are pretty easy to find.
I’m with kbear, when things don’t add up and are off by a number divisible by 9, it’s almost always a transposed number. Ask her to check for this (if there’s any way of doing so.)
And I don’t know about the legality, but the policy of requiring the person in charge of the cash register to make up any shortages is a sensible one as a disincentive to theft.
Will your next paycheck be at least $27 more than the minimum wage for the hours you’ll have worked in that period?
But really, this is a practical question, not a legal question. Is continuing to be employed worth more or less than $27 to you? Because this is really just a mugging. You hand over the cash or you lose your job.
You were a manager once, too. Shouldn’t you already know what is legal for a manager to do?
How about approaching the situation the same way that you would have done, when you were the boss.
Tell her that when you worked at XYZ company, the policy was such and such, and you are surprised that she is following different policies. In fact, back at XYZ company, the policy was spelled out in the manager’s guidebook issued from the national corporate headquarters.
As a matter of practicality, you’re probably still going to have to pay the 27 bucks, but at least you’ll have shown a little backbone and maybe next time she’ll be nicer.
And demand a receipt for the $27.
If she hesitates, politely explain to her that at XYZ company,they cautioned their managers against taking cash from employees without a receipt, because the amount had to be recorded on the balance sheet as a debit in the column labeled “Cash short and over”.
Besides which, it’s fucking illegal.
also—your username is brilliantly ironic. 
It has always been my understanding that it is not legal for an employer to do this. Your best option is to call your local labor board and ask them.
Pending actual information regarding the law:
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Stall on handing over the money. “Sorry, boss. I don’t have $27 right now. I’m a little short until Wednesday/payday.”
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Get documentation of the error. “by the way, can I see the settle-up sheet for that day?” (Or whatever documentation applies) Like others said, it’s probably a transcription error.
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Check the handbook for the policy on this. “Hey boss, the handbook says…”
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If that doesn’t work or you don’t have a handbook with this information, do not hesitate to call Corporate. That’s what they’re there for. “Hello, Corporate? I just wanted to check on your policy…” BUT…consider letting your boss know that you’re going to check with corporate. She may relent when she hears that. Phrase it “innocently,” like “okay, well, I’m going to check in with corporate to get a clarification of the policy, okay?” Don’t make like you’re going over her head or trying to rat her out.
ETA - back when I was in retail management, register discrepancies were almost always errors/glitches on corporate’s side. It was common enough that nobody even worried about it until the store and corporate had a chance to go over the numbers on the phone. So maybe the error was actually on corporate’s side.
An HR department once asked me a question that they shouldn’t have pre-hiring based on a result of a drug test. (It turned up positive, but was a legit prescription prescribed by my doctor. They asked what condition was being treated.) I was really apologetic and said “I’m not sure I’m supposed to answer that. Do you mind if I check in with my lawyer and get back to you?” The person said they’d call me right back, and then apologized and told me I didn’t have to answer. I was hired, no problem. I choose to assume the question was an honest mistake on their part.
Baloney. If the company has agreed to pay her $x per hour, it owes her $x per hour. It doesn’t matter what the minimum wage is.
I agree with this. It might not be worth it to fight it, but you know your situation best.
Same idea as when resturants try to shake down food servers for the bill when someone “dines and dashes” without paying. Screw that.
The IRS uses several criteria to determine the difference between an employee and a contractor.
Contractors generally…
work when they feel like it,
get paid on commission,
provide their own tools,
are unsupervised, and
are responsible for their own mistakes
Employees generally…
work at a specific time,
get paid by the hour,
are provided with tools,
are supervised, and
are not responsible for their own mistakes
Taken individually, none of these factors are definitive. But the IRS looks at the overall picture in deciding whether a particular person should be taxed as an employee or as a contractor. If your employer insists on holding you responsible for your mistakes, then they essentially treating you the same way they treat contractors. Then (some day) the IRS might look at the situation and say “Since you treat your contractors the same way you treat your employees, we’re ruling that your “contractors” are actually employees and therefore you haven’t been filling out the proper tax forms all these years and now we insist that you go back and use the proper forms and oh by the way you now owe us $14,372.18 in additional taxes, plus penalties and interest.”
You might mention this fact to the employer. If they treat you like a contractor, they are running a huge risk that the IRS might reclassify all their contractors as employees.
Also, check with your state’s department of labor and industry. Here in Oregon, if you punish an employee by taking money from them and that causes their total pay for that period to fall below minimum wage, you have to make up the difference. If I have an employee making minimum wage and I punish her by taking $27 away, I’m required to pay her an extra $27 in her paycheck to bring it up to minimum. YMMV.
The practice of docking pay seems to be illegal. However, I’m having a hard time finding a reputable cite. Most are web pages like “8 Workplace Rights You Didn’t Know you Had” type stuff.
The company policy should be explicitly stated in either the employee handbook or training document(s). I work in retail and generally, if your till shortage/underage is under $X you get a written warning, and after several (I think three) warnings in a certain period you can be terminated. If you have a shortage of more than $X you can be terminated immediately, but I’m not aware of any policy that requires the cashier to cough up the difference.
I suppose, if the employee discovered they were > $X short before the manager did, and wanted to save their job, they could make up the difference out of their own pocket. But that’s not the policy and no manager would demand it (they would just fire you).
Not true, at least at the federal level, as long as the employee makes minimum wage after docking. There may be local or state laws or company policies against it, though.
I’ve worked in restaurants, and I have worked in a car wash. At both types of jobs, they made it perfectly clear to me that it was illegal to deduct the cost of broken dishes/merchandise and/or food. Generally the course of action is 1) fix the problem, 2) nothing else. In the case of monetary shortages, the only course of action the manager could take is to write someone up (if the culprit is known).
I personally have, on at least one occasion, handed out too much change and told the manager. The only thing that ever happened was chastising followed by jokes at my expense. Once, at a restaurant where I was assigned my own personal till, I came up short (even after accounting for tips). I was offered the opportunity to pay the difference but it was VERY under the table. I took the write up and never heard anything about it again.
As an aside: Turns out, some other employee was checking out tickets using my employee number, making it look like I accepted payment, and pocketing the money as her own. She got fired (for unrelated but similar issues) shortly later.
When I was 16 and had my first job, I got taken in by a short-change artist, who got away with $60. When I offered to pay back the money to my boss, he told me that legally, that’s not permitted. So if I were you, I wouldn’t do so, at least until I found out if it were kosher.
I cannot speak to what is legal, but it is hinky based on my personal experience. You should not be asked to make up a shortage out of your own pocket. If they think you are dishonest, then they need to fire you. If they think its an honest mistake, then they need to suck it up.
This sound more like a dishonest manager rather than company policy. I assume the manager is not also the owner? Then I would speak the manager’s boss. Call them today. If the manager’s boss confirms that you are to make it up out of your own pocket…then quit.