The level of granularity where you track details does matter. You said it yourself. It’s where:
And for the purposes of illustrating the point about profit, it’s meaningless whether the actual cost of an item priced at $70 was $5 or $0.50, regardless of whether that cost was accounted for, or not.
Going with another post of mine, let’s assume that the thief was only able to make the purchase of the item after the theft, such that an additional, non-limited edition item was sold. The profit the store makes on the sale offsets the loss from the theft. For the purpose of making that point, does it matter if the net loss is $35, $30.50, or $30? You’re going to arrive at the same conclusion that you shouldn’t use the item price to calculate loss, whichever cost you pick.
If it makes anyone feel better Retail Accounting and Finance geeks have been batting this around for years and there is considerable disagreement among otherwise sensible people about the “right” answer, including amounts over $100 that are NOT simply logical errors.
It is a matter of both the scope of what you measure (knock-on effects) and what you assume about the fungibility and availability of inventory, including the question of whether the thief might have made that purchase if she hadn’t stolen the money.
The inventory/sales figures will look fine (assuming no other interesting events).
The person balancing the till will note the shortfall.
The store security will have a very boring afternoon scanning the video of the transactions until they get to the recording of the theft.
The image of the thief will be turned over to the relevant authorities and cross-referenced with other images, these days with some assistance from facial recognition AI’s.
Next time the thief enters the store there will be a non-zero chance he will be identified, cuffed, and perp-marched out the door by the local police. At his trial the video will be presented as evidence of wrong-doing.
This may cost the store additional money. It may cost the thief years of his life behind bars.
Or maybe he’ll get away with it, and the store is still out $100.
Unless the bill stolen was counterfeit, then both the store and the theif are out $100.
We do not fire cashiers due to just one such incident of theft. They might get a lecture about paying more attention, but at least where I work that’s not an insta-fire.
I know. My comment was more related to how the question is ambiguous. It is possible to come up with many possible situations. I’ll amend my situation to include that the cashier has had multiple warnings and had given a “one more strike and your out” reprimand. (and it was all in fun)
I have found 3 counterfeit hundreds since last Christmas, a fake $50, and a bogus $10. The Gas Station convenience store associated with the Main Store has us beat, though, lots more attempts to pass funny money there for whatever reason.
On the “trophy wall” in the cash office we have not one but three fake $1 (one of the has a “for motion picture use only” banner above George that was entirely missed by the cashier. Because who looks at ones, right?)
In other words, this is not entirely an idle exercise for me…
Many posters have gotten the overall picture right that the question is deliberately ambiguous to promote this sort of argument. It hinges on the different meanings of “lost” and for many of these meanings, we don’t have enough information to figure it out.
The shopkeep opens up his store and finds $30 in cash missing and an item that he had priced for $70 missing. There is the ambiguity. He had priced it at $70. We don’t know his cost. We don’t know how quickly that item sells, if it can be easily reordered so that their is no “lost volume” problem.
We don’t know if we are talking about a tax loss, a loss for accounting purposes, or a moral loss. We don’t know if we are talking an out of pocket loss or a loss in future profits (or as noted, if there is a loss in future profits). Would that item listed at $70 have never sold because it was ridiculously overpriced?
Many, many questions remain for the different rabbit holes you go down in trying to determine what the author means by “lost.”
I refuse your invitation to get into the weeds and debate whether the thief “purchased” the item.
The bottom line is that the net loss to the store is $30 plus the item. The ambiguity is how you value the item.
I don’t see any importance to the intermediate steps the thief takes before ending his wrongful trek through the store. It doesn’t matter if he takes the $100, walks to the bank converts it to Euros or buys gold and then hides the gold in the store, “buys” and then “returns” an item, etc.
The measure of loss is the net result of his wrongfulness. What did the owner have before the wrongful acts that is now missing due to the acts of the thief? He had $30 in cash and the item.
Stated differently, if the result would be treated one way if the thief simply stole $30 and stole the item, I don’t see why the result should be treated a different way simply because the thief accomplished the exact same thing by moving items from here to there and back.
Why is this relevant? The question asks the amount of the loss not the security or bookkeeping practices of the store or its ability to be able to discern the loss.