Volunteer Lock Keepers

[alan_fincher]

Interesting - we used to have them oop north (Redcar Safeway had them what must be 10 years ago).

 

Strangely they have never re-appeared....

I do wonder if the chains prepared to use them, and the stores they are put in, is something to do with the perceived honesty of the customers ?

 

Perhaps Waitrose, for example, where hand scanning is commonplace, attracts people who are perceived as less likely to be "tea leaves" ?

 

I really don't know the logic.

 

Because Tesco was wasting so much money on those hopeless "at checkout" ones, I thought perhaps they would never be prepared to go "hand held". But Amersham store now has them - again perhaps one of the more "up market" locations ?

[canaldrifter]

Interesting - we used to have them oop north (Redcar Safeway had them what must be 10 years ago).

 

Strangely they have never re-appeared....

 

You mean there is electricity north of York?

 

Tone

[Guest]

There is no way you can trust customers to scan everything. Some will try and defraud others, like me, will be completely incompetent and make mistakes.

Sue

 

I can confess to the following (in the interests of research of course)

 

I once self-scanned a four pack of something (Can't recall what they were) at our local Sainsbury's self checkout - I immediately noticed the scanner had only captured the bar code on the side of the single item (it shows the price and number of items as you scan)

 

Woha I thought, will I get 4 but only pay for 1

 

answer - place in bag 'Unexpected item in baggage area' - it's clever in how it knows the weight of the item you've scanned does not match.

 

I can think of ways if so inclined to defeat this but I can;t be bothered..theft is theft..

'

[blodger]

to obvious to hook a catch surely - ?????

 

I was going to bite at blodgers till girl comment but.....

 

I thought somebody would as it's not very PC

[Laurie Booth]

They obviously consider that the chances of people being dishonest or inept are outweighed by the staff cost savings they must achieve, though.

 

Otherwise why would they ever bother to let us use hand held scanners ?

 

And checkout staff do make mistakes too. I've bought ten of something, for example but found twelve on the bill when I got home.

It was a common practice to add items to a shopping load to make up for shop lifting.

This was because the loss of goods was taken out of the managers wages. So he would instruct certain staff to add items to a shoppers bill.

[alan_fincher]

It was a common practice to add items to a shopping load to make up for shop lifting.

This was because the loss of goods was taken out of the managers wages. So he would instruct certain staff to add items to a shoppers bill.

Ah!

 

Something similar operated when I was once (briefly) a bus conductor.

 

I was responsible for all my mistakes, so if I collected less money than the ticket machine had added up the tickets I had issued, then it came out of my wages.

 

It was "accepted" that a conductor made enough "mistakes" in the opposite direction not to end up out of pocket.

 

In fact on Brighton Corporation the "acceptance" was that enough was made to pay for the driver and conductors tea at the end of each journey, so these came "free".

 

And there's me sometimes claiming I've always been unscrupulously honest. (I know - "everybody else does it", does not make it "right"!).

[mayalld]

Ah!

 

Something similar operated when I was once (briefly) a bus conductor.

 

I was responsible for all my mistakes, so if I collected less money than the ticket machine had added up the tickets I had issued, then it came out of my wages.

 

It was "accepted" that a conductor made enough "mistakes" in the opposite direction not to end up out of pocket.

 

In fact on Brighton Corporation the "acceptance" was that enough was made to pay for the driver and conductors tea at the end of each journey, so these came "free".

 

And there's me sometimes claiming I've always been unscrupulously honest. (I know - "everybody else does it", does not make it "right"!).

 

Something similar operated when I was briefly doing the bookkeeping for a bus company!

 

Rule number one - if you intend to fiddle the system, it is a good idea to be smart enough to understand just how the company is going to detect fraud.

Rule number two - if the person looking at your waybill is a data analyst, you are going to get caught.

[FadeToScarlet]

Interesting - we used to have them oop north (Redcar Safeway had them what must be 10 years ago).

 

Strangely they have never re-appeared....

 

It's because Ken Morrison, who of course bought out the chain, acts like a Victorian businessman and despises such modern practices as overtime payments, extra pay for working on Sunday, and computers to handle stock and orders. On takeover, they ripped out the multi-million pound central computer and threw everything into chaos- and would regularly "lose" lorries full of fags and booze as a result....

 

Changing employment contract from Safeway to Morrisons really brought home the difference.

[Laurie Booth]

Something similar operated when I was briefly doing the bookkeeping for a bus company!

 

Rule number one - if you intend to fiddle the system, it is a good idea to be smart enough to understand just how the company is going to detect fraud.

Rule number two - if the person looking at your waybill is a data analyst, you are going to get caught.

But nobody was defrauding the company, only the customers, so the management were OK about it. One fiddle where I worked was weighing potatos. We sold them in 5lb bags, they were weighed to just under 5lbs then we added dirt to the bag to bring it over the 5lbs. We were in effect selling dirt.

[Guest]

 

Changing employment contract from Safeway to Morrisons really brought home the difference.

 

Interesting - my daughter once worked for Morrisons for a while a few years ago now and then made the move to Sainsbury's - she too noticed a marked difference in - 'management style' shall we say.

 

The particular store I referred to (Redcar) actually ended up being a Tesco in all the to-ing and fro-ing when Safeway were bought out, I don't remember the detail of what went on but there was I seem to re-call a bit of a bun-fight in response to the mergers and monopoly commission concerns.

 

 

 

..

Edited January 28, 2011 by MJG

[mayalld]

But nobody was defrauding the company, only the customers, so the management were OK about it. One fiddle where I worked was weighing potatos. We sold them in 5lb bags, they were weighed to just under 5lbs then we added dirt to the bag to bring it over the 5lbs. We were in effect selling dirt.

 

If the mistakes in the opposite direction are sufficient that the conductor can take some money for a brew, that IS defrauding the company (in a minor way)

 

In the company that I worked for, nobody had to make up differences between machine reads and cash. It was accepted that there would be mistakes, and provided the cash was within limits (5% on any one duty and 2% over the week) it wasn't a problem.

 

Of course, no matter what system you have, there will be those who try to cheat it. Most ways of cheating it are readily detectable.