ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

The last two Fridays at work I came up short in my drawer $20 and $100, respectively, which really threw me for a loop with regard to work morale and general confidence in my cash handling. After the $20 I was really upset and resolved not to screw up anymore. When I got back to work the following Monday I began a new routine of counting money three times instead of just twice, and made sure to be more aware of my cash transactions to make sure I wouldn’t mess up anything else. I even started counting my drawer down on the hour and keeping track of this. Then on Friday afternoon I turned up $100 short.

To say I was distraught would be a huge understatement. I couldn’t figure out how I could possibly have handed out or failed to take in a $100 bill, particularly when I’d been so scrupulously counting and recounting everything.  I was even counting down the drawer against the computer like every five transactions.  Because I’d done thousands of dollars of business in twenties on the previous Friday, most of which was in a few big transactions, I was willing to accept that on that one I’d screwed up and missed a bill somewhere. It was definitely believable, even though I try to be careful. It’s $20, and people make mistakes.

But on the Friday that my drawer was missing the $100, I didn’t do any transactions over $300 or so. And it’s really difficult to miss that kind of money in small transactions like that. It really shook me up, because I couldn’t believe that I had screwed up that kind of cash, when I had gone all out to be so careful. We counted down every slip of cash in the store and audited everything we could find to determine where it could have been a mistake in anything but cash. But all our numbers were perfect. Everything matched, except my drawer. And it was just…gone.

So I was really low last Friday when I got home, being that my situation seemed limited to two possibilities: either I’m actually incompetent enough that I lost $120 in two weeks, or that someone else at our store took the money and let me take the fall for it. For some reason, not all the drawers at my store have keys for the locks, so if you’re working a window with no locking drawer, you basically just have to try and keep an eye on things.  Both scenarios seem equally miserable to me. I hate the idea that even at my top efforts to be precise and accurate, I’m screwing up in spite of myself. And to make matters worse, both incidents were on a Friday, which is of course a huge red flag to management. “HELLO, I JUST THOUGHT I’D HELP MYSELF TO SOME CASH FOR THE WEEKEND!”

But the alternative seems just as bad. We only have three people at our store right now, so that doesn’t leave too many of us that I can suspect, even if I want to, which I don’t. I trust the manager implicitly, and at any rate he’s usually not there when this has been happening. And I know for certain that I’m not stealing cash. The only other person there is the new girl who started about a month ago. And I really want to like her. She’s nice, friendly, and leaves me alone when I need to study. She does what she’s told. She doesn’t talk back, and she speaks Spanish and is good with the customers. So I hate the idea that this person could be stealing from my drawer and letting me pick up the blame for it. But I also hate the idea that I actually did screw up that badly.

Like I said, nobody at our store keeps drawers locked, because not all the drawers have keys anyway. Pathetic, I know. My boyfriend suggested that I try claiming the one drawer that does have a key, and keep it locked with the key on me. He pointed out that 1) if stealing is the problem then this will put an immediate stop to it, 2) if I come up short again I’ll at least know for sure that it was my screwup that time anyway, and 3) if I have to make the physical action of rummaging for a key and unlocking the drawer before I can get to my own cash, it’ll make me substantially more lucid about the cash than if I just opened it and went on auto pilot.

Before I left on Friday I had told my manager that even though he said it was okay, people make mistakes, etc, etc, it wasn’t acceptable to me that this was happening, so I planned to think on it over the weekend and come up with an action plan for myself. So on Monday I mentioned that I had thought of a way to make myself more aware of my cash during every transaction, and that I was going to start locking my drawer so that I couldn’t get into it without being completely focused on every cash transaction. And then I started. When I help a customer now, I wait until the point of sale screen prompts me to deal with the cash. Then I get the key out, unlock the drawer, put in or take out the prompted amount (after I verify that the screen is correct) and then immediately lock the drawer again. Before processing the transaction, I count the cash on the counter twice and compare it to the amount on the screen each time. Then I process, and count the cash to the customer, checking the amount once more against the receipt. If no other customers are waiting, I then count down my unstrapped cash and balance everything right after this. The key stays in my pocket all day until it’s time to put the cash back in the safe, at which point I leave the key there. This technique is long, slow, and it makes the customers a little impatient. But all this is worth it if it’ll help me get back some of the good work reputation points that I feel the last two Fridays have cost me. And it’s gotten me through three work days this week so far.

I just keep wondering if the manager has been thinking about any of this as well, or if he’s put together the New Person + Missing Cash = ??? equation too, and is just quietly waiting to see how things pan out. I know I won’t say a word about any of my (uncertain at best) suspicions to anyone at work, because it seems like kind of a huge faux pas to hint that your coworkers might be stealing money.

Our new girl looked at me funny and asked what I was doing when she noticed that I’m locking my drawer now, so I explained my reasoning about cash, necessity of a physical action to orient me to cash transactions, bla bla bla, and she seemed to accept it. But a couple of times I thought I noticed her kind of watching me. And it makes me wonder. Am I being unfairly suspicious because I just don’t want to accept that I’m capable of accidentally losing a hundred dollar bill, and is this causing me to incorrectly interpret her actions as those of a culprit who wonders if someone suspects? Or could she really be capable of stealing money and letting me take the fall?  Or is she merely worried that I suspect her of something she didn’t do?

I’m going to go with the innocent-until-caught-red-handed assumption because I don’t want her to be a thief. But I’m also going to keep locking my drawer, if nothing else because it really does seem to be working to keep my mind on my cash. We’re getting along fine like usual, I think.  Anyway, she hasn’t breathed a word about it, because in the cash business you try not to talk about theft because it looks suspicious. Kind of like how you don’t joke about bombs in airports.  Either way, if I don’t come up short again I guess things will be fine. Whether it was my fault or whether it was stolen, I still have my job and I’ll gradually rebuild some confidence in my cash handling and my sense of competence that was lost. And I suppose that’s what really matters.