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Current Articles | Loss in The Supermarket in an Unknown WayLoss in The Supermarket in an Unknown Way
Were you among the businessmen who laughed out loud when they heard this true story? in a Midwestern city a small supermarket was losing money in some unexplainable way. every day the seven cash registers tallied; in each there was as much cash as had been rung up.
When an inventory disclosed enough shortage to warrant a check, detectives planted in the store could find nothing wrong. All goods going out were accounted for on the seven registers. Only when a further inventory revealed still-growing discrepancy did the parent chain bother to send a vice-president right to the scene personally.
What did he find?
That the seven registers received cash for all goods sold each day, that everything was in order so far as he could see. Extra police were assigned outside the store at night to prevent possible pilfering of unpacked goods. it was only weeks later, when worrying further over the store that the VP made his peculiar discovery: The average week's results reported from that store were ordinarily exactly six-sevenths of the amount reported for the week when he personally had been on the scene.
From this he derived a fantastic hunch. He almost dismissed it from his mind but was so desperate to find the answer that he checked the early records of the store only to discover that only six registers had ever been installed there! Quickly enough it was found that the ingenious store manager had simply built his own seventh check-out counter and collected his personal portion of each week's receipts in that orderly, precise way. what genius misused!
Couldn't a man like that make a success of his own business instead of stealing from others and ending in jail? it is to laugh, surely. Especially when the joke is on the other fellow.
An alert owner can put his finger on just what the matter was in that situation. We usually can when it happens to the other fellow. it was a case of absentee ownership being too absentee. it was also a case of too much responsibility being placed in the hands of one man - the store manager. That is a more common mistake leading to countless embezzlement's each year.
There is also the element of the bigness of the parent company - too far above the local entity to recognize its weakness and problems. That aspect of the case reveals a truth applicable to any and all businesses with more than one branch; applicable even to government. when business gets big, for all the advantages attendant on the bigness, there are also numerous disadvantages in the removal of policy making to a level above and removed from the actual level of daily business.
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