So Many Ways to Steal, And People Go With Toilet Parts
“Honestly, some people were coming out for a meal and going home with half a toilet. Bonkers!” That’s Jamie Oliver, quoted in the Guardian, talking about people nicking toilet parts from his chain of restaurants (apparently their hardware was quite fancy). The parts are now welded on, so problem solved. People also steal napkins. He blames it on the recession, but the more likely culprit is that the napkins say “JAMIE’S ITALIAN” and are real cute.
I wanted to find out how PREVALANT this kind of theft is … but then I got totally distracted by this INCREDIBLE LIST 0f 99 ways that employees steal from restaurants and bars.
Stealing napkins is all the way at the bottom (#91). Stealing toilet parts doesn’t even make the cut (innovation).
A few of my favorites:
“#34. Complimentary cocktail or wine coupons are stolen by maids and sold to bartenders who turn in the coupons to justify missing inventory. For example, the wine server buys a coupon for $5 and sells a bottle of wine to a customer for $25, reaping a net profit of $20.” LOL what. That is a HEADACHE. No.
“#30. Phantom bottle – bartender brings his or her own bottle of liquor and pockets the cash earned from its sale. This scheme is much more devastating than merely stealing a bottle of liquor because even though the cost of the bottle is nominal (for example, $10), the lost margin on sales from the bottle is significant (for example, $90).” I just like the word phantom.
“#5. Phantom cash register – put an extra cash register in the bar during specific times (for example, during happy hour) since the sales are not recorded on the master cash register tape they can be skimmed by the perpetrator.” I just really like the word phantom (also … “extra cash register” what?)
http://sf.eater.com/tags/shit-people-steal
@Claire Henry@twitter oh that’s good
I’m gonna assume the napkins go missing cuz people are like, stealing rolls and putting them in them or something, cuz who uses napkins at home?
Or I guess they could be tourists who want a memento.
@Megano! It’s not stealing rolls if you pay for the meal! That’s what we always said on Mother’s Day as my brother crammed the delicious rolls into our take out containers and I like that. A few weeks ago my friend asked for a take out container for the sauce we had. The server thought we were weird, but we paid for that delicious sauce!
@josefinastrummer yeah I didn’t really mean stealing, I meant taking rolls home, poor choice of words.
I’ve worked in four or five restaurants at this point, and I have never seen anyone steal the way restaurant employees steal. It’s craaaazy.
And now, after reading the eater tags, I realize that it’s not just employees. Restaurants must do something silly to our brains.
I have only worked at chain restaurants, and they made it pretty hard to steal in a lot of the ways that PDF describes. Either that, or I’m some goody-two-shoes who would never think of complicated ways to steal anything. We would, however, always ask the cooks to give us bigger portions for our comped meal, or add some ice cream or something. I don’t necessarily think of that as stealing, though, because managers knew about it and basically just said that we’d earned it (and we weren’t taking it home or anything).
I worked as a delivery driver, and all the other drivers would clear out the coupons for the place whenever they delivered to hotels. Then they’d apply the coupon every time they made a delivery and pocket the extra money. I didn’t find out about it til the scam had been busted, because I’m a square. On the other hand, management told me that drivers were under some amaaaaazing insurance policy of theirs (which they refused to show me) when I applied. Then a friend got rear ended while making a delivery. I asked a manager how their insurance would have covered my friend had he been at fault, and the manager actually laughed. So… fuck ‘em.