After Further Investigation...You're An Idiot!

My morning was going just as most do. I was printing out reports from the day before, reviewing overnight video and sipping on the first cup of coffee of the day. On the overhead paging system, the Jewelry Manager's voice came on and requested me to call her.. "at my convenience." I thought to myself, "she is so well trained."

I had advised the coworkers, if they see a suspicious person, possible shoplifter, need somehting urgently, just page "300" instead of my name. If it's not urgent, and you just need to speak to me about something that is not going on now, use my name and add "at your convenience." This will tell me I don't have to drop what I am doing and rush out of the office, but instead I can call or find you when I get a chance. For the most part, everyone has been cooperating.

I called the Jewelry counter and she advised me she had something for me to see from over the weekend. This scared me a bit since we had been having a gang going from store to store committing jewelry thefts. To date, we had been lucky and I really wasn't looking forward to becoming a statistic as a victim of their activities.

I arrived at the counter to find the manager reaching under the display case pulling out a small box with a gold chain in it. A refund receipt was attached with the words "Defective/Damaged" written on it. The manager went on to explain that this item was returned over the weekend. However, when it was bought, also over the weekend, the chain had a diamond and gold pendant attached to it. The customer brought it back in claiming the pendant had fallen off because the chain was broken.
Okay, so it fell off, but I wondered what happened to the pendant. Why wouldnt it be in the box as well when she returned it? I took the box and receipt and headed back to my office. Now I am no jeweler, but when I examined the chain, it made a full circle with a fully operational clasp in the middle. To me, with the untrained eye, that's a fully functioning necklace. This just added to the mystery of the missing pendant.

In an effort to try and make sense of what happened, I pulled up the video of the date and time in question. I observed a lady walking into the store and go right to the jewelry counter. The employee at the counter was new and engaged in conversation with the customer. I observed the employee take merchanise from under the counter then together, both the employee and the customer walk to the service desk.

I later find out that the Jewelry employee hands the service desk associate both the new merchandise and the returned merchandise and asks,

"Can you please exchange this for this for her?"

I observe the cashier scanning and processing the return as a damaged or defective item. After doing the transaction, the damaged merchandise is handed back to the Jewelry employee to take back to her department. The new merchandise is handed to the customer, who then pockets it and walks out of the store. Out of curiosity, I keep watching video and track the lifespan of that "damaged" merchandise.

The new employee walks behind the counter with the box inher right hand. She looks around, leans down and places it on the shelf under the cash register. Ten minutes later, the same employee returns and removes the box from the shelf, and leaves the department. Three minutes later I observe her walking out of the back stock room.

At this point, I think I am on to something bigger than I thought. Suddenly, I am thinking, I found out where the $100.00 pendant got to.

I continue following the employee, by video, who is seen walking through the Men's Department with her hand in her right pocket of her sweater. I am wondering if that is where the jewelry is, and she is keeping her hand, maybe even subconsciously, on the merchandise. Maybe a little too much CSI watching, but still, it was a thought.

I watched as she approaches another employee and says a few things before leaving the apparel area. I stop the video at this point and track down the other employee who happened to be working. I wanted to know what that conversation was about, thinking if she just hid the pendant, or is carrying the pendant with her, she might have been trying to play it off somehow with the other employee. I find the other employee and ask about the encounter.

"Can you remember what she was talking to you about before she walked away?" this was the only thing I asked.

"Yeah, she was telling me she thought we just got ripped off by a customer. Something about a chain that was returned and a pendant..." the cooperative employee relayed.

There it was. I thought I had her all figured out. She obviously had this chain and pendant on the brain, and was still talking about it a while after the transaction.

I return to the Jewelry Manager and ask her to walk me through the life of a jewelry return. She detailed everything that I had seen on the video until she explained that the return is placed into the drawer designated for Damaged or Defective merchandise. In this case, I never saw the drawer opened or the merchandise placed anywhere it should have been.

"Does every jewelry employee know this procedure?" I asked thinking someone is about to plead ignorance. The manager stated she knew that each employee assigned to that counter knows how to do a return. She began naming all of the employees who she knew was aware of the procedure, and the new employee was named. Again, some points against her.

An hour later, the Service Desk associate came in to work. I asked him about the transaction and received much the same information.

"She handed me two boxes and said exchange them, the one was being returned because the chain was damaged." he explained matteer of factly.

"Did you look in the returned box to see what was in it?" I asked.

"Hey that was up to her, she had already done that I would think." he replied fairly defensively.

So, this brought me back to the new employee. After talking with a few more employees working that night, it became apparent that we didn't have an internal theft problem, we had a stupidity problem. Several people advised me during my investigation that she does not look at merchandise being returned.

How does an employee take a jewlery box that is supposed to have a damaged piece of jewery inside and not open it and see what is wrong with it? How does an employee just take the customer's word for it and exchange it for a brandd new piece of jewlery? I hear that the customer is always right, but I believe we are now out $100.00 simply because of an idiot working on our counters.

So, in the end, we had a lady walk in with a chain, return it, and walk out with a new chain and a $100.00 gold and diamond pendant for her troubles.

Case closed.