It seems that a subsidiary role of a shopkeeper is to be ripped off by his staff and/or customers (tick as applicable). Sometimes I feel that they think that we are either too stupid or busy not to realise that they are ripping us off. One does soon realise that this type of crime is more about the power to decieve than to make money, and that the money is a secondary outcome, the con is king. Take for example one Sunday news delivery boy who thought it would be a great wheeze to claim his pay from my wife and then wait until my mother took over the till and then claim his pay AGAIN. Of course, no-one knew this was happening for a while until I sat down and did the accounts and looked at the receipts. Then I noticed there were two lots of payout receipts for the same boy. Did he not realise he was going to get caught? Did he think that we didn’t make records of our payouts? Did he think we were that naive and daft? Obviously so…
So I waited until one Sunday and he duly came in and claimed his pay from my wife. Then I jumped on the till and lo-and-behold he returned again for another payout. I duly pulled him up when I showed him the previous payout receipt and I watched in joy when he ran with speed from the shop. He was so fast I didn’t even have time to fire him.
Anyway, this kid comes back about an hour later and I tell him not to come back into the shop until he’s paid me the money he owes me for the weeks he has claimed two lots of pay. The kid protests: “How can I do that? You’ve fired me! I’ve got no money now.” Great logic, kiddo, you should have thought of that before you decided to steal wholesale from me.
That happened at the beginning of our term at the shop when everyone thought we were too green and believed we could be exploited at every angle. During our first week of trading we had at least four customer claim that they’d “paid with a twenty”. The old routine to claim extra change. Of course, we took their numbers and checked the till at the end of the day and we were never in receipt of their extra change. So fuck off, con man.
Today saw the culmination of a peculiar series of deceptions. One mother of a Sunday deliverer kept claiming that they were missing a particular paper from their round. Of course, you give them the benefit of the doubt the first couple of times and then the routine because that, a routine. So we began double-checking the round in question and today the routine reared its head and my mother said; “No, you can’t have an extra paper because I double-checked the round myself.” So I make up the rounds and my mother and wife have been double-checking. It is a system that works and I have an accuracy rate of 99.9%!
Anyway, this woman takes the round out to their waiting car every week and that’s where the newspaper mysteriously disappears. My mother calls me at home to tell me that this woman is cutting up rough and that she wants to talk to me. Here’s a warning, folks. Never demand to talk to me because I am the line in the sand. Don’t think you can appeal to my better nature because I haven’t got one. This is business and I am a reasonable man, but when I know someone is screwing me for whatever reason my patience becomes wafer thin.
We have a short conversation in which the woman can’t understand why the paper is missing and the inference is that I’ve made a mistake. I point it out that she is inferring that I am lying and I am not pleased. I tell her that the paper was there. Again, she protests her innocence and I really don’t like her brusque, ignorant Norfolk tones. They grate against my sensibilities. The conversation ends thus:
“All I know is that you are losing me money, so I guess we’ll have to call it quits.”
And with that our working relationship is over. I think Donald Trump and Alan Sugar would be proud of me.

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