Is it normal for staff to have their bag searched when leaving work these days?

[nicenewone1]

Dd just started working in a posh clothing store. She says that they all have their bags searched when leaving. Well that might be a slight exaggeration, the manager looks into them as they leave

She was also questioned as to why she was taking her coat to the toilet draped over her arm

Is this normal practice these days? I would be very offended if it were me, but she doesn't seem to mind up to now.

Maybe I am being over sensitive?

Totally normal, though most places I've ever worked this has meant grabbing your stuff, walking up to the manager and opening your bag as you nip out of the door. They glance in it and say goodnight.

Most of the time when I worked for the Disney story you were showing them two bags, your handbag and the bag of stuff you just bought with your discount!

So sorry that happened to you, marsinscorpio; it must have been horrendous and I'm very glad you got suitable compensation

Just as it's vital for stores, etc, to protect themselves, it's also very important that it's done properly and with due care

Puzzledandpissedoff

You don't know me.

I was in my second year as an undergrad but even (especially?) then was a very confident bugger.

I'd go through it every day and twice on Sunday's for that much good food! I'm perhaps naively under the impression that if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to worry about.

I used to work for a major supermarket and it used to be done randomly. They were more concerned with the staff stealing than the customers, and quite rightly so.

In my 8 years working there we had dozens of students bizarrely from the same ethnic group working on my department who seemed to think they could get away with stealing cigarettes or pretending that someone had driven off without paying for their petrol and pocketing the cash. If we couldn't prove it we would move them to a non cash role in the store and they wouldn't turn up for work again! An entire night shift management team were sacked after it turned out they were shifting pallets of alcohol out the back door when the staff were having their break, and selling it on the black market. A Securicor bag with 30k of cash went missing and was never seen again.

The most bizarre one was 500 quids worth of badly forged notes (printed on a home printer and stuck together with glue) that appeared in the till on the day before we were upgrading from manual tills to shiny scanning error proof ones. Turns out a long standing member of staff had been funding her DisneyWorld habit by stealing money undetected on the manual tills and panicked when she wouldn't be able to do that on the new ones.

I worked for a high end department store in central London and we were given clear plastic carrier bags to use.

If we did buy anything in our lunch breaks, the bags were sealed with our names written on them and taken to a storage area from where we collected them at the end of our shifts.

In the big bulk buy stores in the USA like Costco, Sam's Club etc - they check your receipt and your trolley on the way out.

My dh, who is constantly losing things, managed to lose the receipt between the till and the door so had to queue up for ages to get another one printed. it still hasn't stopped him losing things daily

We sometimes got checked on the way out of boots. I remember at one point they put up a list of who had been fired for theft in the region during the last year I think it was. It was anonymous but did show how long theyd worked thete. Most were less than a year but occassionally someone with a much longer time, like 15 years. I was quite shocked!

I sometimes got searched going into work at the prison. Fun times.

Even random bag searches can't prevent theft if someone is really determined... I briefly worked in a well known computer games retailer in the mid nineties and all the staff had to have bag and pocket searches. Thefts were occurring and several of us temp staff were told our contracts were ending and we wouldn't be taken on because of that. They kep on one girl as she couldn't possibly be the thief as she never bought in a bag. It was her... she was smuggling items out in her bra and knickers...

In Superdrug they always bag searched you, sometimes pockets and sometimes shoes. You had to spin a wheel to see what had to be searched! Rightly so though, as I remember one girl who worked on the till and pretended to drop money and would put it in her shoe. Another staff member saw her do it and she got sacked, all for a £2 coin on that occasion!

In my 8 years working there we had dozens of students bizarrely from the same ethnic group working on my department who seemed to think they could get away with stealing cigarettes or pretending that someone had driven off without paying for their petrol and pocketing the cash

Oh god, don't even go there ... this is Mumsnet, remember!! [wink} You'd have thought they might have taken a bit more care over the forging, though ...

MarsInScorpio I'm genuinely very glad you were able to rise above it all and take them for a suitable amount; just think, though, what might have happened to someone who perhaps wasn't quite so on the ball

I worked in a supermarket and they would do random bag and locker checks and would also get you to empty your pockets. Till checks involved removing shoes, lifting collars etc and that was weekly for all staff on till half way through your shift but the day would change each week.

Puzzledandpissedoff

True. Although I don't for a second think I was picked on for being by myself or female or any other 'protected characteristic'. I'm notoriously indecisive and I can see how that could have translated in to suspicion. I made a point of saying that the detective had been nothing but professional with me.

I'd love an answer to my earlier question from any managers or anyone with an understanding of the relevant law. What happens if an employee simply says 'no'?

There's some useful info on here, mars:
www.personneltoday.com/hr/legal-qa-staff-searches/

A lot seems to hinge on whether searches are laid down in the employment contract, and if they're conducted in a "reasonable manner" - however, as so often with the issue of reasonableness, it would probably need someone to bring a case so a legal precedent could be set

I honestly don't know whether anyone's ever done that, though

Thanks puzzled

"If there is a contractual term allowing the employer to stop and search staff, then a refusal could amount to a breach of contract, and you could initiate disciplinary action"

It seems you would actually have to be fairly unreasonable for this to cause legal issues. A smidgen of common sense and this is completely legal. I'm surprised but not quote sure if it's wrong or not.

If it's in the contract that bag searches will happen then saying no will mean they've broken their contract and can be dismissed.

When I was at college the food we got in halls (and there was a fixed way to pay for it all up front, so no choice about living there and eating there) was not only notoriously disgusting, but also tiny portions. The college had a big sports dept and there were loads of teenage football/rugby players literally starving.

Then suddenly almost all of the catering staff were sacked. Apparently, they regularly drove to the back of the kitchens on a Saturday evening, opened up the store cupboards and freezers, and shared out the food supplies for that, leaving only just enough to produce meals for the students. They were all absolutely vile to the students as well.

I lost a lot of weight when I lived there.

RocknrollNerd
If you're still around - of the 80% who steal given the right circumstances, do you have any idea of how many/how often do? I know that it will vary, but is there a rough average, like another 40% will steal once or twice a year, but another 20% will steal at least once a month? Or is it too random/unknown?

Most large retailers have a "right to search" drawn into everyone's contracts / handbooks etc. Refusal is serious / gross misconduct.

There's quite a bit of it going on in hotels too. Couple of relatives worked in them for years and there were several scams going on like 'accidentally' opening the wrong bottle of wine which would then end up being recorded as shrinkage and taken home by staff.

Kitchen staff would find all sorts of spurious reasons why high value food items were unsuitable for guests so would take them themselves or give them to other staff members, especially bar staff, who would repay them with free drinks.

Bar staff would serve them expensive drinks and ring up lime and sodas so they would have large posh G&Ts and pay a quid instead of a tenner.

a relative used to work for a big catalog company.
when leaving they all had to go through a door with a light above. the light lit up at random and the person under the door was searched.
at least staff exit time was paid and staff got great discounts.

Surely it's also a red flag if a staff member refuses to have their bag searched? After all, it's not as if they're being flung against a wall and rubber gloves pulled on (which really would be unreasonable )

^Surely it's also a red flag if a staff member refuses to have their bag searched?

And there's the problem. You get mouthy but honest staff (me), mouthy dishonest staff who hope to brazen it out and thieves who are happy they've circumvented the security.

It was standard practise when I worked in clothing retail 30 years ago.

I'm appalled by all this stealing. I really am surprised there seems to be qutie a bit about.

We had a one off cleaner (Romanian gypsy) last year once - very good indeed but I was astounded at end of her job here she opened up her bag for me to check (not that I've anything much to steal) but she wanted me to confirm she hadn't stolen my domestos etc!

This happened to me when i had an Xmas temp job in retail 13 years ago.

Used to search our bags every day before we left. And yet would NOT provide us with lockers that locked so we could protect our own stuff So bags were kept in the staff room At the end of one shift i returned to the staff room to find my bag upended in the middle of the floor and the zip on the pocket compartment where i kept my keys unzipped. Its always zipped shut.

I did complain. The attitude? They just asked if anything was missing. There wasnt but only because they must have been disturbed.

i had to cancel my bank card 3 days before Christmas (my bank advised me to after i told them what happened) the best the employer could do after that was let me put my bag in the cash office which the other staff had access to as well

Fucking utter hypocrisy. Well i wasnt giving up my Boxing Day for them after all that I called in sick.

They were concerned about their stock but didnt give a fuck about staffs property Fucking hypocrites.

Kickassangel - I don't know what % of employees commit fraud sorry - it's very hard to get statistics on that - most of the literature focuses on increase/decrease rates and which groups are most likely to commit fraud/steal. The definitions vary a lot - some surveys only look at criminal acts reported to the police, others focus on where employers took disciplinary action etc.

There are profiles of the typical fraudster that ACFE and CIFAS and others put out - these include titbits like the highest percentage of fraudsters are middle to upper management aged something like 35-67; the average tenure is 5-9 years etc. That's across the whole board of businesses and employees though. It does fit with the charcteristics of that 80% though - you're talking about people at the prime time in life to feel financial pressure (the 'need' for money); and at that level of management they are often people who feel their career might be stalling (the 'rationalisation' and justification bit - their colleague got the promotion they 'deserved' etc).

Most of that 80% hopefully won't go on to commit fraud/steal - it's where you focus your fraud prevention effort. You make sure you understand their circumstances (someone getting divorced, buying a house, whose partner has been made redundant may well have a 'need' for cash); you reduce the opportunities (good controls which is effectively what bag checking is in retail); you run transparent hiring, promotion processes etc and have a good corporate culture so the justification aspect is removed etc.

When I worked in a relatively large business (1,000 or so employees) and reckoned we used to run at 1 reasonably 'large' case (ending in firing the employee and maybe police involvement) every year or so. So in that case it was a fairly low percentage but I was always aware they were the ones we knew about'had caught. It goes on a lot more than people think.

Some people will do it almost as a 'one off'; others test the waters and then get bolder and bolder as time goes on. Every case is different but the key three factors are always there. Fraud statistics in business also tend to spike around recessions/times of financial crisis as employees feel the pinch - a big part of rationalisation is that they feel a big company won't notice the loss but it will make a big difference to them - that accounts for a lot of retail fraud in particular I believe (not my specialist area though). Staff think a £20 item won't even be noticed/make a difference to a retail chain bringing £1000s through the tills in every shop every day.

Interestingly a number of ex fraudsters make a living after they come out of prison on the fraud conference circuit - they're always fascinating to hear.