To think the employer should be insured for employees mistakes?

[RaptorWhiskers]

My neighbour has recently started a new part time job with a big retailer. On her first week a customer has scammed her with a fake £50. Apparently it’s shop policy not to accept £50s but nobody had told her that. The manager says she should have noticed it wasn’t real and it’s her fault the till is down by that amount, so she has to pay it back out of her own pocket.

AIBU to think this is why the shop has insurance?! I’m fairly certain it’s illegal to take that money from her. What annoys me even more is that she’s just resigned to being ripped off and doesn’t dare challenge it because she doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the boss. So the business gets away with disgusting illegal behaviour and the thieving customer has basically taken £50 out of the pocket of a single mum who’s working to feed her kids. I’ve given her a tenner to help her out but she’s still out of pocket. Utterly furious at the injustice 😡

Deductions from your pay
Your employer is not allowed to make deductions unless:

it’s required or allowed by law, for example National Insurance, income tax or student loan repayments
you agree in writing
your contract says they can
there’s a statutory payment due to a public authority
you have not worked due to taking part in a strike or industrial action
there’s been an earlier overpayment of wages or expenses
it’s a result of a court order
A deduction cannot normally reduce your pay below the National Minimum Wage even if you agree to it, except if the deduction is for:

tax or National Insurance
something you’ve done and your contract says you’re liable for it, for example a shortfall in your till if you work in a shop
repayment of a loan or advance of wages
repayment of an accidental overpayment of wages
buying shares or share options in the business
accommodation provided by your employer
your own use, for example union subscriptions or pension contributions
If you work in retail - for example shops, restaurants
Your employer cannot take more than 10% from your gross pay (pay before tax and National Insurance) each pay period to cover any shortfalls.

Example

There’s a shortfall of £50 in your till and your employer wants to deduct this from your earnings.

You’re paid £250 gross per week. Your employer can take 10% of your gross earnings, which is £25.

They must only take £25 one week and then make another deduction from your next pay cheque for £25.

If you leave your job, they can take the full amount owed from your final pay

the above is from government website and it must be taken from wages not handed back as cash

but in her case if not told re £50 notes she is not liable anyway as her till is not down

But her till is down Tea.

They should have told her and they should be deducting it from wages not in cash, but her till is down by £50 and the company, unfortunately, can take it back.

What a sickening practise. Can you name the retailer here so I can avoid them in the future please?

Even then Parrot they'd need to show they'd given the correct training - ie no £50 and this is how you spot a forgery. Or to have checked she had these skills during the recruitment process.

Apparently they’re not deducting it. They’re paying her in full to keep the books right. But they expect her to hand back the £50 in cash after she gets paid.

That sounds a legitimate way for them to deal with it

I'm no legal expert, but I would have thought that intent would come into play somewhere. If you help yourself to money from the till or take goods without paying - or abet a friend in doing so - then that's clearly a case of your needing to make good your deliberate dishonesty (and being thankful if they don't call the police). However, if you take a payment in good faith on behalf of the company (especially when they haven't trained/advised you in company policy or on vigilance), why should you bear the loss when it was never actually your loss (or negligence, for that matter)? Would they expect you to pay if somebody used a debit card and the payment initially went through as normal, but it later emerged that they'd stolen it and the bank did a charge-back?

If somebody steals my car, they've committed a crime against me. If I subsequently steal an identical car from somebody else (or threateningly demand that they hand it over), I haven't 'made good the loss' and caused justice to prevail - I have committed the exact same crime as the first person did and am equally guilty.

The fact they are keeping her wage the same but expect her to just hand over £50 is telling me its doggy and they know it.
They just dint want any trace of them doing that.... because they know they shouodnt be doing it.

Tweet the company telling them how disgusting their policy is. You don’t name your friend but name the branch

I don’t think some people understand the realities of working a minimum wage retail/hospitality/factory job.

Even national companies in these sectors don’t have this mysterious “HR” department, where you can go running with every last grievance. Your manager (and possibly your area manager) is your boss. They are in charge of you, full stop. They hire and fire, dictate your hours and duties, authorise and sign off your wages. The general attitude is “if you don’t like it, fuck off”, as there are 50 other people waiting to do your job.

Workers in the minimum wage sector may have “rights” but in general, they are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. With under 2 years service, you can basically be let go for no reason whatsoever (although a reason will be manufactured to stay within the law). On a zero hours contract, if you rock the boat by moaning too much, you will just not be given any hours.

People on message boards who automatically say “that’s illegal” don’t help either. A quick read of the .gov site shows immediately that the situation in the OP is not remotely illegal, just that the manager has gone about it the wrong way.

I truly believe that every single person in this country should be forced to work a minimum wage, zero hours contract job in the service industry for a period of time so that they can see how most of the working class actually have to live.

Just out of interest, if your till ends up having with more money than expected at the end of the day, and there's no evidence of its being anything other than a genuine mistake (after all, if you had deliberately given change for a tenner when you knew you'd been handed a twenty, you wouldn't have left it in the till, would you?) nor any way of tracing the rightful owner of the excess money, do these same employers let you keep it?

If not, they're clearly breaking their own already-dubious moral code. Either you bear full responsibility for any discrepancies and take the consequences or you don't. Employees are people and therefore do sometimes make mistakes - only a nasty, bullying employer (especially a huge one) would expect you to lose out if your mistake is in the customer's favour when you can be certain that they wouldn't let you gain from your mistake in the shop's favour.

no @parrot if she was not told to accept no £50 notes and was not trained or given equipment to spot forgeries she isn't liable if she was told she is liable
you can't tell people the rules after the mistake and then blame them. £50 notes are legal so if their policy is not to accept them and if people are liable for forgeries they must be trained to spot them and have access at tills to detectors most forgeries are so good you are unlikely to spot them with naked eye this needs to be in training and recorded as such and in written policies
you can not expect any reasonable person to know that you can't accept certain legal currency, you could expect them to know they can't take american dollars
and either way it has to be deducted from wages not handed over as cash, maybe it wasn't a forgery at all and manager is just taking advantage

maybe it wasn't a forgery at all and manager is just taking advantage

Yes, I agree. Handing back the £50 in cash? It stinks.

I truly believe that every single person in this country should be forced to work a minimum wage, zero hours contract job in the service industry for a period of time so that they can see how most of the working class actually have to live.

With respect, though, I don't think most people are either doubting or denying that this kind of thing happens on a regular basis or saying that it's right or fair. How would forcing such injustices on everybody somehow make it OK? If you'd said 'everybody at companies with these policies who is directly responsible for making/upholding the policies' then I would have heartily agreed with you.

Fortunately for us, it would be highly unlikely to happen in the UK, but there was a horrific edition of Unreported World a few weeks ago, whereby girls (young teenagers) in Madagascar from impoverished families were given 'jobs' working for rich people as maids and cleaners (and were doubtless worked relentlessly and mercilessly) - a long, long way away from their home villages and families. These girls were never paid and, when they eventually asked for their wages, this was met with outrage and their evil abusers ('employers' is a misnomer here) instantly accused them of stealing from them and had them sent, without trial or charge, to a prison, where they would be left to rot indefinitely, without their family ever being informed. To make matters worse, the wages that they owed, which was so desperately needed by the poor families, was so obviously back-of-the-sofa change to them anyway.

I watched the programme in horror and rage on behalf of these poor abused girls and their families - but I still don't see why it would have helped my understanding or compassion at all if I'd been sent to be abused alongside them.

A friend of mine used to work in a petrol station and the manager would make them pay for any stolen petrol out of their wages. One tank of fuel stolen would pretty much wipe out their whole pay for the day. It's so unfair

@justchecking while I can see it happens is there any way a employee can stop this if not I do not think they can be blamed but some garages have rumple spikes which they could have deployed

Many years ago I worked in a petrol station and we had to stock check every item down to the last Mars bar every single shift and losses were deducted from our wages.
Everyone working there recorded that we had 3 large bottles of engine oil, even though there was only 1 on the shelf, because if you owned up you would be the one charged.
The other 2 had been nicked months previously, but no one would say anything about it.
I seriously thought that that stuff had been made illegal

you can be legally deducted for shortfalls in till
but I'm not sure about theft at all

you can be legally deducted for shortfalls in till

I'm sure that you can. All I personally know is that, if I were the owner/manager of a profitable business of any size and this happened as a one-off on the watch of one of my lowly-paid staff, I wouldn't be able to sleep that night having actually exercised my legal right to stop it out of their wages.