Employee stealing from a food bank

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NC'd for this. I run a food bank. I have a (paid) assistant Mary, along with lots of volunteers. My assistant used to be a volunteer, for context, but this is now her first proper job. She's on the autistic spectrum but very high-functioning. She is due to leave at the end of this month (travel, then uni). She's 19.

Anyway - I'm pretty sure she's stealing stock. Not donations from the public, but corporate type donations - bulk packs of biscuits, crisps etc. Always treat-y things rather than the (many) more mundane foods we have. Eg we receive two boxes of Dairy Milk at 2pm on Monday, I see them on the shelf, I head off at 3.30 and leave Mary there to finish whatever task - and when I come back in at 7 the next morning, one of the boxes is open and two large bars are missing. That sort of thing, again and again. On some of these occasions other people are in too, but the common denominator is Mary (and she'd always be the one in last/locking up). It's also extended to leaving the wrappers lying around on occasion, which is both dumb and infuriating.

Lives at home in a very well-off house, no expenses/money issues, no shortage of food - I'm quite certain. It feels, instinctively, like "teenage bottomless pit" type behaviour.

So:
Catch her out definitively?
Give her a vague but pointed chat about our stock and what it's for?
Say something before I wave her off at the end of the month?
Ignore?
Some other thing?

I don't think the value of what she's stealing is any great shakes, but a) really, who the hell steals from a food bank? b) theft is theft c) I trained her up and gave her a brilliant opportunity with this job, so I find it quite hurtful. I also would rather she learn her lesson now rather than when she's, I dunno, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I don't have any other managers etc to bounce this off. I have trustees, who I suspect will leave it with me to make a decision as I see fit. WWYD?

You can use a camera as long as those potentially being recorded are aware and you follow a data protection policy. Call a staff meeting to highlight that some items in the store area are disappearing and you will be setting up a camera. Hopefully that in itself will prove a deterrent. If not you can take appropriate action.

This is what I'm thinking too.

The young man I know (21 or so), he can't read or write very well due to his on spectrum autism but he has a supermarket job and rents his own flat and presumably pays bills (with help from mum).

This young woman is off to uni.

You can be accommodating and understanding of someone's needs whilst also taking it seriously as there are some shops who wouldn't be this understanding, especially/even if she has on spectrum autism. Just a simple, it's wrong to steal, explain properly and if she really has an eating disorder to ensure she's getting the correct medical help for this.

Chinny reckon you'd go further.

Unless you are daft enough to want to get sacked for gross misconduct, horrendous news-worthy privacy breaches, & risk of a lawsuit from the purportedly well-heeled & doubtless well-connected parents.

I've not read the whole thread but you should be very careful with a couple of pieces of advice.

1. The idea of having a meeting of the whole staff to discuss it is terrible. Don't do it. It is the sort of thing a lazy or incompetent manager does because they're too weak to sort the issue with the person involved. (Like introducing a uniform policy because you didn't want a confrontation with the one person who took the piss when the dress code was smart casual.)


2. DO NOT GET SECRET CAMERAS INSTALLED. You can have CCTV provided that it's visible and there are signs explaining what the purposes are (eg crime prevention). You must not install covert cameras in almost all situations. Someone nicking a few chocolate bars would not justify the huge breach of privacy. (Be mindful that even if you go down the legal route and inform everyone you're installing cameras it will have a knock-on impact on the other members of staff.)

I've just checked your OP. I'd actually check with the Trustees (as well as the Food Bank policy). I think I've changed my views on this.

You never know, taking into account her disability etc they may (I think I would do this) just decide a quiet word is best (rather than say nothing at all) with her. I don't think this is something you should challenge yourself though, as @KettrickenSmiled says because in theory you could really get in hot water. There must be some sort of employer/employee manual here or HR dept? And agreed the parents could go nuclear over this, and quite rightly too.

There must be some sort of employer/employee manual here or HR dept?

Literally nothing.

I'm speaking to a trustee later.

What kind of person would potentially ruin a teenager's life over a couple of fucking chocolate bars?

I can't imagine doing anything other than pulling Mary aside for a quiet chat and saying "I've noticed there are a few chocolate bars and things going missing when you're working - is everything OK?" Then she either lies about it, but realises you know and stops doing it, or she comes clean and tells you why she's been doing it - binge eating, low blood sugar, whatever. It would be then fair to ask her to pay for what she's taken, reminding her that the foodbank clients are vulnerable and needy people, and remind her that this is technically theft and she really shouldn't have done it.

No wonder so many autistics can't ever work and are scared to venture out into the world. A tiny little mistake regarding judgement and there's talk of secret cameras, telling her parents, an all-staff meeting...WTF? This is exactly how you ruin someone's confidence and faith in their abilities and ensure they never work again. Why is being a normal, compassionate human being so hard?

Well said {mention: pixie5121}

{mention: pixie5121} this has been weekly/twice-weekly for at least a few months. I'm not yet sure how to respond but I think "a tiny little mistake regarding judgement" is minimising the situation.

OP just talk to her. Say you have a reasonable suspicion that she is stealing from the food bank. You say she is very likely to deny it, but that does not stop you making the point that if she were, hypothetically speaking, caught stealing in a future job, not only might she be sacked but she might also be prosecuted.

If you are not 100% sure it's her, you can still say things are going missing and it's a serious issue because if someone from the food bank went to another job and behaved in the same way they would lose their job and possibly be reported to the police/prosecuted. You may be able to get the message across without being accusatory.

I agree with PPs who say she may not even be aware that it is stealing. No money changes hands in a food bank.

Take her aside and say, 'Mary it looked like you had a couple of chocolate bars from the stock when you were working last week. It may not seem like a big deal but legally it is stealing. I want you to know that we staff absolutely musn't help ourselves to anything from the Food Bank. Nothing at all. If it happened again, it would be a sackable offense. I know that might seem OTT, but that's the law and as your manager I need to ensure you know this and abide by it.'

It may need spelling out that there's no such thing as helping yourself to treats even if they have been donated. She may think they're a "staff first, recipients next ". Not ok but easily confused if she's not fully in tune with why the food bank exists.
So say that then that you've mentioned it as you'd seen missing chocolate and wrappers and those bars need to be considered joe other donations. The office biscuits - again may need pointing out that the norm is a couple not the whole box and if taking them all then a contribution to replacements is nice

I thought adding a camera would show who was taking it. What ever happened to innocent until proved guilty!!!

Oh my God, once or twice a week for a few months must be what, 15-20 chocolate bars in total? If she's bingeing because she can't resist and hoping nobody notices or doesn't realise it's wrong, then the fact it's little but often actually supports this...it's not like she stole 5 boxes at once to sell them online. In the grand scheme of things, yes it IS a tiny little mistake. It's almost laughably irrelevant.

Please stop taking on autistic people and treating them like NTs. You are doing harm.

I really think from what you're saying, yes, it is a tiny mistake but in the grand scheme of things, if she carries this on into other jobs or even tries to steal from shops (not saying she would) then as others have said this could land her into trouble, whether she's autistic or NT.

Yes, it's her first job, but it's also a paid job. If there's ambiguity over what she can take or not then this should/could have been set out from the start.

It's pointless trying to give every autistic person extra special treatment though, just because they're autistic although yes, of course you should make allowances and have the correct training and support in place and they will be employed as you have to employee disabled people in companies (over a certain size I think) and there'll be policies for this. My friend's son has worked for M&S and now for Co-Op and generally they've treated him well and understood his autistic and accommodated it.

I've seen you around on other boards - you're autistic as well aren't you?
The issue isn't the size of the crime, but the behavior.
If everyone wanted to punish her as you're suggesting they'd all
propose firing her, giving a bad reference and being done with it. As would be done with an NT person.
All of this tiptoeing around is because she's ND so clearly being accounted for.

If she has an eating disorder, issues with impulse control etc these should all be acknowledged and help obtained before it spirals into something worse. Yes she's 19 and an adult but if she just refuses help, or to acknowledge it would be irresponsible to leave it there until she gets into bigger trouble. Especially as she's off to lead a completely independent life, with travel and the uni.

Aghhh.....it's not 'special treatment' if you literally have a disability that means you have trouble understanding what is and isn't OK!

I used to work in a pub, and I saw the owner and manager regularly help themselves to crisps from the stock and fizzy drinks, so I assumed it was OK for me to do so as well. It's normal to get a cooked meal off the pub's food menu during a shift, so I thought snacks and drinks were also fine. I had no idea of the hierarchy involved, that I as an employee was basically treated like a serf who wasn't allowed to use about 5ps worth of Coke to keep my hydration and energy levels up on a hot day, while watching those two constantly fill pint glasses to sit around and chat in the garden. I genuinely didn't know I wasn't allowed. Once they told me to stop, I did.

This is why most autistic people don't and can't work. You might be excellent at the job, well-liked and efficient, but eating a fucking chocolate bar suddenly undoes all of the hard work and effort. Believe me that when you have to try much harder than an NT person to do just about anything, someone acting like a minor issue like this is some terrible crime is traumatising.

"Mary, maybe you don't realise it's stealing because our clients don't pay for the stock, but it is stealing to eat chocolate intended for our clients, so please don't do it again. If you're peckish, nip out to the shop on your break." - how hard is that?! Why is OP making a mountain of a molehill?

A normal, rational response is to sit the girl down and ask if everything is OK, and tell her that there's been chocolate bars going missing during her shifts, remind her it's not OK to eat the food bank donations, and ask if she needs anything. Not put up hidden cameras, call all-staff meetings and inform all the trustees.

You do realise that Mary probably doesn't see this as stealing? She's likely not trying to 'get away with' something the way a neurotypical person might. She's probably getting peckish and seeing a chocolate bar and thinking 'ooh that'll keep me going until dinner'. It's the kind of thing I did as a teenager, before I had figured out all the obscure social rules. It used to confuse me that people assumed the worst of me. If I'd worked in a foodbank and thought it was alright to have the odd snack and was then told it wasn't, I'd have happily replaced them and not done it again. The fact she's leaving the wrappers there makes it all the MORE likely she doesn't think she's doing something wrong - she's not being sneaky and hiding it.

I didn't realise until I was about 14 that it's not OK to open other people's fridges and get drinks or snacks out of them. I come from a big Spanish family where I grew up spending time in relative's homes, where I was welcome to do that. I remember being berated at an English friend's birthday party for getting a can of Coke and feeling so small and humiliated. Autistic people don't tend to knowingly break rules - it's simply not understanding what is and isn't OK. I'd seen the birthday girl's sister get a drink out of the fridge and I hadn't realised that it wasn't OK for me to do that as a guest. Once I was told, then I knew. These are exactly the kinds of unwritten social rules autistic people struggle with. You need to explicitly say what is and isn't allowed. NTs seem to think it's 'obvious'. It isn't.

Hit the nail on the head. And better than I could say!

If its been going on for months and you've known it was Mary for months then that's totally on you for not dealing with things sooner.

If you haven't known it was Mary for months then you should be open to the idea that it wasn't just her taking stuff and she may be copying something she's seen and so thinks it's OK.

And if it is just Mary taking stuff you still need to be open to the idea that she may not know its wrong.

I have taken all you say on board but I do know some autistic people who seem to use their autism as a pass to not know social cues and nuances or not when I can tell sometimes that they certainly do know what is right or wrong or they at least have a semblance of this. This woman has passed exams and interviews for uni so she can't be that bad at reading signals. I'm not being unkind or not understanding and of course they need to have things explained explicitly but if you treat them like children who can't understand anything, ever, then that's where issues happen.

That's what happened with this boy (but he was a teenager), he was forever putting his foot in it with various things he got up to and finally he moved miles away to a nice area, with a flat and a job (helped by his mother) as he wanted more independence but also not to forever get things wrong and not be independent by himself.

I think you might be letting your own experiences disproportionately colour your response here {mention: pixie5121} . No one’s installed cameras or called meetings, and speaking to my trustees is what I would do in any situation I find difficult, because I don’t want to make difficult decisions unilaterally and would rather benefit from their experience and guidance.

Mary was a highly competent volunteer who was diligent and took on a lot of responsibility, who then applied for and secured a paid role with us. She told me she was “on the spectrum” about three months into the role, as a passing remark. When you work with volunteers you get used to adjusting for lots of quirks and nuances in how people conduct themselves, and this was never an issue with Mary.

Thanks all - I’m getting nearer a decision now.

Wow what horrible attitudes. Reasonable adjustments classed as 'all this tiptoeing around' and a poster who magically knows autistic people are cheeky scammers pretending to be socially awkward to get some advantage. No wonder unemployment is so low for disabled people of this is the attitude out there.

I have a sister with autism and she used to have an issue with stealing - she knew it was wrong but I think she might have had a skewed understanding of how other people could tell it was her.

Once on holiday she got caught and shouted at by the shopkeeper and she never did it again.

It's not 'treating them like children' to recognise that nuances and social niceties are often difficult for autistic people @GonnaGetGoingReturns

My DS is autistic and at grammar school. He couldn't figure out the 3rd discrimination in a multiple choice of 3 yesterday in business studies. He recognised that only giving jobs to people not using wheelchairs or under 40 was discrimination. The 3rd one was paying men less than women for the same job. Because it was pay related, in his mind, that wasn't the same as the other two.

That's the kind of thing a NT kid will have no trouble with.

It's subtle.