Most people practice what they are going to say in a job interview. They come up with the likely questions and prepare their answers accordingly. You just have to make the best choice with the information you have available. You may or may not pick the right person. At first most new hires are great because they come to work when they’re scheduled, they stay over when you need them, and they seem to live and breathe to make your business successful. Unfortunately you likely won’t find out until it’s too late if you have gotten yourself a bad apple. Out of all the steps you take to pick the right person for the job, one of the most important is the background check.
You should still perform the obligatory employment history verification and check their references, of course. As far as employment history, most companies have now instated policies forbidding store level management from giving any information about former employees. You are likely to only get them to tell you whether or not the person did indeed work there. Reference checks can be helpful, but only to a short extent. I know the people on my own reference list are notified ahead of any possible calls, and they know the drill: make me sound awesome. If you are stopping after these steps, you may be setting yourself up for more work and effort in finding another employee sooner than you had hoped.
The company I work for does include a background check in the application process. I hired a young lady a few years ago, and she seemed ideal. She was well liked among her peers and the customers. She really did a great job and I was pleased with her work. Then she started having a lot of refunds on her shifts. I figured it was just a training issue, since in most cases there was a receipt for the merchandise. The refunds continued so I began to monitor her closely. I discovered she was keeping customers receipts when they didn’t take them, and in some cases she was actually getting them out of the day shift trash when she came in for the night shift. She would just wait until no one was around and take that merchandise off the sales floor and refund it with the receipt. After some investigation, she was interviewed and admitted to taking about $700 over a three month period. She was terminated and charged with embezzlement.
About a year later, I went to dinner with my family at a local steakhouse. There was a memo posted at the front desk advising recent customers to check their credit card statements. They had discovered a waitress adding major gratuities to her credit card slips at closing. Customers were finding the charges later when their statements came. The memo named the waitress and it was the very young lady I had terminated for refund fraud.
This was a large popular restaurant chain. Had they done a background check on this person, they could have possibly avoided the whole fiasco. Her refund fraud only affected our store, but her criminal activity with people’s credit cards touched their business and disturbed the trust of their customers.
Don’t let the lack of information on a potential new hire affect your bottom line. Look into getting background checks added to your to-do list. This simple step may save you a lot of trouble in the future.
For more information contact us: Backgroundcheckexperts.net or call 1.770.426.0547
Most people practice what they are going to say in a job interview. They come up with the likely questions and prepare their answers accordingly. You just have to make the best choice with the information you have available. You may or may not pick the right person. At first most new hires are great because they come to work when they’re scheduled, they stay over when you need them, and they seem to live and breathe to make your business successful. Unfortunately you likely won’t find out until it’s too late if you have gotten yourself a bad apple. Out of all the steps you take to pick the right person for the job, one of the most important is the background check.
You should still perform the obligatory employment history verification and check their references, of course. As far as employment history, most companies have now instated policies forbidding store level management from giving any information about former employees. You are likely to only get them to tell you whether or not the person did indeed work there. Reference checks can be helpful, but only to a short extent. I know the people on my own reference list are notified ahead of any possible calls, and they know the drill: make me sound awesome. If you are stopping after these steps, you may be setting yourself up for more work and effort in finding another employee sooner than you had hoped.
The company I work for does include a background check in the application process. I hired a young lady a few years ago, and she seemed ideal. She was well liked among her peers and the customers. She really did a great job and I was pleased with her work. Then she started having a lot of refunds on her shifts. I figured it was just a training issue, since in most cases there was a receipt for the merchandise. The refunds continued so I began to monitor her closely. I discovered she was keeping customers receipts when they didn’t take them, and in some cases she was actually getting them out of the day shift trash when she came in for the night shift. She would just wait until no one was around and take that merchandise off the sales floor and refund it with the receipt. After some investigation, she was interviewed and admitted to taking about $700 over a three month period. She was terminated and charged with embezzlement.
About a year later, I went to dinner with my family at a local steakhouse. There was a memo posted at the front desk advising recent customers to check their credit card statements. They had discovered a waitress adding major gratuities to her credit card slips at closing. Customers were finding the charges later when their statements came. The memo named the waitress and it was the very young lady I had terminated for refund fraud.
This was a large popular restaurant chain. Had they done a background check on this person, they could have possibly avoided the whole fiasco. Her refund fraud only affected our store, but her criminal activity with people’s credit cards touched their business and disturbed the trust of their customers.
Don’t let the lack of information on a potential new hire affect your bottom line. Look into getting background checks added to your to-do list. This simple step may save you a lot of trouble in the future.
For more information contact us: Backgroundcheckexperts.net or call 1.770.426.0547
There’s not a month that passes where I don’t find myself in the middle of some type of external investigation. One of the most common and popular areas of my store for shoplifters is our apparel section. Generally speaking, the bulk of our merchandise does not have a clothing security tag affixed to them. We reserved the tags for merchandise above a certain dollar limit. This helps us reduce shrink on low margin items, as well as reducing the security budget, which ultimately eats into your gross margin anyway.
The great thing about the clothing security tags is that you can identity your product very easily from a CCTV monitor. An often overlooked theft scheme in some retailers is the “price-swap”. It’s a very simple scan and is easily conducted with apparel merchandise, since the barcodes are usually held in place with a simple plastic thread. A thief will remove the higher priced barcode and replace it with the barcode of a lesser priced item. If your cashier isn’t trained to spot the difference, or is just inattentive, a thief can buy higher dollars items at quite a bargain!
A while back I was researching some suspicious refund transactions by this individual, we’ll call Bob. Bob, over the course of 3 weeks had made several returns at various store locations of high priced camouflaged pants. These particular pants retailed for $149. The company I worked for carried a wide selection of hunting apparel, so at first a few returns didn’t really raise any red flags. Over time, though, we started to see a pattern with Bob. He would return the expensive stuff, then use the store credit to purchase the cheaper brands. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, since there was a pattern to his actions. I began looking into Bob a little further and realized he was price switching the pants.
I don’t care who you are, or how much of an expert you think you are on a product line, but it is near impossible to tell one pair of camouflaged pants from another when looking at the CCTV on a register. I needed to prove what he was doing, but was having some difficulty isolating when a theft had occurred. I asked a colleague of mind for assistance, since he had a great deal more experienced than I had at the time. After reviewing a few of Bob’s purchases, my colleague pointed out the checkpoint tag on a pair of pants during one of Bob’s purchases. Those checkpoint tags were reserved for items over $99. After looking at the receipt, I saw where Bob had only paid $12.99 for the pants. I was pretty excited that I was able to make my case. I was able to prove that my shoplifter was purchasing the items at a lesser price, then returning them for full value.
While the clothing alarm device didn’t stop Bob from stealing the pants, it did assist me in my investigation. Without the tags, I would have never been able to make this case and ultimately have Bob arrested. It was a lesson I learned early on in my career, and is still a training tool I use today when speaking with cashiers.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
There’s not a month that passes where I don’t find myself in the middle of some type of external investigation. One of the most common and popular areas of my store for shoplifters is our apparel section. Generally speaking, the bulk of our merchandise does not have a clothing security tag affixed to them. We reserved the tags for merchandise above a certain dollar limit. This helps us reduce shrink on low margin items, as well as reducing the security budget, which ultimately eats into your gross margin anyway.
The great thing about the clothing security tags is that you can identify your product very easily from a CCTV monitor. An often overlooked theft scheme in some retailers is the “price-swap”. It’s a very simple scam and is easily conducted with apparel merchandise, since the barcodes are usually held in place with a simple plastic thread. A thief will remove the higher priced barcode and replace it with the barcode of a lesser priced item. If your cashier isn’t trained to spot the difference, or is just inattentive, a thief can buy higher dollars items at quite a bargain!
A while back I was researching some suspicious refund transactions by this individual, we’ll call Bob. Bob, over the course of 3 weeks had made several returns at various store locations of high priced camouflaged pants. These particular pants retailed for $149. The company I worked for carried a wide selection of hunting apparel, so at first a few returns didn’t really raise any red flags. Over time, though, we started to see a pattern with Bob. He would return the expensive stuff, then use the store credit to purchase the cheaper brands. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, since there was a pattern to his actions. I began looking into Bob a little further and realized he was price switching the pants.
I don’t care who you are, or how much of an expert you think you are on a product line, but it is near impossible to tell one pair of camouflaged pants from another when looking at the CCTV on a register. I needed to prove what he was doing, but was having some difficulty isolating when a theft had occurred. I asked a colleague of mine for assistance, since he had a great deal more experience than I had at the time. After reviewing a few of Bob’s purchases, my colleague pointed out the Checkpoint Tag on a pair of pants during one of Bob’s purchases. Those Checkpoint Tags were reserved for items over $99. After looking at the receipt, I saw where Bob had only paid $12.99 for the pants. I was pretty excited that I was able to make my case. I was able to prove that my shoplifter was purchasing the items at a lesser price, then returning them for full value.
While the clothing alarm device didn’t stop Bob from stealing the pants, it did assist me in my investigation. Without the tags, I would have never been able to make this case and ultimately have Bob arrested. It was a lesson I learned early on in my career, and is still a training tool I use today when speaking with cashiers.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
At this point, most states have passed legislation that allows nightclubs to offer bottle services. These are the services where a customer, or customers, pays for the use of a table, a dedicated waitress, and full bottles of liquors and other alcohols. Since the mark up on full liquor bottles is significantly higher than the mark up on individual shots of the same alcohol, nightclubs are scrambling to offer these services in their clubs.
Those that oppose the sales of bottle services contend that the purchase of a full bottle of alcohol brings far too many issues to be worthwhile. There are some that say if a patron or group of patrons buys a full bottle, they will feel pressured to finish off the bottle, since it cost several hundreds of dollars. Even spit up amongst a party of several people, the quantity of alcohol consumed may be too much for some to handle as they drink down their paid for bottle.
Others are a little more practical in their approach of the subject of overindulgence. Logically, a bartender who is stationary as they serve drinks from behind the bar is far less likely to notice a customer who is at risk of being over- served. They may have only served this customer one or two drink during the entire night.
A customer who is looking to drink heavily will know to go to different bartenders throughout the night to avoid suspicion. They will also have their friends buy the drinks and bring them back. This way a bartender sees a more sober patron, when the reality is someone out in the club is having way too much to drink.
A bottle service, on the other hand operates under the premise that there is one dedicated employee working the table for the entire duration. It is their responsibility to pour the drinks and the shots. It is also their responsibility to maintain a close eye on who has had how much to drink. They also need to be able to speak up to cut someone off if they are having too much.
One of the best tools a waitress working a table has are bottle locks, like the EASy Bottle. These bottle locks help the waitress to control the flow from the bottles. Even if she turns away for a minute to refresh mixers or get another bottle, no one at the table can access the liquor until they come back.
The EASy Bottle locks are caps that fit over the tops of the bottles for product denial. There is a key that unlocks the caps very quickly. Just a quickly the caps can be reattached after the pours are completed. The keys are small and very nondescript which makes it easy for the waitresses to have on hand, or tuck into a small pocket of their uniform or outfit.
In the end, using these locks is a great resource for your club to maintain their standards. They are also great tools to help convince any naysayer that bottle services can be controlled through the use of the right tools and resources.
For more information on Bottle Caps, Bottle Lock, Bottle Locks, EASy Bottle or Bottle Services in your Nightclub please contact us at Bottle Service or call 1.770.426.0547
All of the most prominent nightclubs, bars and venues in New York, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Virginia Beach, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas use Bottle Services for their best clientele. Don’t let your nightclub miss out on this VIP experience.
At this point, most states have passed legislation that allows nightclubs to offer bottle services. These are the services where a customer, or customers, pays for the use of a table, a dedicated waitress, and full bottles of liquor and other spirits. Since the mark up on full liquor bottles is significantly higher than the mark up on individual shots of the same alcohol, nightclubs are scrambling to offer these services in their clubs.
Those that oppose the sales of bottle services contend that the purchase of a full bottle of alcohol brings far too many issues to be worthwhile. There are some that say if a patron or group of patrons buys a full bottle, they will feel pressured to finish off the bottle, since it cost several hundreds of dollars. Even spit up amongst a party of several people, the quantity of alcohol consumed may be too much for some to handle as they drink down their paid for bottle.
Others are a little more practical in their approach of the subject of overindulgence. Logically, a bartender who is stationary as they serve drinks from behind the bar is far less likely to notice a customer who is at risk of being over- served. They may have only served this customer one or two drinks during the entire night.
A customer who is looking to drink heavily will know to go to different bartenders throughout the night to avoid suspicion. They will also have their friends buy the drinks and bring them back. This way a bartender sees a more sober patron, when the reality is someone out in the club is having way too much to drink.
A bottle service, on the other hand operates under the premise that there is one dedicated employee working the table for the entire duration. It is their responsibility to pour the drinks and the shots. It is also their responsibility to maintain a close eye on who has had how much to drink. They also need to be able to speak up to cut someone off if they are having too much.
One of the best tools a waitress working a table has are bottle locks, like the EASy Bottle. These bottle locks help the waitress to control the flow from the bottles. Even if she turns away for a minute to refresh mixers or get another bottle, no one at the table can access the liquor until they come back.
The EASy Bottle locks are caps that fit over the tops of the bottles for product denial. There is a key that unlocks the caps very quickly. Just as quickly the caps can be reattached after the pours are completed. The keys are small and very nondescript which makes it easy for the waitresses to have on hand, or tuck into a small pocket of their uniform or outfit.
In the end, using bottle locks is a great resource for your club to maintain their standards. They are also great tools to help convince any naysayer that bottle services can be controlled through the use of the right tools and resources.
For more information on Bottle Caps, Bottle Lock, Bottle Locks, EASy Bottle or Bottle Services in your Nightclub please contact us at Bottle Service or call 1.770.426.0547
All of the most prominent nightclubs, bars and venues in New York, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Virginia Beach, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas use Bottle Services for their best clientele. Don’t let your nightclub miss out on this VIP experience.
A High School Library is expected to operate with a certain set of standards. That typically means that there is a list of books that contain questionable material for the teenage crowd. As such, many books are banned within the school systems.
Even with the top layer of questionable content left out of the High School Library, doesn’t mean that the books that are left don’t dabble in some other taboo areas. As such, many students would rather steal a book with this content, than to take it up to a librarian and have their names documented as checking it out.
A recent report stated that in a high school library the top theft books are ones surrounding the occult, or many of the Beat writers (if the library even carries them). Because their peers, or their parents might view the reading material as questionable, these curious students are quick to shove a book in their bag and walk out the door.
When some kind of anti theft security system is in place, similar to ones used for bookstore security, the quantity of theft incidents is dramatically reduced. Students are then forced to take their chances with the bookstore security, check the book out, or read the material while in the library. Each of the three options reduces the losses for your high school library.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase Bookstore Security and Library Theft Detection System devices and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system from Checkpoint Systems to stop inventory losses.
For more information on Checkpoint Systems and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us at Retail theft prevention to stop inventory losses in your College Bookstores,
School Bookstores, School Libraries, High School Library, or
High School Bookstore call 1.770.426.0547
A High School Library is expected to operate with a certain set of standards. That typically means that there is a list of books that contain questionable material for the teenage crowd. As such, many books are banned within the school systems.
Even with the top layer of questionable content left out of the High School Library, doesn’t mean that the books that are left don’t dabble in some other taboo areas. As such, many students would rather steal a book with this content, than to take it up to a librarian and have their names documented as checking it out.
A recent report stated that in a high school library the top theft books are ones surrounding the occult, or many of the Beat writers (if the library even carries them). Because their peers, or their parents might view the reading material as questionable, these curious students are quick to shove a book in their bag and walk out the door.
When some kind of anti theft security system is in place, similar to ones used for bookstore security, the quantity of theft incidents is dramatically reduced. Students are then forced to take their chances with the bookstore security, check the book out, or read the material while in the library. Each of the three options reduces the losses for your high school library.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase Bookstore Security and Library Theft Detection System devices and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system from Checkpoint Systems to stop inventory losses.
For more information on Checkpoint Systems and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us at Retail theft prevention to stop inventory losses in your College Bookstores,School Bookstores, School Libraries, High School Library, orHigh School Bookstore call 1.770.426.0547
When you are in the business to sell high- end liquor and wine bottles, you need more than just an everyday, run of the mill, anti theft device for your bottle security. You need something that functions as an anti theft device, and still maintains other traits important to high-end wine sales.
When we think of bottle security, we tend to lean more towards bottle locks. They have been proven as an effective anti shoplifting deterrent, are easy to use and to remove at the time of purchase. Many brands are slim in design to not reduce shelf quantities, thus working to maximize sales.
For many stores, using bottle locks also prevent sampling of the product. It wouldn’t be the first time someone came into a store and started to drink from the liquor and wine bottles in a store. It won’t be the last either, but the right lock will help to reduce those incidents.
Those locks, like the EASy Bottle, are a perfect fit for most liquor and wine stores. They are not, however, perfect for high- end wine sales. Those products require a completely different anti theft structure. Alpha Security, who makes the EASy Bottle, has a better lock to prevent theft of high- end wine bottles. They made the Steel Grip bottle lock.
While the Steel Grip sounds industrial and clunky, it is actually very simplistic and refined in its design. When you are looking for high-end solutions, you need not only effective security devices, but also aesthetically pleasing solutions. Anytime the aesthetics of a security device overshadows the product, customers are less likely to purchase. The luxury feel is diminished, along with the perceived value of the item in question. No one wants to spend high-dollar prices somewhere that they feel like they are walking through a dollar store.
The Steel Grip is not just a pleasant to the eye solution. The Steel Grip actually enhances the shopping experience. Many top dollar wines are expensive beyond just brand recognition. Specific vintages, varietals, and years create very unique and desirable wines. Customers are looking to these wines not simply for consumption, but also as investments and additions to their collections.
As such, the actual bottles need to be in tiptop condition. A break in the cork can allow air inside of a bottle, rendering the wine rancid and useless. A collector will want to inspect the cork to ensure the quality and condition before they make their purchase.
In some cases, the foil wraps must also be inspected. A customer might be looking for the same evidence of bottle integrity, or they might be looking to put the bottle on display. Having a noticeable tear or scrape in the foil reduces the perfection of such a collector’s item.
The Steel Grip is a minimal band that wraps around a wine or champagne bottle. There is no cap to block a customer from inspecting the cork. The inside of the band has padding on it, which will minimize the risk of tearing or catching on a foil cover. This maximizes the value a customer sees in the item, while reducing costs to the store when they have to replace a foil covering due to damages.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase EASy Bottle bottle locks by Alpha Security and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system.
For more information on Alpha Security, Bottle Lock, Bottle locks, Bottle Security, EASy Bottle or Liquor Bottle Security and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
When you are in the business to sell high- end liquor and wine bottles, you need more than just an everyday, run of the mill, anti theft device for your bottle security. You need something that functions as an anti theft device, and still maintains other traits important to high-end wine sales.
When we think of bottle security, we tend to lean more towards bottle locks. They have been proven as an effective anti shoplifting deterrent, are easy to use and to remove at the time of purchase. Many brands are slim in design to not reduce shelf quantities, thus working to maximize sales.
For many stores, using bottle locks also prevents sampling of the product. It wouldn’t be the first time someone came into a store and started to drink from the liquor and wine bottles in a store. It won’t be the last either, but the right lock will help to reduce those incidents.
Those locks, like the EASy Bottle, are a perfect fit for most liquor and wine stores. They are not, however, perfect for high- end wine sales. Those products require a completely different anti theft structure. Alpha Security, who makes the EASy Bottle, has a better lock to prevent theft of high- end wine bottles. They made the Steel Grip bottle lock.
While the Steel Grip sounds industrial and clunky, it is actually very simplistic and refined in its design. When you are looking for high-end solutions, you need not only effective security devices, but also aesthetically pleasing solutions. Anytime the aesthetics of a security device overshadows the product, customers are less likely to purchase. The luxury feel is diminished, along with the perceived value of the item in question. No one wants to spend high-dollar prices somewhere that they feel like they are walking through a dollar store.
The Steel Grip is not just a pleasant to the eye solution. The Steel Grip actually enhances the shopping experience. Many top dollar wines are expensive beyond just brand recognition. Specific vintages, varietals, and years create very unique and desirable wines. Customers are looking to these wines not simply for consumption, but also as investments and additions to their collections.
As such, the actual bottles need to be in tiptop condition. A break in the cork can allow air inside of a bottle, rendering the wine rancid and useless. A collector will want to inspect the cork to ensure the quality and condition before they make their purchase.
In some cases, the foil wraps must also be inspected. A customer might be looking for the same evidence of bottle integrity, or they might be looking to put the bottle on display. Having a noticeable tear or scrape in the foil reduces the perfection of such a collector’s item.
The Steel Grip is a minimal band that wraps around a wine or champagne bottle. There is no cap to block a customer from inspecting the cork. The inside of the band has padding on it, which will minimize the risk of tearing or catching on a foil cover. This maximizes the value a customer sees in the item, while reducing costs to the store when they have to replace a foil covering due to damages.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase EASy Bottle bottle locks by Alpha Security and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system.
For more information on Alpha Security, Bottle Lock, Bottle locks, Bottle Security, EASy Bottle or Liquor Bottle Security and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
