You just got to love life don't you?
I probably shouldn't be posting this here, but there isn't really anyone else I can talk to that's not involved. Today I found out the office manager (none family) at the small, family owned (my family) business has been embezzling money from us. I have been being trained by her to fill in while she is out since she is pregnant. She has been gone a lot with doctors etc. and I was taking care of things today. From a quick look through of our books she has taken a pretty good amount over a number of years. We aren't talking Swiss bank accounts and a home in Tahiti kind of money, but it's a good chunk of change, in the low five digits, and there is likely more that I haven't found yet. When I first started getting suspicious I called her and asked some probing questions in the guise of not being sure how to handle something with our system, nothing that would tell her I knew, but it was enough to make her voice pretty stressed.
I brought the owners into this (two closely related family members of mine) and we checked things out. We were able to find out enough that there is absolutely no doubt that she did these. And we are still trying to figure out how to handle this. We know we are not going to get the law involved, that's for sure. She is pregnant and has no husband or even father of her child to support her. All we would end up doing is hurting the kid. And who knows what the stress of this kind of situation would do to her and the child in her condition, she is already considered an at risk pregnancy. She has also been a friend to the whole family for a long time, which is the worst part. She was almost like family. There is also the practical matter of only her really knowing how to run all the back room part of the business, and If any of y'all have ever worked in a small business you know that there are a billion things you need to know how to do, and all in a different way to fit your company. We could get by without her, I have learned most of the basics and we could reach out to some other people for help, but it would end up being a whole hell of a lot of work. So you can see this isn't easy for us. And since one of my bosses just locked her out of our banking accounts, and she texted him asking why since she got a email notification about it from the bank, she has got to have the thought that we might be catching on to her.
The worst part for me though is that I trusted her, I have even defended her when other members of my family bring up some complaint about her. I have never been a very social person and haven't interacted with very many people, but I thought I could judge people's character better than this. I thought people in general were better than this. How can you laugh and joke around with people you are betraying the whole time? I have Asperger's, and I always thought I had trained myself through very hard work and effort to have most of the skills neurotypical's have. I guess I was just fooling myself, I might as well be that autistic teen in southern Maryland that was abused by two teen girls that he thought, and still thinks, are his friends. I no longer trust my judgment on people, maybe on anything.
Oh, and just to add icing to the cake her mother suddenly died last week. Yeah, great time for all this to come to a head, huh?
Comments
Let's remember who the victims are here...
You're family that owns the business. Its money out of their pockets. If it were a struggling small business, this could be enough to put it out of business. If you let her go, and son't press charges, what would stop her from victimizing her next employers?
If you aren't going to fire her, then someone has to constantly monitor everything she is doing, which will double the work for someone. I'm guessing she wouldn't be able to pay your family back the money.
As for the timing...there is not good time to steal, and certainly not to get caught. Maybe she has a drug problem? Maybe she did it to pay medical bills. That still doesn't make her the victim. It sounds like her circumstances are very sad but once that trust is broken, it takes a long time to earn it back.
{{Hugs}}
Frank
Firstly...
I doubt the Asperger's has much to do with it. In fact her feelings and reactions may be perfectly genuine. Some people seem to shut half themselves off.
Secondly, I think you need to know why and where. Why she was taking the money and how/where it was spent. The answers to those questions will tell you how to deal with her.
If you want a private chat PM.
A long time ago in a small souther town
I had a friend who was the CEO for a family owned business. He was not part of the family. The business operated two retail operations, a consignee warehouse and delivery service, and a small wholesale oil and gasoline business, servicing about 20 local service stations and mom & pop grocery/gas stations.
The CEO noticed some anomalies, investigated quietly and found that the manager for the oil wholesale business was under-reporting sales. A lot of their business was in cash.
The whole town was surprised when it all came out, because the man had a good reputation in town. If the company were to prosecute him his whole family would have suffered tremendously.
Instead, the owners moved the man to another, lower position within the company, where he didn't have any responsibility over money. The explanation was, he was otherwise an exceptional employee, and simply had a weakness to the temptation of handling cash unsupervised.
The business then took steps to tighten security, but as far as I knew the employee continued in another business unit for many more years. When asked, the owners told folks in town that it was as much their fault for putting the employee into the situation as it was the employee's fault for succumbing.
The whole incident was an object lesson to the local town in forgiveness.
Hugs
Carla Ann
Sounds like a soap opera
It's your business and can do as you wish, but I'd have her so out of there, and to be honest, if she robbed you of five figure money, I'd get the police involved. Boo hoo, I'm pregnat, how can you do this to me? Well you should have thought of that before you stole money from someone else. When I had a walk in retail business I hired a new girl when my daughter moved to Las Vegas. She seemed very well suited for the job. Things were going well until I received a bill for a credit card I never applied for. The balance was past due and they wanted their money. I explained that I never applied for the card and their answer was, yes you did, we have your social security number on the application. I asked to see a copy of the application and yep, everything was there, address name social, the works, except when the application was filled out it had the wrong birth date. It seems the new girl used one of those you're approved applications and filled it out using the business address for the mailing address, hence she knew to head off the card when it came. Needless to say we fired her the next day, and I really liked the girl, but I won't put up with theft or lying. Like I said, it's your business, but if it was me, I''d ask her to not let the door hit her on the ass on the way out, Arecee