This has been laying on my conscience all day and I feel like a dumbass for basically putting my own job at risk for no reason. Mainly because I make a little above minimum wage and I didn’t want to get involved or be asked as a witness when I just wanted to do my job and go home.
I was working self checkout and an employee who works there wanted to get a gift card after they clocked out. I clicked the approve button when he scanned it. It was rush hour at noon, tons of people needed help with items that are mislabeled, accidentally scanning things twice, asking questions, etc. It’s mayhem on Sunday. And I saw the employee I approved the 50 dollar gift card leave the store like anyone else. About 15 mins later I see the self checkout screen STILL says the item is there, and they only paid for the soft drink they bought which was 2 bucks. The machine was still waiting for him to pay the 50 dollars.
I didn’t know what to do… as I couldn’t suspend the transaction since part of it was paid. I asked a team leader who tried to do the same thing like me to no avail too. She was like “I can’t even suspended it, damn.” I was like “yeah, someone didn’t pay for the gift card after I approved it, and left.”
She ended up having to turn the entire self checkout out computer off and reboot and then we had to say that self checkout machine was closed for the next hour. The assistant manager came over and was like “oh the machines off” and my team leader was like “yeah a customer didn’t pay for the 50 dollar gift card and just left, and I couldn’t suspend the transaction”. And he was like “oh we might have to cancel that transaction so the gift card isn’t useable”. And he just walked away.
At this point I couldn’t go back and say “yeah so and so did it!”. Had I known it would take rebooting the self checkout and everything I would have just said who did it and let that person get burned. But not wanting to get involved or deal with drama over a stupid minimum wage job, I let it go. In my head I was like I don’t get paid enough to deal with this, so whatever, if that employee is stealing that’s on them.
I feel like a moron and will never do that again. If I see someone stealing I’m gonna report it. My anxiety is thru the roof and I should have just said who it was in reality. I really feel like a dumbass who is possibly jeopardizing my own job because I hate confrontation. I don’t even know why I lied in actuality.