I work part time for a small local chain of liquor stores and all employees just received the following hostile, derogatory memo. I’m publishing it here in full with identifying details redacted. Apologies for the length but there is some pretty juicy stuff in this thing.
“The information I am going to cover is abundant. I would much rather do this in person, but due to geographical challenges in having all our employees in the same room, at the same time, this email will have to suffice. This email will cover some of my observations concerning this company over the last several years, as well as our owners' observations over that same time period. The following information needs to be printed out in all stores, and each employee must read and sign this document. A copy of this document will need to be kept in a file by the manager, as this document will concern some changes to policy and procedures here at [company name]. Please print 1 per employee.
First off, as I am sure many of you are aware by now, we were the target of scammers through several of our locations over the past ten days. I'd like to say these scammers were sophisticated, but I wouldn't find that to be true. These criminals were able to convince eight employees throughout six stores of a con so egregious, that if I didn't know some of these people personally, I would be convinced that everybody was in on it. These employees were given a story, from 2 guys, about how they were in a catering business and purchasing bottles for a lavish wedding. They went on to purchase high end bottles, doing so over many separate transactions, with multiple different credit cards, and all the cards were on their phone. Not one physical card was present for any transaction, and as many as 16 transactions were performed in one store. All their visits to each store took less than 30 minutes, so these were not spread out over many days. Overall, these guys were able to get away with 44 transactions, in 6 stores, for a total of nearly $25,000. By now, I have talked to every manager to let them know that we DO NOT INPUT CREDIT CARDS MANUALLY. Now, there are exceptions. If you know a customer personally, and recognize them as a regular, and their card will not work on our machine, due to machine malfunction or chip/magnetic stripe malfunction, then you are allowed to take that card with proper ID. Also, when we have tasters come in the store, they will have stored CC info on their phone from their company. That is fine, but only for the purchase that they are sampling out. What really gets to me, concerning this whole ordeal, is that several of the employees that were duped, had a gut feeling that something awry was going on but failed to act on it. Every employee needs to know that moving forward, it's better to be safe than sorry. I know it is cliche, but if just one person would have acted on their “gut feeling” much of this could have been avoided. This event has caused us to re-evaluate certain things here at [company name]. There will be some personnel changes moving forward, as well as the aforementioned policy and procedure changes. An event of this magnitude really makes us ponder how many of our current employees are actually looking out for the best interests of the company they work for. There are some for sure, I have met and talked to some, and the actions of others throughout the last several years have demonstrated their love for this company. Managers, take this into consideration for those first 90 days of a new employee's probation period, which ones demonstrate that demeanor and sharpness that it takes to effectively work within a system that is always going to be targeted by criminals. Whether it's someone trying to purchase illegally, due to age or drunkenness, or someone trying to rob us of tens of thousands of dollars.” — continued in comments.