gallows bay employee busted

It happens. Some employees no matter how long they work for you feel they are undercompensated and take stuff to make up for what they think they are worth!

this just makes me sad. if it is who i think it is, he was always nice

I've seen him working in that store for 14 years. He also ran the GB plumbing store back when it was open.
This really surprised me as well!!!!!!!!

Guess ya never know...
Think how much stuff he could lift in 30 years. Wow! Reminds me of a Johnny Cash tune "One piece at a Time".

Ha, ha! It took the other employee this long to report the thefts? Nobody was held responsible for the missing inventory during annual counts?

The VI has too many ostriches. If you don't have checks in place, your business could be next.

I too was shocked to read that Noel had be charged with theft.

He seemed like such a nice guy, but looks can be deceiving.

But didn't they have security cameras?

That's pretty basic equipment in retail stores these days.

he is one person they should have been able to trust.

It happens. Some employees no matter how long they work for you feel they are undercompensated and take stuff to make up for what they think they are worth!

This is true, but then again, some people are just thieves, no matter what the circumstances.

I've known "Happy" for a long time. I was both surprised and saddened by this.

Even with cameras the board of labor always seems to side with the employee. Even with completly conclusive video. It's sickening - I could NEVER work in retail here with such crooks. I wish I could tell you the half dozen stories right now but I can't. It would blow your mind what happens here in retail.

Come on AandA2VI...tell us some Office Max stories!

ric, that is who i thought it was. and i agree with AandA 100% dol usually does side with the employee. too bad this is not a right to work area

... dol usually does side with the employee. too bad this is not a right to work area

It's an interesting observation as, years ago, DOL was entirely skewed towards the employer and not the employee. I believe the playing field is much more level now.

Noel was and is a very nice person. But I don't condone theft and if the allegations against him are true, as I suspect they are, then he should stand up to the penalty.

But it should be noted that during Phil and Mary's tenure at GBH in Gallows Bay, and at Sunny Isle back in the day, theft was a managerial institution. I don't know (and frankly doubt) whether Noel was complicit in that very long fraud, but theft was how things were done for decades. Noel chose NOT to move to Gannets with the Croziers and was allowed to stay at GBH, along with most of the better GBH employees, which says something. None of that mitigates his alleged crime, but I believe seeing Noel in the longer context of GBH is helpful if you want to understand how some good people casually cross lines that other people see as absolute.

agree to disagree, i think it leans way to far to the employee

gallows bay sure was better when phil and mary ran it. i just dont understand how they did not do well at schooner bay and the new gannet.

Home Depot ...

lots of thieving going on there too

Phil and Mary's tenure was marked with exactly the thing Noel is charged with, only on a much grander scale. I was no at all surprised gannets failed.

I should edit to add I have only second hand info regarding this issue.

It truly saddens me to read this story, I have a high regard for employees that have stayed with a company for so long, and I generally assume after that length of time they are honest and trustworthy. I've always been astounded here, that employee theft was never/rarely reported to the police. I do believe if someone steals from you or your company, they should be reported to the police and prosecuted. I know thefts by employees happen here frequently, and the employee is fired, but often not reported to the police. I commend GBH for doing what should be done, I hope other companies will follow suit when/if they are in this situation. I don't know the person involved in this, and quite frankly ... as nice as he may be, I don't care. If you steal from your employer or anyone, you are a thief and should be held accountable.

Many years ago I owned a restaurant. I discovered that some employees, several who were close friends, were thieves. It seems that many, I won't say .. most,.. employees will steal if they get the chance. It was a sad awakening for me. Some of it was as subtle as my good friend, the bartender not ringing drinks or letting friends drink for free, or as blatant as a ham going out the back door or an entire days receipts disappearing.

I am not sure why this happens, but I can understand why employers often do not trust their employees.

Most of that theft is small time when we look at our local government employees and officials. They have moved stealing from tax payers into the big time.

gallows bay sure was better when phil and mary ran it. i just dont understand how they did not do well at schooner bay and the new gannet.

Had you not been into Schooner Bay Market during the "Stephanie/Wallace" era? Obviously they had no idea how to run a grocery store. But at least the place is being totally remodeled by folks who do know how to run a store and will reopen in June.

of course, look at the difference between the two. when they ran gallows bay it was always well stocked, schooner bay on the other hand was never stocked-so why the difference? why could they not run that the way gallows bay was?

Come on AandA2VI...tell us some Office Max stories!

Her bf would be in hot water if someone at OMax reported that she cited specific incidents... but I won't! 🙂

I would venture a guess that over 50% of all retail associates in the VI are thieves, or will steal if an opportunity presents itself. The first thing I noticed day one at OMax is that the alpha keys, they black keys they use to unlock those security containers, had been cut off of the cash registers - every last one. We had three, but kept them in lockup and had to go get one every time someone bought something in a container. One day I'm walking around the store and I see an associate holding an alpha key, checked lockup and all three were there. I'm thinking "great, how many of these are floating around this island" and confront him and he says "oh, I just found it."

One day a customer comes back in with a camera box she'd just bought and said there was no camera in it. I went into lockup and started spot checking and found at least 20 cameras stolen out of the boxes, so now I'm suspicious of all logistics associates on the night crew. I was showing a customer a large desk on the furniture pad and opened a large filing cabinet drawer and it was filled to the brim with empty Coke bottles and candy wrappers. I checked cameras for the night before and sure enough, when the night crew gets in they raid the candy and Coke cooler and then gather around that desk and chow down. We had one really good guy on the night crew, we actually just promoted him to supervisor. One day I closed at night and then opened the next morning. Apparently he didn't know I cound the computers when I close or open, and between closing and opening we were missing one. Watched camera footage and sure enough, our new superviser stuffed a computer between pallets and wheeled it out the back door.

Our best cashier, a nice young woman with a great personality, always on time, always willing to give you an extra hand (a total anomally for retail associates here) got busted by loss prevention in PR, they caught her liberating about $7000 from our cash drawers. Another time I was in the cash office with a cashier counting down her drawer and she was exactly $300 short. I asked her what the hell happened and got the typical vacant stare and "I don't know. Can I go now?"

Once watched a sales associate go up a ladder, pull down two large LCD monitors, and walk them out to someone's car and load them up. Apparently the only time you get good service is when they're helping you steal something.

Christmas Eve 2007, I notice two teenagers sitting at the back of the furniture pad for over 30 minutes. I walked back and asked them if they were being helped, and they say they are so I walk back to the manager's office and just watch them. Sure enough a sales associate comes out of receiving from the back end rolling a 4 drawer filing cabinet over to the kids and starts making his way up to the registers. Oh yes, two teenagers buying a file cabinet at 9 o'clock at night on Christmas Eve. So I hop on the radio and tell him "hey we've got a new policy with filing cabinets because we're getting too many complaints about dents. When you get to the register let's open it up to make sure it's fine." Off in the distance I see the top of the filing cabinet do a 180 and make a b-line for receiving, where I was waiting for him. He pulled the cabinet out and stuffed the box full of electronics. Of course, he claimed he didn't know and didn't know the "customers."

I cleared out a room in the back to start storing furniture in there and found a five foot tall stack of security containers that had been torched through with a butane lighter, that was nice.

We used to have a delivery van and I was shocked to learn that nobody actually checks what's being loaded into it, a receiving associate hands him invoices and he just loads it up and goes. I spot checked him after he'd loaded the van and half of the merchandise was not on an invoice, it was going straight to his friends' houses.

For a time we had a Sales Manager that was about as smart as a brick. He didn't know how to do a change order, so instead of asking one of us he just loaded up the Sales Supervisor with a few thousand dollars cash in a laptop bag and send him marching to Banco. There are two containers hooked up to the building, and on his way back with the change an armed gunman jumped out of them at 11am and at gunpoint ordered him to give up the bag. Either one of our associates or someone at the bank had obviously tipped him off that a kid in an OfficeMax costume was about to stroll buy it with a bag full of money. He left island in fear and the Sales Manager was fired.

As you would guess, the store has an elaborate network of motion sensors that are set at night if there's no overnight crew. One day it malfunctioned and would no longer arm. Centurion came out and told me what they need from PR and that the system wouldn't be functioning for a week. I told them I'm not worried about it, we have a lot of trucks this week and will have an overnight crew every night except one, that Wednesday. That Wednesday night we were burglarized. There is a communication booth in the back of receiving that isn't used for anything, and that day two men walked into receiving through the back entrance and climbed into it. After we closed and locked up, they casually climbed out of it with a power drill, and we can clearly see in the video that they didn't come in with it. There are three locked rooms, one had computers/laptops one had low dollar value but high theft items and one had the cash office with the safe. They walk right to the computer room, kick the door in, and start stacking up laptops next to the back door. They they walk right past the low dollar value room to the cash office and kick that in, then spend no less than an hour drilling into it. Totally unconcerned about getting out quickly because they know the alarm isn't working. They even know exactly where the totally non-descript box is that is the actual alarm if you open a door and covered it with industrial foam before leaving.

These are just theft stores off the top of my head, if I started getting into lazyness and general inteptitude I'd wear out this keyboard.

Speedy, at schooner bay they were not using someone else's money/credit line.