Worker Fired After Robbed at Gunpoint

Please please please proofread your articles. I know mistakes are made occasionally however, I think people expect more from a national publication such as ABC News. Go Packers.

Mr. Moore, you were wronged by this company. Apparently there are no managerial/supervisory employees at this company who have ever worked a late shift 2 days before Christmas. I hope you find another job soon.

The fact that he worked there on a full time basis for 2 years, and it was a few days before Christmas, and he was ROBBED at gunpoint… makes this company look extremely disloyal and unkind. Each of their employees need to take this situation as a true life example of what could happen to them. Carefully worded legal response from the company, and because they offered the young man counseling, that makes it all okay. I hope Occupy get wind of this… As a matter of fact, I think I’ll send them an email.

Does Romney own this store? I bet he gets a tingle in the pants reading this headline.

The solution is obvious for Cumberland Farms employees – no matter how many people are in line or waiting to be helped, you take care of that money drawer first. Companies say they care about customer service, but policies like these make it seem unlikely.

I agree with Sunstone…. It doesn’t matter how much money was in the drawer. I worked at a bank and we had an amount to keep int the drawer but on a busy payday it was hard and you never unload a bunch of cash in front of customers!!!!!! Give me a break!!!!! It could of been $5 and he still would of been robbed!!!!! Shame on the company, this is whats wrong with our country. Your employees should be first.

Better off leaving this garbage company … I will make a note never to spend another dime with them.

I get that the kid broke the rules. I also get the reason for the rule – thieves are more likely to avoid places that don’t have much cash. What’s odd here is, the day he broke the rules on putting the cash away, was the same day he got robbed.

For me, this PR (because of its tone) reminds me particularly of the one issued by WalMart a few years ago when that young employee was trampled to death by maniac holiday shoppers as its doors opened.

If the policy is written, then it must be enforced. Not following written policies could cause the employer more grief in the future however, never put your company in a box by a policy without some kind of leniency provision for infractions that could take into account individual circumstances. I would think a convenience store employee is not likely paid more than minimum wage and a good employee sticking around for two years is not all that easy to come by. If Mr. Moore is well liked in the community, they will surly voice their opinion via patronage. If there isn’t another underlying motive for the employer to fire him and the community stops shopping the store, I’d bet there is a good chance for a rehire.

The logic about safety makes no sense here. Hypothetically if the store posted a sign indicating the registers have no more than $75 in them the robber either didn’t see them or chose to ignore them so this would be a failure in their logic. On the other hand if the store didn’t post the signs then how can this rule result in better safety becuase the robber doesn’t know the rule?

This “policy” isn’t about “safety” … which is a crock. And BTW, convenience store “thieves” are not smart enough to know or care how much cash is in the store … they rob it because it is “there” and they want money, usually for drugs … Shove your “mouthpieces” … your “reputation” is toast.

“The logic about safety makes no sense here. Hypothetically if the store posted a sign indicating the registers have no more than $75 in them the robber either didn’t see them or chose to ignore them ” Or they saw how busy it was and figured that there was much more in the till than the sign said for the very reason Mr. Moore cited he hadn’t put the excess cash in the drop safe. Or perhaps you’re right and the rule is there not for safety but to prevent employees from setting up an inside job by having a lot of readily accessible money in the register. Habitual thieves, even those who rob convenience stores, try to ensure that the reward is worth the risk of getting caught or worse. In any case, my opinion is that Mr. Moore can do at least as well as running the risk of getting shot while earning minimum wage( or close to it) by working elsewhere.

Hmm… Cumberland is owned by Gulf Oil? What possible synergies are there here? Coffee for their workers? Customers for their stores? LOL!!! Great idea to contact the company demnme5! I’m sure Ari Haseotes will take the call because Carin is so overwhelmed at this moment.

What Cumberland Farms Corporate did was wrong. Its a shame that this happened and is very telling of the nature of our corporate culture.

I for one will never shop at Cumberland Farms again. The company response was completely without compassion or caring and carried out by individuals who have obviously never worked 40hrs a week in a convenience store for 2 years at $9 per hour. The guy just went through a traumatic experience and they fire him??????????? Thankless job, no security, no assistance and no appreciation that when you are the one person minding the store, you can’t just leave customers on their own to move cash around even if company policy dictates. If he had left the front of the store, and they might have lost more than $150 to shoplifting. Idiots. You lost a loyal employee and with any luck…..you’re going to lose loyal customers. Who at the top gets axed for this stupid call????????

Clearly, this smells like an inside job. More to the firing than what is said on surface.

I don’t think a lot of commenters here have ever run a cash register – i did at a Busch Gardens in the 70s, and my register took in over $2,000 per shift. Would he have had to leave the register unattended to get the money to the safe? How busy had it been in the half hour before the robbery? Most registers keep track of the amount of the sale, and the amount tendered, so you can easily see if he had received a number of large bills immediately before the robbery. Details are needed.

Easy solution, when it goes about $75, put it in your pocket. Then you are in full compliance.

Simple- show your disapproval by People Power- boycott the store.
Employers need to understand that you can’t treat poeple like that and get away with it!!

Cumberland Farms, you have LOST MY BUSINESS and I hope the business of many readers here!!

All of you dissing on Cumberland Farms – there is a safety factor here. If the robber realized that there was $150 rather than $75 in the register he probably would have brought two guns. As it was, knowing the policy he only brought one. So you can clearly see that their policy works. As for Mr. Moore, I hope he completes school., gets a good job, makes a fortune, buys Cumberland Farms and fires all involvred in stupid policies and decisions.

Cumberland farms is the WORST employer out there. Some years back there was a class action suit against them because they would systematically accuse employees of stealing money or merchandise from them and attempt to extort money from their employees.. or threaten to send them to jail if the employee did not pay up!! They would lie and say they had video evidence of the employee stealing… when no such thing existed. What legitimate employeer does that?

Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! Boycott!

___”Question. What if you haave to give someone change for a 50? Now you have a 50 in your drawer and only $30 in small bills, but you have to put some in the safe. You are left with large bills and (I am assuming based on their safety policy), the kid working the register can’t get INTO the safe. How does he get change if he can’t make change for the customer? I understand putting a limit, but with it being near Christams, more money is necessary to make the change customers will inevitably need.”

Posted by: Daniel | January 11, 2012, 6:33 pm 6:33 pm_____________Most of these convenient stores have signs that say that large bills are not accepted. I have seen a store which says bills lager that $20 are not accepted. It is meant to reduce the inceidence of poeple passing counterfeit currencies into the system.

Having worked probably 10 years on the night shift at various convenience stores, let me offer a few things.
1. Depending upon where it was located, putting monies into the drop safe could be relatively easy or close to impossible with customers in the store, at the pumps, etc. Generally they choose the location for it with about as much common sense applied as they use to write the policy about when/how to drop the money. If all he had to do was grab a stack of bills, turn and put them in the slot, that’s one thing. If he had to count it fill out a form, wrap it in a rubber band, and leave the immediate area of the register (like many places) then he’d have probably been held liable for the shoplifting and drive offs that occurred ie lose/lose
2. Whenever a company makes a big point of saying “this isn’t about the money” – it’s about the money…. after all they were too cheap to schedule a second person on a day that they knew, or should have based upon past years, it would be very busy. Maintaining a “$75 maximum” was difficult on a busy night by yourself with $2 gas, so with $4? That’s less than ONE SUV fill up!
3. Evening/Night shift traditionally get dumped all the jobs that the day people didn’t get to (or didn’t want to), plus all the restocking and most of the cleaning. On a slow night you can get it all done, on a busy one, you’ve got about 200 things that need doing and you DO get a bit frazzled. It’s easy to lose track of something like making a dump.
4. The evening/night clerks not only traditionally have the highest probability of getting robbed, they also have the highest probability of being made the scapegoat by the manager/owner when things go wrong. (I worked at a place where the assistant manager was selling stuff out the back door. They fired all the night and evening folks as a matter of course, BEFORE actually investigating!)

To everyone upset that he “wasn’t following the rules” What idiot makes a rule that your only allowed to have $75 in the (gas station!) register at a time? Lets try to come up with a hypothetical situation. Gas station has x customers waiting in line, y are there for gas, z of them are there for lottery tickets. Lets just say that the gas purchasers have to fill up 20 – 25 gallon tanks at $3.5 per gal. Lets say that instant lottery tickets can cost up to $20 per ticket and at around $5 for a full lotto ticket and they get w (whatever) amount of tickets. To keep it simple just ignore any other purchases such as drinks, food, and cigarettes. Even with just a few average customers your emptying the register every time you turn around! Cost me over $80 to fill an f150 tank yesterday, I guess I should’ve been fired the attendant when I handed her the money :( I could only imagine how busy it was when people were actually buying cards and gifts from a gas station.

Now we know which convenience store to avoid

Cumberland Farms is a crook. They did approximately the same thing to my cousin many years ago. They said that they did an inventory of the store and he was over $500 short of gas receipts. They made him sign a receipt for the money and were going to take it out of his pay for several months. He got smart, however, and handed this whole thing over to a lawyer. They never pushed it again. He went out and found another job and then quit.

Leaving extra money in the register, and losing it in a robbery sends a message to the street that the place may be worth the risk to rob, and not just that stirs, but every store in the chain, increasing the risk of further robberies, endangering every clerk working a register. I feel for the guy, but he deserved to be fired.

Damn, that is messed up. First you get robbed at gunpoint and then get fired from job because, when being robbed, you had about twenty-five to fifty dollars too much in the cash register. *smdh* Hopefully, Moore will pick up an even better job now.

I watch the news and other crime shows. If given enough time, a robber will make the employee open the safe to get the rest of the $ and if they cant get it open may kill the employee in anger. He could have lost his LIFE just because the robber wanted to kill his witness. The loss of $75 could have been recouped from his pay check. There must have been more to the firing

The store is guilty. This man was in a no win situation. Either he ignores the customers and leaves the register/gas pumps/shelves unattended to put cash in the safe, or he has too much cash in the register. Either way, he is in trouble. Do they seriously expect him to run to the safe every time someone fills up their SUV. The company should have made sure that there was enough staff working so that all of their policies could be followed. To expect one person (and on a busy day even two) to help customers, restock shelves, clean up spills, watch the gas pumps, re-fill the soda machines or ice, and still keep track of how much money is in the register and fill out the forms (there must be forms, otherwise, how would they know when the money was put there, and which till it came out of, and therefore whether or not the till was correct) to put the money in the safe. If the store wants their policies followed, they are responsible for ensuring that they have adequate staff to do so. If they do not have adequate staff, they are setting their employees up so that there is no way that every policy can be followed. Maybe that is intentional so they can fire someone and never be charged with discrimination.

The policy of 7-11 is to put bigger notes received in safe. Customers usually give big notes for changes. Therefore, big notes usually will not be used again. If he didn’t put the big notes in safe at the peak period, that means the robbers had taken away a lot of money.

Most robbers don’t pull a gun when it’s busy, they wait for the store to clear out.
Means the guy prob had time to lock the money up

Please Mr. Moore, This is a blessing in disguise to be released from that store. The owner doesn’t know it but because you had enough money in the register at that particular time, that is what saved your life that night….If you have given the perpetrator $75.00 They would’ve been highly upset and asked for more, then you would’ve had to lead them to the safe and I will not even speak on the rest… GOD is great all the time and that time , it wasn’t your time…

I will never shop there, and I will speak to everyone I know about not shopping there either, nor looking for employment with this corporation. Good job Cumberland – hopefully word will get around and you’ll have hold up signs on the street corner asking for customers !!!! Way to support your employees.

This is a typical tactic used by employers. They give employees so many tasks to do that if they fail, which is often necessarily the case, they are terminated for cause. This justification gives the appearance of fairness. If, for instance, the employee chose to give priority to keeping the cash register drawer under $75, the customer line would have been so long that customers would have gone elsewhere to shop to save valuable last minute Christmas shopping being just 2 days before Christmas. The ensuing reduction in sales, customer complaints, lack of completion of various housekeeping chores would have assuredly led to this unfortunate employee joining the ranks of the unemployed if he had complied with the $75 till limit. The choice he had was to decide which policy or policies he would violate. He chose violating (to a modest degree I must add) the $75 cash register limit. This violation yields more money for the company and investors which is ultimately the bottom line objective for most companies- 99.999999999%. However, Cumberland Farms is not the newest sprout in the field- the PR they are getting from this story assuredly sends the message to any future robbers (at least to the ones that can read and have Internet access) that they are only going to net $75 from robbing one of its stores- not a good return on one’s risk investment. Assaulting a Cumberland Farms gets you about the same punishment as bilking millions from Wall Street Investments- use your time wisely and get an education and hopefully avoid all acts of plunder and serve humanity. The only possible scenario that may have spared this unfortunate Cumberland Farms employee this major life aggravation would be if he was protected by a labor union. As with any organization or anything for that matter- you have good and bad. A good union could have saved his job. The next time you are offered a union agreement- consider it as an insurance policy on your future- to maintain a job, and to even get a job in the future beyond your present job- for instance- this terminated Cumberland Farms employee also has to deal with having been fired from a job on his next job interview which will likely result in his long term unemployment status. Prospective employers will not even consider his application for they are avoiding even those who presently are unemployed but have a good work reference and history. A labor union is what the employees make of it- make it good and everyone, including the employer, will be served well. I have been an independent labor union organizer (so that I would decide the employee/employer dynamics), employer, business owner.

Crackheads will rob you at gunpoint for $5.00.
Another testament to corporate stupidity. America worships corporations because it worships stupidity too.

I support the company, what it did was the best for it’s employees, even if one of them is worse off. For all the people saying “What difference does it make how much money is in the till?”, it probably made the difference between him getting robbed and not. Criminals know the signs of a place that doesn’t have much money to rob, for a start there are signs saying “No more than $75 in till”. When an employee violates the policy he puts every other employee in danger. Clearly the robber researched the job (“cased the joint”) and established the time when there would be most money in the till. We don’t know how often this guy was lax with the cash drawer, but the robber could easily have noticed that he was lax and figured he would have more. By firing him the company is reemphaising that robbers will get no more than $75, which could save their employees lives.