PUBLISHED ON JUNE 16, 2024 IN LINKEDIN
How To Reduce Employee Theft In Your Laundromat
An overlooked aspect of Laundromat ownership is what knowledge can help reduce employee theft. Our current society appears to have a reduced attention to honesty and this is reflected in the necessity of increased attention by ownership.
Perhaps the salesmen promoted concept of Laundromats that can be operated with limited supervision contributes to any increase in employee theft. The old phrase of “When the cat is away, the mice will play” seems to be a universally accepted principle of restraining employee theft.
The significant increase in rent, gasoline and food has likely contributed to any increase as well. In days past you might accept the minor reduction of soap products, soda and candy from your stock. Most owners viewed this shrinkage as acceptable or allowed. Now the stakes are higher especially with the expanded spread of Wash & Dry and pick up and delivery being performed in Laundromats.
Wash & Dry requires a diligent attention to management details. Here’s one reason why: If you’re selling your services at $1.50 a pound, for example, a fifty-pound load of clothes brought in by a customer should gross an income of $75.00. It doesn’t take long for a shrewd customer to realize that if no management is present, why not offer your employee $30.00 in cash plus the cost to start your washers and dryers to wash the clothes for them? This scenario is more common than most owners realize.
A second method of theft in coin operated stores is when you provide service keys to your employees. They soon learn that a pencil can trigger the coin drop and start the machines for the customers at a reduced rate.
A third method is when a store uses tokens. Some smart employees will discover that these tokens of the correct size can be purchased from a token supplier and then sold at discount to your customers. Your employees appear to be helping the customer but in reality, are feathering their own nests.
A fourth method of theft is done by repair persons who discover a simple repair can be turned into a profitable service trip by wiping an old part clean and installing it as a new part in your machines. The alternative to just technique is to just bill you for a part that was never removed and never installed.
A fifth method is used on stores with coin slides. A blocking device (often two quarters glued together) is inserted between the coin box and the slide so coins are deposited in the meter housing and later removed by the service person or your employee. Normally these blocks are deposited in five to ten machines for limited hours and changed to various machines throughout your store. If discovered it’s hard to prove it was just not another coin jam.
A sixth method applies to card operated stores using proprietary cards where someone has broken the code and your employee sells the cards loaded with significant money on it for reduced prices. Of course, the manufacturers are constantly fighting this possibility, but a search of Google will reveal a variety of potential methods of beating the card systems.
There are many more methods which I will avoid mentioning to avoid the hacks being discovered and implemented by any marginally honest customers and employees. Suffice it say that I’ve had hundred of thousands of dollars stolen from me in my ownership and operation of fifty or so stores in the last fifty years. If you’re running a high gross volume store, the theft of $100 to $200 a week is barely discoverable by the average owner. I paid for my knowledge over the years from some of the most apparently honest workers. I hope this helps others to avoid paying for their own knowledge.