5 tricks your “trusted” staff may be using

A pump owner phoned me: “Sir, something is wrong at my pump. The accounts do not match. My employee is very honest. He has worked here for 10 years. But 1,200 litres have gone missing in the last 3 months.” I went to his pump, and within 30 minutes I saw three tricks.

Trick 1: rounding the reading

The meter says 21457.8. The register says 21450.0. It is only 7.8 litres. “Sir, why write down to the decimal?” But 7.8 litres a day over 30 days is 234 litres a month, or about ৳21,060 at ৳90 a litre. That is lakhs a year from rounding alone.

Trick 2: the gap at shift change

The day shift’s closing reading at 6 PM is 28945. The night shift’s opening reading at 6:05 PM is 28930. “Sir, there was a little confusion. I could not read it properly.” That is 15 litres, or ৳1,350, every day. It is the most dangerous trick because each shift blames the other, the owner is usually not there, the records get confusing, and it is hard to prove.

Trick 3: rush-hour “mistakes”

In peak hours, 7 to 9 AM and 5 to 7 PM, there are many customers and a lot of chaos. The attendant notes the reading quickly but wrongly on purpose, for example 8765 instead of 8795. “Sir, I made a mistake in the rush.” Owners rarely check at busy times and simply trust the staff.

Trick 4: the calculator game

Educated staff do this one. They keep every reading correct but get the final calculation wrong. Closing 45678 minus opening 45234 is really 444 litres, but the register says 410. The 34-litre difference is worth ৳3,060. The owner checks the readings, finds them correct, and never checks the arithmetic.

Trick 5: the vanishing slip

Some slips just “get lost”. “Sir, I can’t find that slip. I may have thrown it away by mistake.” That slip held a 120-litre sale, a ৳10,800 transaction. The whole sale is missing.

Why these work so well here

• A culture of trust: “my boy is a good boy”
• Family businesses, where close monitoring is rare
• Small losses are ignored: “it’s only a little”
• Manual record keeping with no real-time monitoring
• The owner is away during the key hours

How automatic recording stops them

• Every litre is recorded automatically with a timestamp, with no manual step to tamper with, and the data is backed up in real time
• Shifts open and close automatically, so there is no gap between them and staff are accountable by name
• An SMS when something unusual appears, a daily summary report, and remote monitoring from your phone

Honest staff usually welcome it, because it also protects their reputation. The only real way to know whether your staff are honest is digital monitoring.