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Are your staff stealing from you? Controversial and I hear shouts from both the employer and employee side , If my staff stole I'd sack them and the employee's shouting " of course we don't steal" . Hear me out , Over the years I heard and seen so many examples and recently taken on 5 employee's overnight , Talking today to a parts delivery driver the conversation got onto staff and how different some people work, some just turn up and go, others actually understand what else is entailed rather than just turning up. Going back to when I was an apprentice in the late 80's I was told in my 1st few days how it works ,The service manager explained to me, " you start at 8.30 and finish at 5.15 , by start that means ready to start , not a case of clocking on putting your overalls on and then starting work, when I say finish 5.15 that means finishing the work , then washing your hands at 5.15, not driving off the premises at 5.15 " I remember those words well , and to make sure I was always at work around 8.15 latest , some of the experienced , long term mechanics pretty much stuck to the rules too, so it wasn't just 'us apprentices' and if someone was 5 minutes late they would lose quarter of an hour's pay. I was explaining to my staff how this was when I was a lad and I'm reasonably flexible , however the give and take has to be on both sides up to a point. So am I wrong when I tell them that they are stealing from me .... Last week 3 of them come into the kitchen to make a drink at 8.30, ... then them wonder into the workshop chatting away ..eventually at about 8.50 they decide to open the workshop doors and move a couple of cars , by the time they start to bring cars in for work its 9.00am. At the end of the day come 5.00pm they start to clear up and are ready to go at about 5.05 and on the dot 5.15 they are off. To me I've lost at least 20 mins each in the morning and 10 each in the evening , that's 30 minutes per day per person , that in a week is nearly a day's worth of work - wasted . My time I asked how would they feel if I deducted the wages at the end of each month for the hours not worked ? They didn't seem to understand that they were actually stealing from me! Thoughts ?