A Meth-Head to His Madness

On a cold December day, I was approached by the Compliance Director regarding an anonymous complaint she received regarding one of our employees, “Randy.” The caller explained that Randy purchases drugs from her boyfriend and that it started off with crack-cocaine, but has since turned to meth. She also alleged that Randy was giving her boyfriend free gift cards to local stores and didn't know why. She reported that she was telling us because she was concerned that one of our customers would get hurt if Randy was behind the wheel and caused an accident, and that we would be liable if anything happened to our customers if he was driving under the influence. (If only we had this lady watching Nick too - see “Crash Dummy”)

A few days later, we received another call from our mystery woman, explaining that Randy was going to meet her boyfriend again to purchase a $50 bag of meth, while he was scheduled to be working. The woman explained that Randy was away for his birthday, and was now feigning for a fix.

The allegations were obviously disturbing, but we couldn't help but wonder why this woman was so invested in Randy’s wrongdoings. I hate to be so cynical, but it would be curious for the girlfriend of a drug dealer to be so concerned about the health and wellbeing of our customers. It sounded like she personally had it out for Randy, so Randy’s manager and manager’s manager were extremely skeptical that these allegations were just reported to cause trouble. But being in the business for so long, I’m smart enough to know that usually when there's smoke there's fire, and that regardless of the intentions, we needed to determine what actually happened in order to prevent the company from risk.

So, in order to confirm or deny the allegations, yours truly decided initiated an investigation. First and foremost, I sent Randy for an unannounced drug screening. While on the phone with his manager and him, I explained the situation and told him he needs to immediately go from a drug screening. As Randy worked overnight, and I was delivering this message in the morning, towards the end of his shift, Randy quickly gave an excuse that he couldn't risk that the screening would take longer than expected and not be able to take his son to school. We knew it was bullshit, but after much pressing the issue, he refused to go and I felt as if I couldn't pressure him in the event he were telling the truth about his son. We explained that he needed to get the screening done by the end of the day. Unfortunately, when he arrived at the testing site, they refused to see him as it was too late in the day (we confirmed this). A few days and a few excuses later, we had to give him an ultimatum, and he finally went for the screening.

The screening, as you probably guessed it, came back positive for… *drum role please* …cocaine and methamphetamine! If you guessed that correctly, you can subscribe to this blog and win a free prize (e-mail updates from me!). When confronted about the results of his drug screening, Randy explained that he had been away at a bachelor party, where all of the groomsmen used the illegal drugs found on his screening results recreationally. But with further investigating, his staff corroborated that he always seemed to be a little “off” but believed that it was “just his personality.” One even cited that she had to often “reign him in,” while dealing with customers and described him as a “real hot head.”

In terms of the gift cards, the anonymous caller was able to correctly identify the types of gift cards we gave out to assist with customer relationship building. As a Supervisor, Randy was able to sign out and give out the gift cards at his own discretion. Although Randy’s staff claimed claim that they rarely gave out gift cards, nor did they see Randy give out the gift cards, Randy signed out over 400 gift cards over a two month period. This was in stark contrast to Randy’s direct reports estimating that they give out, at most, 70 gift cards over a three month period.

While discussing gift cards with Randy, he estimated giving out 400 gift cards a month, which further confused where all the gift card went, and if he even signed some of them out. He further explained that on two occasions, a vendor gave him multiple gift cards for free and that his family donated $1,000 worth gift cards “just because,” and that he distributed them as soon as he got them. Besides the fact that none of that made a drop of sense, he admitted that he distributed them before anyone at our company know anything about the gift cards donated from his family, and that he had just given them out at his discretion. Therefore, $1,000 worth of gift cards were basically donated and distributed without anyone in administration knowing about it.

Due to the amount of unaccounted gift cards, and the caller being able to identify the specific types of gift cards they received, there was clear reason for us to believe that gift cards were being misappropriated.

And as a bonus, Randy also admitted to taking some of the customers to his friend’s gym after it closed and allowed them to work out, take showers there and even personally gave them cash for laundering services, food and transportation.

Clearly, Randy admitting that he gave customers cash, along with his drug screening results and non-credible rationalization for the missing gift cards clearly supported the anonymous reporter’s allegation that Randy was purchasing drugs while on the clock.

In addition, he participated in conduct that exposed the company to allegations of sexual misconduct by admitting that he transported customers to his friend’s gym after hours so they could use the facilities and shower. His admission of giving customers cash (and “bribing” them for their business with gift cards) coupled with his admission of taking them to a secluded gym, in my opinion, created an environment conducive to sexual exploitation, or for customers to perceive that he expected them to return his favors in exchange for sex.

The easiest part about this was that he admitted to so much wrongdoing that it was a slam dunk to terminate him, which we obviously did.

After we terminated Randy, he alleged that he had worked off the clock and demanded to be paid for his time worked. We asked Randy to estimate how many hours he worked off the clock, which he quipped back, “I don’t know that's your job,” and hung up the phone.

After spending hours and hours comparing his e-mails and call logs to his clock in/outs to avoid a Wage and Hour issue, we determined that he worked a whopping 5.17 hours off the clock over the course of his prior two years of employment. And that was a humungous overstatement of time, as we considered every e-mail he sent off the clock, regardless if it was just a short response acknowledging the e-mail or ever just forwarding the e-mail, five minutes of work time. In addition, if Randy was paid for the time in between e-mails if the e-mails were less than 20 minutes apart.

When we notified him of the findings, he asked us to donate the money to his favorite charity. I told him we could not, and that he could do whatever he wished with the money once he received his check.

We never heard from Randy or the mystery woman who started all of this again. I hope the charity was happy with his generous donation of roughly $100. ***rolls eyes***

Until next time…