GRRR! I got fired a again (this time over a morgan)

EDIT:the heading says morgan but it wasnt.....im looking at my morgans now...and i accidently put that...its a different dollar coin(see below)

ok,
i'm wondering if theres anything i can do....

I go into work at about nine n the morning today. ( I worked at M'coys, a local family restaurant)

so this guy orders a coffee which is $1.00....

i give it to him and he tries to pay with a nickle, a penny, and......

a trade dollar ( no lie)

i didnt know if these are even allowed to be used anymore....

but i took it and instead of putting that in the cash register...i but in my dollar bill and put the trade dollar in my pocket...

So, i got fired because i apparently stole the dollar because my manager who saw me do this said it is worth more than i dollar

although he is right, i technically didnt even have to take the trade dollar and could have told the guy to do give me a dollar bill.....

so ive been jobless(again:vanish for like an hour ...

i had to give the trade dollar back and leave...other wise my manager said he was gonna press charges....although i dont think theres anything he can do..

so who's right...? my manager or me....

is there anything i can do.....

sorry for the rant...

 

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Actually, the Trade Dollar was probably fake. Regardless, its not legal tender. Its the only US coin ever to be demonetized.

 

And, while you work for the place you are an employee. If you found a wallet in the rest room, do you get to keep that? If the coin was in the form of a tip, you would be on firm ground, but as the payment itself, that was the property of the company you work for.

Put another way, you were wrong.

 

i didnt find it, he gave it to us (tried to spend it)

also, if its a payment....then technically i didnt have to take it

 

I guess technically you were in the wrong.

But it seems really trite to me. You were going to cover the guys coffee and keep the 'token' he wanted to pay with.

Your boss seems a little anal...........

 

No, he did spend it.

But you did!

If a customer gets his bill and says "I don't have enough money to pay this, but I'll give you my Rolex watch in exchange for the merchandise" you can say yes or no, but if you say yes, it's the company's Rolex, not yours.

You got fired for stealing, because you did.

 

Yep. If it wasn't this, I'm sure it would only be a matter of time before it was something else. You are probably better off.

 

stainless,

You were wrong and deserved to be fired. It doesn't matter if the trade dollar was fake or real unless you had requested permission to buy any coin from the drawer and the manager had approved this ahead of time. In the eyes of your manager, you are deceptive and can't be trusted in small things, so you will never be trusted with bigger things. The way you tell it, he is right. You can choose to learn from your mistake or just continue down the path you are on and try to make your own integrity problems look like the fault of others.

Also, I doubt that the manager would have pressed charges against you if you kept the dollar, and if he did it would never be provable. So you lost twice. Besides, it would have made both of you look a little foolish going in front of a judge to fight over a counterfeit trade dollar.

 

Interesting views. As a business owner I would say this. First off your not in a position to make decisions for the company. I have technical people working for me that receive gratuities all the time from clients, ie.. free lunches etc. Now technically they belong to me, however that being said, I have made it clear to my employees that I am to be told about anything they receive from a client. I let them keep whatever simply because they work hard for me and I dont have an issue with it. But I do let them know that until I release the "fill in the blanck" it does belong to me if they were given it during the time that I am paying them. They have been given things like free lunches, free concert tickets stuff like that. They know that when they are on the clock it belongs to me.

Now what you should have done is this. Went to the manager and said, this gentleman is trying to pay for his coffee with a token. Its not money and I collect them. Can I have the token and pay for his coffee. Or offered the token to the manager. Its not yours to keep without permission from management. If your in the restaurant business and you get a tip, its yours, no ifs ands for buts.

 

I don't work in retail, so as an unexperienced person, I don't see anything really wrong with what you did. I would have done it also.

 

The lack of ethics, integrity and honesty in our society runs very deep. It's so bad that people can't even distinguish between right and wrong anymore. How sad.

 

I agree with cloudsweeper99. It was a bad call on your part. Maybe you should have put a dollar in the till along with the trade dollar and called your boss over and explained that you paid for the persons coffee and he gave you this coin. If you let your boss make the "executive" decisions he might have given you the trade $, praised your good nature in buying the guy a cup of coffee with your own money and more importantly, kept you on and trust you more in the future.

Bruce

 

This is how I would have handled it.

You could have accepted the trade dollar and put it in the till, and nearing the end of your stint at the till, you could have went to your manager and said, "Hey this guy bought something with a trade dollar. I know it is not legal tender and such, but I am willing to buy it off you for a dollar if that is ok with you. I collect coins like this. In this way you don't waste time trying to find your manager to get his opinion, and thus keep the customer waiting. You take care of the customer first, and nearing the end of your stint on the till you connect with your manager and get his ok or not to do this.

 

A friend of mines daughter works at a local bank. She recently exchanged a $20 bill for a $20 1928 gold certificate for him. He is always getting star notes from her. Now concerning the coin, It would have been nice to alert the customers attention to this coin but not many people, including me , would have probably done this.

It is hard to believe the customer did not know he had this coin. Maybe he was having one of those moments when he became confused (senior citizen moments)and spent it . I would think there is a good chance he may miss this coin and come back looking for it. From the manager stand point I can see how this would create a problem if the customer knew he spend it their and now it has just dissappeared from the face of the earth.

At this point I would think the manager has the coin so he could be the only one that comes out ahead in this deal. You know he put it in the cash register , right?

 

The point is, he did not give it to you, he gave it to your company..

 

What is the difference in this and someone paying for gas with a handful of Peace dollars? Would you turn in the peace dolalrs to the owner or the bank since they were given to the "company" that being said, if you worked in a bank and someone cashed in a handful of walking liberty halves or a roll of morgan dollars, would you intercept the roll and trade in bills for the roll or would you let whomever collects rolls turned in to take them to the vault for shipping?

Honestly, it was a one for one exchange. The gentleman paid a dollar for a dollar bill, and a dollar went into the till. Is ee no crime in that. If the bill was $5 and you accpeted something worth $5 as payment I could see the arguement.

There have been several posts in here where someone paid for a bill with peace, morgan, silver and it was instantly replaced by the coin collecting cashier (same with rare bills)

 

And re-montized, now legel tender.

 

The best thing to do is to let a supervisor know that you are a collector up front and make sure it's alright to trade out coins. I did this when I used to work at Wal-Mart back in high school and no one ever had a problem with it. It's also best to have another employee or a supervisor witness you exchanging the money just so their isn't any suspicion.

 

If you guys are are explaining this correctly. The coin wasnt legal tender,right? So if the guy tried to pay with a dollar's worth of corn flakes ...and you love corn flakes.... so you replaced the flakes with a dollar bill.....that would be unethical? dont get me wrong, I wouldnt have kept it either. I wouldve told the guy we dont accept this as payment. I know the difference between right and wrong. However,your manager should only care about the dollar and only the dollar. And I dont know how some of you feel about this; but no one owns me while I am in thier employ. I earn the money they pay me. If a client wants to show his appreciation like a concert tickets for ones good job, well that would be like a tip. He is giving it to your emloyee for the good work he has done. He isnt giving it to the company. Does the air your employees breath while on the clock belong to you too? Bud, you got fired because you werent up front about it. not because your boss is anal.

 

A similar case was prosecuted in Indiana I believe where someone took a doughnut in lieu of payment a $5 fee, the person was fired but claimed they put the $5 in the till, the court determined the person engaged in theft of state property by accepting something that was not acceptable for payment of a state fee, this being the doughnut. Even though the person put the $5 in the register, the mere acceptance in the front end of something otherwise jeopardized their job and resulted in their justly being terminated.

If you wanted to accept the trade dollar in payment, you should have advised a manager immediately that the customer was tendering that payment, that you thought it might be a good coin and would like to purchase it from the register. If you took it upon yourself to buy the coin out of the register without someone else's knowledge the presumption is that you are indeed engaging in theft of money and should be terminated. If I caught you doing that, I would have acted in the same fashion, I would have terminated you on the spot. Had you come and explained that the customer tendered said coin in payment, that you would like to purchase it from the register, I would have then approved it and said Hey, it is your lucky day. Even if the thing is counterfeit, it is worth more than $1.