If you were to walk out of a Weis Market without paying for a small purchase - say, a 50c bottle of spring water - you'd be arrested for shoplifting. Given that the item is only 50c, you'd probably only spend 10 days in jail.

So why is it OK for Weis to steal $103.70 from a customer through financial shenanigans, and when they're called to answer for it two weeks later, they demand that the consumer wait until the following week, and then take a day off work in order to collect a refund of the stolen money?

Fair Dealing

Each employee should endeavor to deal fairly with the Company's customers, suppliers, competitors and employees. No employee should take unfair advantage of anyone through illegal conduct, manipulation, concealment, abuse of privileged information, misrepresentation of material facts or any other unfair-dealing practice.

Weis Markets, Inc
Code of Business Conduct and Ethics
Dated July 8, 2003

When someone handles money in the course of their employment, their drawers are reconciled at the end of the shift. That leads to possibilities:

1. An employee deliberately took $107.30 from the till, and kept it from being noticed by doing an electronic funds withdrawal from my account, AND including my check in the drawer as well.
2. Weis accidently came up with an $107.30 overage for the till - and deliberately ignored it, instead of trying to find the problem.

Sounds like a pretty good racket. Maybe they get away with their fraud, and maybe they have to pay the money back - but the worst possible case is they get an interest-free loan for several weeks.

Gee, to be fair, shouldn't I be allowed to shoplift my groceries at Weis? If they catch me, the penalty should be that I'd have to actually pay for what I've stolen, but I get to wait a few weeks before I pay.

According to the law, an employer is responsible for the acts of his employee, so there's no question that Weis needs to pay me back.

But what about the loss of use of that money? What about the time and energy I've expended in trying to collect this debt? They want me to come into their store on Monday, but my wife's car is in the shop. Can I expect them to reimburse us for a lost day of wages?

I thought about standing outside Weis tomorrow, passing out papers to everybody entering the store, warning them not to pay with a check or debit card, only with cash. If I did that, though, they'd ask that I be arrested for trespass and disorderly conduct, because their store is in a shopping center with signs prohibiting passing out bills.

I don't know what would happen if I stood outside Darrenkamp's, though, giving people something that said this:

They shouldn't have a problem with it, should they?

I suspect that if my wife takes off Monday so we can talk to the Weis manager in person, they're not going to want to reimburse her lost wages. And I have a bad hip; I don't fit in the back seat of the Taurus sedans that are used by the local taxi company.

On the other hand, the district justice is within walking distance. I plan to telephone Weis corporate headquarters on Monday morning. If they don't courier the cash to me by mid-afternoon, I suspect I'll just mosey over to the district justice's office, and file a small claims suit. I've been before the local district justice, Cheryl Hartman, on other matters, and if you present your case without histrionics and have the facts on your side, she seems to have common sense, and a zeal to see justice done.