A customer said that he placed 20 dollars and some change on the counter for a mug.  The total of the transaction was about 10.79 for the travel mug (which looks like it was a 9.99 mug).

When the cashier rung up the mug and began to bag it, the cashier turned away and then the money was no longer there.  The cashier turned to see that only 80 cents was there.

The customer claimed to me personally that he had “handed” her the first bill.  This did not jive with the security footage as we did not see him place any bill in her hand directly, and only saw him place things on the counter, which may or may not have included the bill in question.

The cashier said she seemed to think the customer had placed the 20 back into his pocket only to take it out again and place it on the counter, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

My take on it, is if that he had somehow put the 20 back into his pocket before he started putting change on the counter, it’s possible that ALL of his hand motions directly motioning to the counter might not be any bills at all, but only the coins after he was digging through his pockets.  I know for sure that it didn’t seem like he handed her anything directly.

As an aside, the cashier mentioned that the guy had exchanged a shirt that he had “won” earlier that day with a clothing rep for an even exchange with no money.  This all happened at about 6:20 pm.

At closing, 7:00 pm, he said he essentially wanted to take the mug without paying for it because he was “out 20 dollars.”  I told him we couldn’t let anything out of the store without it being paid for, so he eventually agreed to give me his information and his name, and then he bought the mug “again.”  I told him prior to this that we were gonna have an officer come by and help with the situation because I didn’t want to question the cashier out in the open or anything like that and make the guy mad.  He said he had to go, at which point he paid for the mug.

I had another cashier count out that register, just to make sure no conflict of interest arose.  The customer had basically agreed that the register hadn’t opened at all, plus I never saw it open on the video, so there’s that, as well.

What ended up happening after all of this, was my manager basically met the customer halfway and offered a 20 dollar gift card for the store that was to be picked up by his daughter.  I never heard anything more about it getting picked up after a couple of times of asking if it ever was, and it wasn’t.