A Closer Look
A jealous mind leads to turbulent times. Everyone knows sometimes they have to watch their back when it comes to an envious person, especially when it comes to their job. A jealous coworker? Now, that’s a dicey situation. Sometimes, a little sleuthing is all someone needs in order to make sure all their bases were covered. One can never be too sure when handling a situation. It’s every man for himself when one’s job is on the line. Sometimes it’s not personal, it’s just good business. However, when investigating someone, one should be wanted of the dangers. One would never know what they might find when they decide to go undercover and investigate someone.
“Larry” found out this tough lesson when has was an assistant manager at his local automotive shop. Larry noticed some rather odd behavior from his manager, “Bradley” since he started making some major sales. Bradley would be passive-aggressive towards Larry and picked up quite a peculiar habit. This spurred Larry into action and made sure his job was secured at the end of the day. Larry wasn’t going to let anyone put his job at risk. Not even Bradley.
Arch Nemesis
Larry was hired in early 2020 at his local automotive shop. There, he and the rest of the employees sold tires and alloy wheels for passenger vehicles. Pretty standard. He thought it would be a good job to work while in college. The company he worked for owned many stores besides his and he reported under Bradley. However, Larry noticed shortly after he was hired, that Bradley’s behavior towards him turned slightly unprofessional. This made Larry not only uneasy but also cautious.
Bradley would constantly mock and berate him for being the new guy. Larry didn’t like this one bit. But who would like it when someone made fun of them on a daily basis? Larry didn’t quite know why Bradley was treating him so poorly, but he had some suspicion it was because of his jealousy. See, Larry performed exceptionally better than Bradley. Larry had recorded more sales than within his first few months as an employee, which was quite impressive for a new hire. But Bradley’s performance was on the opposite spectrum from Larry’s.
While Larry was being the top performing employee, Bradley would ‘knock off’ and start his drinking early while the rest of the employees continued to work. One of the biggest red flags Bradley exhibited was attempting to goad Larry into a physical altercation since he knew Larry was an MMA fighter. All of this gave Larry a reason to think about why Bradley was behaving this way. Could it be possible Bradley was trying to get Larry fired? Why else would Bradley be provoking Larry for no other reason? Nothing could have convinced Larry more of this sentiment than what happened between the two of them next.
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Red Alert
Larry had become quite observant during his first few months at his job. He had a trained eye for these types of things. There were glaring discrepancies that made Larry more skeptical of Bradley. The biggest discrepancy of them all was the money and the record sales were not matching up correctly every day. They were either too high or too low. Which should never be the case for either instance. As far as Larry was concerned, everyone at his job did their job correctly.
Ever the proactive employee that Larry was, he would spend hours at a time after work pouring over the company’s books to see where the errors were coming from. How did Bradley react to this shocking revelation about the glaring errors in money? He simply threw his hands up in the air and shrugged. Bradley was as useful as a monkey with a laptop at this point. His excuse was he didn’t know what was happening. Typical Bradley behavior.
The only problem with Bradley putting his head in the sand about this was it was a reoccurring issue. Bradley should have shown a little more concern considering he was the top manager. Not Larry. However, Larry was an accounting student at university so he used his skills to dig a little deeper. Larry noticed strange amounts of cash was left out during the day. Now, why would that be? Larry really wanted to say something about all of these oddities. However, Larry was concerned his complaints about what he noticed would be used against him by Bradley due to how he was treated by him before. And boy was Larry right.
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Common Factor
Larry got to test this theory out several weeks later when Bradley took some personal time off work. With this big opportunity to work free of Bradley’s reign, Larry managed a personal record for store sales and noticed something really interesting. Larry noticed the cash was never out at the end of the shift like he usually noticed. Since Larry was the standing manager until Bradley returned to the office, Larry had reported this finding to the company’s owner and explained what occurred while Bradley was there.
Larry had hoped the owner would take a lot more action and have a word with Bradley about the discrepancies. But he was also weary that once the owner spoke to Bradley, then Bradley would know who reported him. And Larry’s hunch was spot on. Once Bradley returned to work, he approach Larry with a very disgruntled look.
“I’ve spoken with the owner. You tried to blame me for the discrepancies?! You should focus on doing your job properly, then this wouldn’t happen!” Bradley exclaimed frustratedly.
Bradley’s misplaced anger surprised Larry. Yet, Larry expected this type of reaction from Bradley when he tried to twist his words and place the blame on him. But why was Bradley so angry if he was innocent? Larry had all the questions but none of the answers. One thing was for sure, Bradley’s reaction made Larry even more suspicious of him. However, Larry wasn’t pleased with the way Bradley handled the meeting. A storm was brewing in Larry’s brain. Bradley wanted Larry to do his job? Okay then, Larry made sure he would do his job very well. Two can play this game.
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And Action
The same week Bradley made a complaint about Larry reporting him, Larry concocted a plan. Larry made sure he paid close attention to what customers were paying when they interacted and dealt with Bradley. Larry also sneakily went through Bradley’s sales transactions and invoices with a fine tooth comb. He wanted to catch Bradley in action. He was sure that the common denominator for the discrepancies was all due to Bradley.
As days went by while Larry did his investigation, he uncovered all of Bradley’s dishonest deeds. Bradley was up to no good. He had developed quite a system for his scheme. Bradley would tell the customers prices were 200 bucks if they paid in cash. That was a complete upcharge. Then, Bradley would discount the 200 bucks by 50 bucks in the invoicing system. Then put the remainder of the cash, which was 150 bucks in the till and record a cash sale.
And lastly, before they counted the cash at the end of the day, Bradley sneakily pocketed the extra cash while no one was around to see. Bradley didn’t think his scheme all the way through and it ended up being foolish. It was obvious to Larry when he was doing the accounting that Bradley could never remember the amount the exact amount he swindled out of the poor, unsuspecting customers. So when the cash was up some days, he didn’t swindle enough. And when the cash was down, he swindled too high.
Larry wasn’t about to let Bradley get away with this scheme this time. Not when he had proof. That’s right, Larry took screenshots of the discounts to take to the owner along with a report. Larry’s report detailed what he discovered during his investigation. The icing on the cake was Larry also detailed what happened when Bradley wasn’t there and how there were no discrepancies. Score.
Feeling bamboozled, the owner was infuriated with this new revelation. How could this have happened right under the owner’s nose? The owner was so mad he had Bradley take a urine test to test for illegal substances the same day he found out this unsettling news. Bradley had failed the test. No surprise there. The test revealed he had an addiction issue. A very huge substance problem.
Larry concluded Bradley was probably stealing money to support his bad habit. Bradley’s irresponsible behavior could have put the owner in big trouble had someone been injured while Bradley had been working since they operate heavy machinery. Bradley was effectively terminated and placed Larry as the new manager. The owner even took Bradley to court in an attempt to recover the money he stole.
Take this as a lesson to always watch your back when someone is jealous of you. You never know what you might find when you take a closer look around you. As for Bradley? Bradley learned the hard way that secret’s never stayed secret for too long. He also learned no bad deed goes unpunished. Good guys always prevail and in this scenario, it was Larry in this case. Larry received the job he should have had this whole time.
Right or Wrong?
It was very obvious Bradley was very much wrong for what he had done. Stealing from your job is never something anyone should think about doing. The bigger issue at hand for Bradley was going to work with illegal substances in your system. He could have seriously injured a customer and the owner would have had a lawsuit on his hands. The situation between Larry and Bradley was a little deeper than coworker jealousy but it was the root of everything Bradley decided to do. Bradley also abused his position of power and misrepresented the company.
I commend Larry for taking things into his own hands. Bradley was wrong for mistreating Larry for no good reason. Someone needed to do something to stop him. However, no one could have predicted everything Larry uncovered. It was very clear who was right and who was wrong in this situation. If I was in Larry’s position, I don’t know if I would have handled it as well as Larry did. Not only had Bradley abused his power but he abused the trust the owner of the automotive shop had placed in him. This should give people some food for thought the next time they either want to take advantage of their place of employment or feel like someone they work with is doing something shady. So, what will you do if you were in either one’s position?
