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Like any company we have issues of dishonesty with its vendors. Here at the Homeless Voice we have a numbered hats system. This means the vendors selling the Homeless Voice have a number on their hat. If you should see a vendor being dishonest or a vendor being rude to the public please contact us at 954-925-6466 and ask the operator to speak to the operations department. If you happen to see a vendor who is being unsafe please stop your car for just a few seconds and call us so we make sure the team captain checks on the vendor. As stated above all companies have issues of theft. We at the Homeless Voice go one step better than just having a supervisor at each corner. We have a very good system, like casinos have to keep the theft down.
First we have an employee "Crime Watch Line" where a vendor can report other vendors who may be stealing and the honest vendor gets a reward. We have undercover shoppers, better known as honesty testers, who drop marked money in the buckets. Before the money is dropped in their buckets the serial number is written down and the money is sprayed with an invisible dye so we can scan the money under a black light to see if the money was touched. We have a rule that the vendor cannot go into the bucket for any reason. If we scan their hands we can see if they touched any money or put their hands in the bucket. Before they start their shift they must sign a form stating how much money they started with at the beginning of the day. Anything they buy for the day they must get a receipt for and turn the receipt in to the team supervisor.
If we have a suspicion that they are stealing we can search the individual and if the records do not match, we confront the person. At least seven teams a day have floaters who are our undercover vendors. These vendors live at the property and we move them from team to team to watch our team captains and other vendors. They actually vend the paper like an ordinary vendor. We also at times place undercover people at bus benches to watch a team. They may take a bus to three or four locations a day to see what they can find out. We also have a street supervisor to drive by intersections looking for violations of the street safety rules as well as theft. Most of these undercover bus bench people are volunteers who are retired or young professionals still in college who need community service hours to get their degree.
When someone from the public calls us to let us know that a possible theft might have happened, we ask that person to always be on the look out for other thefts and call us if they see something. We have retained a list of about 40 volunteers who call us and report safety violations as well as possible dishonesty. With all this policy for theft, we estimate that on any given day, three out of 90 vendors are dishonest and do get away with it for that day. Our estimation is that we will catch that person within four days. We usually catch four vendors a week who did steal money from the buckets.
These stats are much less than the national average of internal theft from corporations such as department stores. This is incredible considering our people come to us not having a penny to their name.
We think the reason for low theft rates is because they know these security policies are taken very serious. They also know that we can put a self contained hidden video camera at intersections and they have seen the footage of these tapes when they come into our facility. If we do catch a person we counsel them first before taking any other action. If there is a second time we move that person to another task at the shelter or find them outside employment. I hope after you read this message you still contribute, we believe in telling the public the truth.
We are proud that our theft rate is low. We also think that the theft rate is low because the Homeless came to us and we helped them and they respect our reputation.
We thank you for buying the homeless voice. Help us help people in need.
Mark Targett
editor@homelessvoice.org
Editor
The Homeless Voice |