Retail Loss Prevention: Security Guards Stop Sweethearting

Sweethearting might sound like a lovely name, but this term is used to describe employee theft, most notably in the retail industry. It’s one of the most difficult types of employee theft to catch. With dedicated security guards in place, you can protect your business from retail loss prevention at the hands of your own employees.

The Definition of Sweethearting

Sweethearting is the name of a particular type of employee theft in a retail setting. The cashier checking someone out deliberately gives away merchandise to a customer – that person is known as the sweetheart. Discounted or free items given to a customer, often a friend or family member who is in on the deal, benefits everyone involved in the transaction. Retailers, restaurants, and bars most often suffer from sweethearting, but this kind of theft can be found across industries.

How Security Guards Can Prevent Sweethearting

It may seem like sweethearting can’t be that detrimental to the bottom line of a retail environment, but this kind of theft is so prevalent and challenging to identify, it’s difficult to determine just how much money is being lost. Security cameras aren’t enough to recognize a theft that occurs after a preconceived plan or a spur-of-the-moment nicety or a sleight of hand. Security guards are the watchful eyes that every retail environment needs.

• Undercover presence. Discretion is necessary for sweethearting. Security guards can skip the uniform and pose as a customer, employee, or bagger to keep their eyes on the suspected thief.
• Self-checkout monitoring. Sweethearting can be committed by patrons of a store who use self-checkout options and intentionally do not scan every item.
• Security camera surveillance. Boots on the ground are important to catch sweethearting, but it’s also smart to have a security guard monitoring close-up security camera surveillance.

What Makes Sweethearting So Difficult to Uncover

The dedicated eyes and ears of an undercover security guard are needed to truly crack down on sweethearting and here are just some of the reasons why:

• It’s all good. One of the biggest problems with identifying sweethearting is the guilty cashier may not see it as theft. A freebie, a discount, or a few dollars off are often considered by clerks as good customer service. Any tells that thieves may exhibit are absent since they have rationalized their actions, making catching cashiers mid-crime more difficult.
• It looks normal. Sweethearting is easy to do at point-of-sale interactions. It’s a simple matter of throwing an extra item in a bag or providing a generous discount the customer did not earn. In restaurants or bars, a generous pour, not charging for all drinks or appetizers, or providing a dessert “on the house” may be done to improve the chances of a bigger tip.
• It’s not linear. While some connections between cashiers and customers may present themselves obviously (like family sweethearting family), other sweethearting interactions can be more difficult to identify. An employee in a clothing store may make a deal with a cashier at a big box store for an even exchange of merchandise.

If you suspect sweethearting in your place of business, contact Korner Security to develop an effective plan to stop this theft quickly.