More Than Just Pens
This was relayed to me by the RP manager (individual stores didn’t have RP managers, they existed at the district level) of the office supply chain I worked for in High School.
A young man (let’s call him Eric) had been with the company for almost a year. He worked in office supplies and was, by this time, known to management to have light fingers.
At some point the store manager called young Eric into his office to discuss his continued employment with the company.
When Eric entered the room there was a strange man who was introduced as the RP manager for the district. The conversation from the RP manager was very short, hoping to elicit a confession to the pens they knew he had stolen.
“Eric, we know what’s been going on. If you tell us all about it we’ll promise not to press charges against you.” Eric just about crapped himself and proceeded to spill all the details.
The assistant manager was bringing in additional software, packing it in empty boxes of printer paper and selling the “printer paper” to his “friends” and somehow writing off the software as stolen or returned. Eric’s job was to fetch the boxes from the back when the friends came to pick them up.