A till is counted into a cash office against what the system says it took, and a difference either way is a discrepancy somebody signs for. Till 7 is eleven pounds over every Friday, and the over is always a ten and a one.
I run the cash office at a superstore. Twelve years.
How a till is counted, because the controls are the point.
A cashier takes a drawer out on a key and the system knows the float. At the end of the session the drawer goes into the cash office in a sealed pouch with a declaration slip.
We count it. Notes through a counter, coin through a coin counter, and the total goes against the system's figure for that drawer. A difference over two pounds either way generates a variance report and the cashier is spoken to. Over ten pounds and it goes to the store manager.
A shop this size takes about a quarter of a million a week and our average weekly variance across every till is under five pounds net, which I am proud of, and I have the sheets to show the auditors.
Till 7's Friday drawer is eleven pounds over.
Every Friday since at least 2019, which is as far back as our sheets go in the office, and I have checked the archive boxes back to 2017 and it is there too.
It is eleven pounds exactly.
Not ten ninety eight. Eleven pounds, in a ten pound note and a one pound coin, and I have written that on four hundred variance slips.
What has been done, and it started as a disciplinary matter, which is the part I feel worst about.
It looked like a cashier putting money in, which people do, to cover a shortage on a different day, and that is a conduct issue.
Till 7's Friday drawer has been worked by fourteen different cashiers in that time, including a supervisor and, for six Fridays in 2021, me. Rotas are randomised across the week and I have looked at the allocations.
It is over on every one of them.
Two cashiers were interviewed in 2019 before anybody noticed it was the till and not the person. Both were cleared and both are still with us and one of them is a team leader now, and that sits badly with me.
What has been checked since.
The till itself. Replaced in 2020. The drawer and the lock mechanism replaced.
The system side. Our IT ran a reconciliation on till 7's transaction log for twelve Fridays and found no missing or duplicated transactions. The system's figure for what that till took agrees with the sum of its own receipts.
So the till took what the receipts say and the drawer contains eleven pounds more than that.
The counting. Two counters, calibrated, and four Fridays counted by hand twice by two people in the same room with the camera on. I have a note from the store manager confirming he watched one of them.
Eleven pounds over.
The float. A float error would show every day and not just Friday, and we count floats in and out.
The notes, which is the thing nobody has an answer for.
A ten pound note has a serial number and ours go out of the store in a sealed bag to the cash centre, so I cannot follow one afterwards. But I can write one down before it goes.
I started in 2021. Every Friday I record the serial of the ten in the over and the date on the pound coin.
There are two tens. The same two serials, alternating, not in a pattern I can see, across three and a half years.
Both of them are of a series that was withdrawn from circulation in 2018. Paper notes. We do not accept them and the banks do not issue them and a cashier would not take one without calling a supervisor, and I am the supervisor they would call.
The pound coins are all dated 1994 and they are the old round pound, which ceased to be legal tender in 2017.
So what is in that drawer is eleven pounds of money that nobody can spend.
That is the part I had to make a decision about, and the decision is mine and I have made it the same way for four years.
I bank it. It goes into the cash office safe with a note on the slip saying WITHDRAWN CURRENCY, TILL 7, with the date, and it goes to the bank in the bag, and the cash centre credits us eleven pounds because the Bank of England exchanges old notes for ever and the banks take the old coins in bulk without looking.
The store's cash position is correct. The variance sheet shows an over and an explanation. Four hundred slips in my handwriting.
What I do now.
The Friday count is the busiest of the week and till 7 is in it like everything else.
What I changed is that I do not count till 7's drawer alone after nine at night.
The cash office is a small room with a door you cannot open from outside and a camera in the corner, and counting in there on your own is the most ordinary thing in my working life.
In October 2022 I had till 7's Friday drawer open on the counting table and I had the over in my hand, the note and the coin, and I put them on the slip and wrote the serial down, and I was looking at the paper note and thinking about nothing much at all.
It was warm. Not room warm. Warm the way a coin is warm when somebody has had it in their hand, which is the temperature of a person, and I have been putting my hands in cash drawers for twelve years and cash is always the temperature of the room.
I put it down and finished the count and balanced the office and went home, and since then the Friday drawers are counted two up, which I justified to the manager as a control improvement, and he agreed, and it is one.