I have a daughter that works at a fast food resturant. At the end of her shift she was short $18.00 in her cash drawer (it was not a shared drawer). Her employer expects her to pay the difference. It is not going to be deducted from her paycheck. $18.00 is about the amount she would be paid for her 4 hour shift since she is making just over min wage. This is uncommon for her and was probably the result of an incidental error made on a busy day. Is she responsible to pay the shortage? I have worked with cash myself and was never responsible to pay back any shortage. Can she ask the employer to deduct the amount from her paycheck if she is responsible? Is there a timeframe for repayment? Thank you in advance!

I don't mean to be harsh here, but did she take the money? If she did, she should just pay it back and be lucky she isn't prosecuted and still has a job.

Now, to the legal issues.

They cannot deduct it from her pay without her written authorization specific to the incident cited.
http://www.dli.state.pa.us/landi/cwp/view.asp?a=142&Q=61106&landiPNavCtr=|#12

Having said that, if the employer "makes" her pay it back out of her own pocket, and threatens to fire her if she does not, it is likely that the state Dept. of Labor would see that as merely a subterfuge to recover the money without being in literal violation of the wage deduction law.

To be precise, the error was believed to be made during a dispute with a customer involving the amount of change he received. The customer wanted to break a $50 bill and I feel, through questioning my daughter, the customer deliberately employed confusing tactics to acquire more money than he was owed. This is a common scam and I was always trained to insist on a manager balancing my draw before I was to release any additional funds to the customer, if I felt certain correct change was given. She however was never trained on these types of scams or how do handle a change dispute.

This leads me to a follow up question. It appears the employer doesn't necessarily frown upon an under cash balance, since the employee is responsible for reimbursement. However, it appears it would be greatly frowned upon if she was to stop production to insist a manager balance her till to determine if an error was or was not made. It was never communicated to her that a balance would or could be done mid-shift. Does she have the right to ask that her drawer be balanced without penalty?

These circumstances became apparent when I advised her on how I was trained to handle these types of situations. It would become a catch 22 of sorts. Either she would have to assume the customer is always right and pay the difference or insist a manager balance her cash drawer and suffer the consistences for slowing production. Because of PA's "At Will" employment status it is usually best to take whichever action threatens your employment least. In this case it appears taking the chance the customer is correct and pay back any difference. From talking to her fellow employees, it is common practice that they just pay the customer any change they think they are owed. But this hardly seems fair and the employees are at risk to be taken advantage of by bait and switch scams.

To answer your question about my daughter taking the money. One could never be 100% certain but I doubt that is the case. This was brought to my attention because she needs me to loan her the $18.00 for repayment and was very upset and frustrated over the entire situation. To insure she is being I honest, I may personally repay her "debt" despite my reluctance to get involved in her employment affairs.

Thank you for your previous response and any further follow up.