Always had a hidden security camera over my bar and counter area. The employees did not know it was there. Also made sure to review the computer readings on a regular basis and compare it with what I am seeing on tape.
I found it particularly interesting that if I was gone on any weekend night our pool business was always off about 10%. My night manager would tell me, "Boss, it was just not as busy as normal." I caught him failing to enter on the computer two pool tables at the back of the room and doing all the other normal things; handing out the ball tray and taking a drivers license or credit card and putting it in the correct slot for that table. He would commit to memory the time they started and when they were finished he would charge them accordingly (at $10/hour). He would open the register and put the money he collected inside. He would go through the motions on the computer, but nothing got entered. All looks good on camera.
Later on the next time he made a transaction for food or drink sales, or pool time (on any other table) for that matter, he would remove the extra money he had put in the register earlier. He would just grab the twenty or thirty dollars and stuff it in his pocket when he walked away. He did this all night with two pool tables, and on a busy night like Friday or Saturday that might mean $60-80 on each table. So maybe about $125-150 he was pocketing on that night. He got away with this for a few months as I rarely took a weekend night off. But once in a while there would be an event that I wanted to attend or maybe a poker tournament I wanted to play in locally.
After I had heard this story (slow night for pool boss) a few times I began to review my camera recordings against the computer readings. I correlated what I was seeing on my outside cameras that showed all eighteen tables in the room, against what I was reading on the computer. All the tables were being played on but I was not collecting money on two of them. Bingo! It took me a couple of hours to figure out what was happening but I caught him. The next day I took him in my office and confronted him. He denied everything. I told him I would show him on camera what he was doing and began to cue it up to the exact place where he was stealing. He stopped me, and then began to apologize.
Long story short. He got fired and I did not get a dime back that he had stolen from me. The funny thing is that I would see him from time to time at local pool tournaments and he would be all friendly to me, as if nothing had ever happened. He acted like we were still best buddies. Sometimes real life is very interesting don't you think.
I don't even want to get started telling stories about people I've loaned money too
. All I will say is that the best way to lose a friend is to loan them money. In the end though I would rather be on my end of it then theirs!