Balance sheet shenanigans or: How I learned to stop worrying and love crooks

Standard

Apologies to Kubrick for ruining what was a great title of an even greater movie.

I once ran day to day operations of a small/medium retail business for a man I know and respect. He had been in the retail business for 20 plus years and knew all the tricks of the trade: legal and not so legal ones which, given the business environment we operated in, was necessary. My biggest worry was my staff or customers stealing merchandise. The customers were easy enough to monitor but the staff presented a huge problem since I found it difficult to trust and suspect people at the same time. When I presented him with this problem he sat me down and basically said,”You need to be the bigger crook”. Continue reading