History Main / StealingFromTheTill

A subtrope of WhiteCollarCrime and InsideJob. Compare StealingFromTheHotel and FakeCharity. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] stealing something from [[Music/{{Rammstein}} Till Lindemann]].

[[folder:Fanfic]]

* ''Fanfic/ADarkerPath'': Atropos makes it clear to the mayor that if any members of the Brockton Bay revitalisation committee try to skim funds for their own use, she will know and will [[MakeAnExampleOfThem persuade their colleagues not to repeat it]]. Some of them still have sticky fingers, though.

How acceptable the crime is perceived as depends on [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality narrative focus]] and the relative scale of the theft. If you work at a horrible, soul-sucking job, then it's "okay" to take money out of petty cash to help cover the bills, but your boss wiring money to an off-shore account is not. If you take supplies rather than cash, that's even less frowned upon, because the company was ''expecting'' it to be used, right? (Similar logic applies to StealingFromTheHotel.) Large-scale schemes to defraud people are almost always seen as a worse crime than other kinds of theft, not just because of the number of people ripped off, but because of the breach in trust.

* In ''Series/{{Batwoman|2020}}'', Ryan Wilder's tenure as CEO of Wayne Enterprises almost comes to an abrupt end after its board of directors suddenly notices all the money that's been siphoned out of the company over the years. She herself is not a suspect, as she was only recently appointed to the job, but she and Luke have to figure out a cover to avoid the board discovering that two of their former CEOS were Batman and Batwoman, respectively. In the end, Luke forges some documents to "prove" that Bruce Wayne had a top-secret deal with A.R.G.U.S.

* A major reason for labor unions' current image problems stems from [[UsefulNotes/TheMafia the American Mafia's]] notorious involvement in labor racketeering. Once the mob took over a union, they essentially ran everything and stole from worker benefit plans to line up their own wallets. Food preparation, construction, transportation, clothing and garbage hauling were some of the industries worst affected by labor racketeering. It became so serious that Congress held numerous hearings over this in the 1950s and 1960s. The movie ''Film/OnTheWaterfront'' is a good example that depicts the rampant corruption and bribery on the New York dockyards. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act has provisions that allow the government to place a union under federal control. Prosecutors have to prove the union was a cover for organized crime.

* Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) fraud occurs when [[CorruptCorporateExecutive employers]] would steal money meant for benefit plans. It's a breach of fiduciary duty as ERISA essentially holds employers liable for any issue affecting their 401(k) plans. Enron was a notorious case, where its execs raided its 401(k) plan before it went belly-up. This is a form of "reverse embezzlement," where the employer robs its workers of their benefits. Sadly, many don't even notice the breach as they usually toss their 401(k) statements. To detect ERISA fraud, employees should be extra vigilant on things such as erroneous contributions, unusual transactions, or abrupt changes to the plan. As an additional requirement, benefit plans must be covered by a fidelity bond, as it insures against theft by persons who handle the plan.
** Sadly, no equivalent protection appears to exist in Britain: there have been at least three well-publicised cases of big businesses in trouble "borrowing" from the employees' retirement pot to make good shortfalls elsewhere, or in one case, outright theft. As this is not illegal in the UK, the delinquent [=CEOs=] got away with it, despite moral opprobrium and a lot of suddenly impoverished pensioners.

* Creator/{{MGM}} was practically drained dry by [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Italian fraudster Giancarlo Parretti]] when he briefly took over the company in the early 90s; he was an old hand at misappropriating funds from his other businesses, and it resulted in him being kicked out and arrested on the order of his creditors, the French bank Credit Lyonnais, who weren't much better at stealing, getting bribed and general financial chicanery. (See [[https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/07/08/214344/index.htm this article]] for the whole story.)

-->''If my manager insults me again I will be assaulting him

-->I would not like it thought that I do not buy my own paperclips, sir. I enjoy owning my own paperclips. It means that they are mine.

-->If you catch me with my hands in the till\\

I'm just swimming in copper to smell and pretend like a robot!

-->Make you sick, make you ill\\
Makes it cheap, slippin' change from the till

-->If my manager insults me again I will be assaulting him
-->After I fuck the manager up then I'm gonna shorten the register up
-->Let's go back, back to the Gap
-->Look at my check, wasn't no scratch
-->So if I stole, wasn't my fault
-->Yeah I stole, never got caught

-->I started as an alter boy, working for the church
-->Learning all my holy moves, doing some research
-->Which led me to a cash box labeled "Children's Fund"
-->I'd leave the change and take the bills inside my cumburbund.

* ''LightNovel/AscendanceOfABookworm'': After the antagonistic High Bishop who was in place at the beginning of the story is replaced, his former assisstant mentions that he didn't make any difference between the money meant for his own expenses and the money meant for temple expenses. This resulted in ''both'' budgets being in the red.

* ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'' has a a sympathetic example. Lucius and Bruce are [[http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2012/07/16/the-dark-knight-embezzlement/ technically embezzling]] assets from Wayne Enterprises, and they are discovered and blackmailed by an auditor ([[BullyingADragon technically again]]).

* Music/{{Sting}}'s song ''Fill Her Up'' is about a gas station attendant who considers stealing his boss's cash box so he can take his girlfriend to Vegas to get married. He decides not to do it because it would only "Fill her up with sadness and shame" to know she married a thief.'

* Mentioned in the chorus of the Music/LosCampesinos song "Death to Los Campesinos!":
-->If you catch me with my hands in the till, I promise, sugar I wasn't trying to steal...

* ''Machinima/FreemansMind'' is a machinima of someone playing through ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' while narrating Gordon's thoughts. He fantasizes about looting office supplies throughout the earlier episodes. First, when he assumes he's going to be fired and wonders about how much he can sneak out with him, and then later, after the Resonance Cascade but before he realizes the damage goes beyond just Black Mesa. This gets dropped once the full scale of the disaster becomes clear.

* ''Machinima/FreemansMind'' is a machinima of someone playing through ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' while narrating Gordon's thoughts. One part in the beginning has Gordon freaking out because he thinks he's gonna be fired, so he keeps saying things like: "I better start looting the office. I bet that laser printer will get a lot of money" and "Oh good, I'm not fired. Yeah, looting from work is so much harder than not looting from work". And things like that. He does keep considering looting the area after everything goes to hell, but by then he's getting increasingly sure he's lost his job because Black Mesa's screwed.

* In ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'', Reese gets a job at a fast food restaurant where his supervisor is Richie, one of Francis' lowlife friends. Richie encourages Reese to perform "pocket transactions" (putting the money in his pocket instead of the cash register), but Reese uncharacteristically can not bring himself to actually do it, only ''pretending'' to pocket the cash to get along with Richie. When $400 is missing from Reese's drawer at the end of his shift Richie says this is too much from him to ignore, but Reese denies doing it and confesses he never even did the original "pocket transaction". Later, Malcolm deduces instantly that Richie is the real thief and is trying to frame Reese [[ObviouslyEvil because it's Richie]].

* In ''Film/RoadHouse'', the bartender is literally stealing from the till (cash register) until Dalton fires him. Too bad he's the nephew of the local crime boss...

** Taken [[UptoEleven Up to Eleven]] in "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment", where when Mr. Burns shows up Homer asks Bart to hide everything the former borrow... er, stole from work, up to ''a computer''.

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* When Marten gets laid off in ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'', an ex-colleague suggests he steal as much in the way of office supplies as he can, to spite the bosses. Said bosses closed the entire branch to pay for their own raise. Said ex-colleague, and everyone ''except'' Marten, retaliates by taking everything in the office that's not nailed down, and probably several things that were.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/stealing_from_the_till.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:I think I'll give myself a bonus.]]

* ''Manga/SpyXFamily'' has Loid and Franky go on a sub-mission alongside the main ''Strix'' mission, where they have to bust a smuggling ring and take back a load of stolen jewelery. Franky is hesitant to do so until Loid suggests that a few small pieces could go "missing" in the process. Loid pockets a diamond ring intended for his fake marriage with Yor but loses it in an ensuing gunfight alongside her, so he opts for a grenade pin ring.

* Randall admits to doing this in one of the ''Comicbook/{{Clerks}}'' comic books.
* Thug Boy in ''Comicbook/{{Empowered}}'' used to make a living working as a [[ObfuscatingStupidity Dumb]] {{Mook}} for various supervillains, stealing their expensive gadgets and ebaying them after the villains got caught. 'Til they steal from the wrong guy...
* While it's usually not portrayed as a bad thing when he does it, ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' spends a lot of the Wayne Enterprises budget on weird bat-themed gadgets, and sometimes a ''space station''. While Wayne Enterprises is referred to as "his" company, it's also generally portrayed with a board, occasionally at risk of a takeover, and other things that suggest that like most large companies it's a publicly traded corporation, or at least has multiple shareholders, and Bruce Wayne is simply the majority shareholder. Consequently Batman has embezzled, or caused Lucius Fox to embezzle on his behalf, millions of dollars.

* In ''Film/{{Casino}}'', the mafia bankrolls a Casino in order to fleece it. The skimmers take offence about their own operation being in turn skimmed off the top.

* The first half-hour or so of ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' follows Marion Crane as she steals from her place of employment and escapes to the Bates Motel. [[ItWasHisSled Then she meets Mother.]]
* The title character of ''Film/{{Marnie}}'' is a serial thief, preying on one employer after another.
* After waking up from a coma, Durant in ''[[Film/DarkmanIITheReturnOfDurant Darkman II]]'' soon finds out that one of his men has used his absence to take a piece of his organization's earnings for himself, and has him killed by putting him in a golf cart that drives off from a building.
* ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'' has a a sympathetic example. Lucius and Bruce are [[http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2012/07/16/the-dark-knight-embezzlement/ technically embezzling]] assets from Wayne Enterprises, and they are discovered and blackmailed by an auditor ([[BullyingADragon technically again]]).
-->'''Lucius Fox:''' Mr. Wayne, the way I see it, all [[WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys this stuff]] is yours anyway.
* In ''Film/CanyonPassage'', George pilfers gold dust from the express office safe to cover his gambling debts. This catches up with a miner returns much sooner than expected and wants his gold before George has had a chance to replace it.
* ''Film/{{XX}}'': In "The Birthday Barty", Clara is helping herself to her employers' liquor.
* ''Film/TheWarWagon'': Wes Fletcher pilfers from the supplies he delivers for Pierce. At the start of the film, he steals two bags of salt and hides them in a secret compartment under the drivers seat. Taw sees him and tells him to put them back, as he's no use to him if he gets sacked for stealing before TheHeist.
* The SPECTRE meeting in ''Film/{{Thunderball}}'' had Number One accuse an underling for stealing from him when the illegal drug trade racket he's in charge of earned less than expected, despite the man's explanation of competition from TheCartel driving prices down. He's nervously sweating like his side operation's just been rumbled and he's about to be fired and fried...[[spoiler:until Number One abruptly zaps [[BlofeldPloy a different member that was acting nonchalant the whole time]]. Said underling even looked [[SmugSnake smug]], but Blofeld knew that he was the ''real thief''. Blofeld even uses it to warn the other members to not betray him. TruthInTelevision as real life criminal gangs have killed members who knowingly stole from the organization]].
* In ''Film/TheCandySnatchers'', Candy's WickedStepfather is very wealthy from constantly embezzling money from the jewelry store he manages.
* ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'': One deleted scene (restored in some versions) showed that Elwood worked in a glue factory while Jake was in jail. As he was quitting to restart his old band, he stole at least one bottle of the glue they made; this turned out to be a ChekhovsGun, as he later used that same glue to sabotage the Good ol' Boys' vehicle.

* ''Film/DeadtimeStoriesVolume2'': In "Dust", George learns that the Martian dust might destroy cancer cells, he immediately steals a sample to test on his wife.
* In ''Film/TheDry'', [[spoiler:Scott is doing this on a massive scale by having an educational grant worth $70,000 earmarked for the school redirected into his personal account.]]
* ''Film/{{Fargo}}'': It's [[ImpliedTrope implied]] that Jerry's been doing this at his car dealership, and is on the verge of being found out, necessitating him to set up his wife's kidnapping to replace the stolen money (and make a nice profit on top of it).

* In ''Literature/BigTrouble'', Arthur Herk has been stealing bribe money from his employer, Penultimate, Inc., to pay off his own gambling debts. Penultimate, a major government contractor whose {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s have far more professional experience in skimming money, decides to punish the embezzling employee by hiring a couple of New Jersey hitmen.
* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'' by Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold:
** The [[FramingDevice framing story]] in the ''Borders of Infinity'' FixUpNovel involves an alleged peculation plot by Miles Vorkosigan for several million Imperial Marks. Two of the three component stories explain the rather large cost overruns his missions incurred that form the basis of the accusation. (The third story is about why Miles would never steal from the Imperium.)
** ''Literature/CaptainVorpatrilsAlliance'' begins with looking for a ring stealing military equipment.
* Creator/DenisLeary tells an anecdote in ''Why We Suck'' that involves him and a handful of friends stealing office supplies from the Atlantic Monthly offices while working there as night janitors. The group (minus Denis, who was fired earlier for unrelated reasons) eventually gets fired when they get caught trying to steal a desk.
* Many Scott Adams (featuring his Dilbert comics) books feature submissions and other brainstorming over things to do with stolen office supplies, including roof thatching with floppy disks.
* In ''I Can Get It For You Wholesale'', Harry Bogen convinces Meyer Bushkin that Apex Modes is making so much money that it needs to hide its earnings from the government, so they can set up a scheme where Apex Modes writes checks to a personal bank account, on which checks of equal amount are drawn. Harry makes sure Meyer's name is on all the checks, so that Harry isn't the one facing jail time when the company goes bankrupt.

* ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile'' has this as a possible motive for [[spoiler:Andrew Pennington, who was stealing from the victim. It's also implied that Simon Doyle was doing the same thing to his previous employers, which is why he was "out of a job" when the book started]].

* In ''{{Literature/Banco}}'', Papillon can't resist a little criminal action even while doing honest work. He winds up running the executive's kitchen for an American oil firm and he embezzles from his department's budget. The high-quality food eventually gets the executives to bring their wives along for meals, which only helps Papillon skim more money with less risk -- he's already breaking the rules by feeding extra mouths and nobody is paying attention to the extra expenses.

* In ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'', the Count notes that his head servant has a salary of 1500 francs per year, and is making as much again by taking a cut out of the household expenditures that he is in control of.

* Brandon from ''Literature/KeasFlight'' used to be the CEO of a company. He was sentenced to the Flying Dustbin for disguising an illicit personal fund as a non-profit organization.
* ''Literature/TheCatInTheStacksMysteries'': [[spoiler:The villains in book 7 were embezzling from the library budget for over a decade using a phony e-book company, which they themselves had set up and then got a subscription to it for the library, allowing the college access to the e-books it provided. Except all the items were permanently checked out, and the money supposedly going to the company went straight into the villains' pocket. When the library director tried to cancel the subscription in order to reduce the library's spending, the villains killed him and faked his resignation; when his successor figured out what was going on and tried to blackmail the villains, he was killed; and a witness who tried to continue the blackmail was also killed.]]
* ''Literature/HannahSwensen'': As revealed in ''Cream Puff Murder'', this got Ronni Ward fired from one of her previous jobs -- she was a cocktail waitress at a bar, where she totaled her customers' bar tabs early, took their credit cards and rang them up. Then, when they'd order another round, she'd ask them to pay in cash and pocketed it. When the owner complained to the bartender about his coming up short, the bartender started keeping a closer eye on the cocktail waitresses and caught her in the act.
* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': It's discovered that in ''Killer Cruise'', that [[spoiler:Kyle Pritchard has been embezzling from his aunt Emily so he and Leona Nesbitt can run off to the Cayman Islands.]] [[spoiler:Neither of them are the killer, but they get disinherited and fired respectively.]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', [[TheDragon Arl Rendon Howe]] is helping himself to silver from the royal treasury (seemingly uncaring of the fact that Ferelden's army is desperately underfunded and trying to fight a CivilWar with their own people, one triggered primarily by his and Loghain's brutality and incompetence, while simultaneously trying to fight off the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil darkspawn horde]] moving up from the south. One of the Warden's side missions involves swiping said silver from a warehouse in Denerim before Howe can ship it to his private estate.

* Used in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' as a way to justify the revenue cap. When explaining to [[TheHero Ezio]] (and the player) about the revenue chest, Claudia mentions that whatever excess appears in the chest, she'll take for herself.
* One entire series of collectible eggs from the Facebook game ''Hatchlings'' is themed around goofy "animals" that bored workers can assemble from office supplies - tape-dispenser snails, binder-clip snakes, etc - that they pilfer and squander.
* In ''VideoGame/CuteKnight1'', working as a cashier in the local shop would at some point trigger an event that gives the player an option to steal from the till. Not only does this raise her sin level, they may get caught. If so, the shop owner would not only stop working with her, but also charge her more for merchandise.
* ''VideoGame/Persona5'': One target in Mementos has been doing this at the convenience store he runs, to the tune of about 50,000 Yen (roughly $400), all whilst pinning the blame on a part-timer and forcing said part-timer to repay it.

* Annie gets fired from a job in ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' partly for doing this.

* ''Literature/HannahSwensen'': As revealed in ''Cream Puff Murder'', this got Ronni Ward fired from one of her previous jobs - she was a cocktail waitress at a bar, where she totaled her customers' bar tabs early, took their credit cards and rang them up. Then, when they'd order another round, she'd ask them to pay in cash and pocketed it. When the owner complained to the bartender about his coming up short, the bartender started keeping a closer eye on the cocktail waitresses and caught her in the act.