Disaplinary hearing

A question about : Disaplinary hearing

Hi I would like some advice regarding an issue at work.

I had a customer who placed a large order over the phone in December,
the transaction was for appropriately Ј4000,he said he will be sending his diver to come in and collect the items the next day.

This is not unusual for us as we often have customers who spend large amounts
and often have people pay over the phone and collect another day especially when we have special offers of 10% off as we did that day.

His driver came into collect the next day,I wasn't in but i left everything ready for my colleague to give it to him. As she was getting everything ready the department manager and the head of security passed byand asked who he was and what was happening, she explained and they both told her to call the customer and check if it was his driver before giving the items over, she did as they said. The same customer called the next day and placed another order with my colleague (a second colleague) this time for Ј6000, the driver came in to collect that evening with from myself and a fourth colleague.

It turns out the card was fraudulent and the matter is being investigated with all people involved. I had my 'fact finding meeting last week' and now they are escalating and i have a disaplinary hearing this week.

Their main arrangements is that they have no recorded from the bank that i called to check the card, which I did. Their other point is that they have an internal system where staff can access training notes and other information
and if I was unsure about anything then I should have referred there where it would have told me that I cannot do a telephone order and physically give the items to a customer it must be posted out...fair enough but my argument is that I have never ever had an induction with the store; where they would tell me all of the stores procedures including mail orders; I told them this in my meeting and that I had never heard of this system and had no clue how to access it.

I believe it is down to the department manager at the time to book new staff members in to ensure everyone knows the rules, also for as long as I have been there (just short of 2 years) we have always allowed customers to collect orders placed over the phone, all of my colleagues and managers have done so; it has been the norm and no one has ever told us otherwise. In the past floor managers have just asked us to keep the items locked away as they had been paid for.

My argument is that just because they have no record of my call it does not mean the call was not place. If I was never told about these tools how can I have been expected to use them (the internal system),

if I have never been educated by the way of an induction how can I be expected to know the procedure of not allowing customersto pay over the phone and collect when my colleagues and superiors have always done so.

My Contract states:
You are obliged to comply with the rules and regulations of the store in which you are based. Any breach of this requirement will result in disciplinary action being taken

As I haven't had training to state what these rules and regulations are, how can I be in breach of them. Also if I'm in breach then I would assume that everyone else within my company that has done the same thing are also in breach?
The letter sates that if these allegations are proven then disciplinary action up to dismissal could be taken.

By the way I recorded the meeting, and will probably record the hearing for my own reference

I hope I have written this clearly, thanks in advance for any help.

Best answers:

• The first thing to do is to contact your union rep (assuming you are a union member??), who will help you to put together your case and represent you at the meeting.
• Hi, I have only just joined the union so they haven't been much help...They are unable to attend for this reason.
• That sucks.
  How to play this depends what their plan is - are they intending to get rid of you to make an example, or do they have to pretend to go through a process in order to keep their insurance, or perhaps they honestly don't realise that everyone does this all the time and they genuinely believe you went against a rule that you knew about?
  You haven't been there for two years which means that - regardless of this particular disciplinary - they can just pay you off for any reason or no reason, so don't mark yourself out as having an attitude problem because it could make things worse.
  They will say, quite reasonably, that it was your responsibility to ask what the rules and procedures were that your contract talks about, if it hadn't been explained to you. And if you say "my induction was rubbish and nobody told me anything" this is going to be all the more reason why you should have asked questions. So be very careful about that.
  I think you need to make it clear that you believed you had been taught all the correct procedures on the job, and that you had seen the phone order/pick up thing happen many times before including while you were being trained up. This explains - without pointing fingers or ducking responsibility - why you did not ask whether there was a special procedure for phone orders.
  Tell them you're gutted that it happened on your watch, that you feel terrible that it turns out there was a procedure that would have prevented it, and that you've now read the whole handbook from cover to cover (do this quickly, before the meeting!) so that something like this can never happen again. What you're trying to do here is show that you're taking it seriously, that you're on your employer's side (if you see what I mean) and that you're keen to avoid anything going wrong in future, but without actually saying that it was your fault or that you did something wrong.
• Hi Snakey, many thannks for your reply
  I will ensure I come across as non-argumentative, I'm not sure what there agenda is, however the HR lady is from an external company so I'm hoping that she will be neutral rather than on my companies side.
  To be clear I have never had an Induction.
  My point is that I am following the common practice of all of my colleges and managers, I believe I have documented evidence to support this but I need to check this out.
  Its strange but I kind of work in a company within a company, I have read the smaller companies handbook, however the larger company doesn't have a handbook just this internal intranet thing.
  Yes I agree, I will take it seriously and will asked to be put on the next available induction.
• I suspect this external company thing may be more and more common (is it Peninsula?) - it's supposed to demonstrate reasonable employer behaviour, as the external company IS supposed to demonstrate a degree of neutrality. At least it takes some of the emotion out of it - e.g. the investigator is not at risk of being a manager who will have their own poor performance demonstrated if they are found not to have conducted the required induction.