Curious article out of the Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Journal Gazette, regarding a church custodian stealing from the collection plate, but "half of which he said he put back in the collection plate because it 'made him feel good about himself,' according to court documents."
Once you get past the "stealing, so you can donate" part, you wonder if the church did any screening for the position. Not uncommonly, churches will give work around the church, like cleaning, to a "down on his luck" parishioner, or a friend or relative. Commendable motivation, but a questionable business practice.
In contrast, because we assume a certain responsibility for our clients' facilities and possessions, we screen our folks: statewide court records, civil and criminal, down to justice court level; nationwide felony and sex offender databases; driving records; identify and Social Security number confirmation. And we're darned aggressive about insuring that no one we've not screened gets access to a client's facility, or keys (and we make the keys difficult to duplicate).
All this is in marked contrast to methods used by "ma & pa" services, most franchise janitorial operations, and a lot of firms who use "friends" or family to do the janitorial, often "off the books". We don't claim to eliminate all security issues, but we do quite a good job limiting them.
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