Is having employees pay for missing items legal?
Florida Jul 21, 2026
Location: Florida I work as a commission only sales representative for a billion dollar retail company. We conduct inventory every single morning and scan every item in. Our products range anywhere from $15 to $3,000 in value. If an item goes missing during a shift, the company automatically forces the sales reps who were on that shift to pay for it out of pocket. For example, if an $800 item goes missing and 4 people were on the shift, they split the cost and charge each rep $200. The company has comprehensive loss insurance and writes off these inventory losses on their taxes. This means they are recovering the full retail value (even though they bought the items at wholesale), plus getting tax write-offs, while simultaneously making minimum-wage or commission-only employees cover the losses. This feels like it has to be double dipping. and a violation of wage/labor laws, especially since we are commission only employees. My question would be: Is it legal for a company to force employees to pay for missing inventory, especially when split arbitrarily across an entire shift without proof of individual fault or theft and also getting to use their insurbace to cover the loss as well? Any advice on what federal or state laws might apply here would be greatly appreciated.
