Sign Here: How Drivers Get You to Skip the Check
Updated: Sep 4
This is Part Two of a three-part series.
Catch up on Part One: Two Kegs In, Two Empties Out - One Wasn't Empty!
Read Part Three: It's Your Prerogative to Check
Goods Receiving Series - Part 2 : The Pressure
“Oh, that must still be on the lorry.”
Twenty-fifth floor. A restaurant that only takes deliveries by lift - pallet up first, then kegs on two-wheel sack trucks, one trip at a time. A keg short on the delivery. The driver’s answer: must still be downstairs.
Think about what he’s actually claiming. That rather than bring everything up in one go, he’d rather leave a keg behind, let you notice it’s missing, then go back down twenty-five floors and up again to fetch it. If I were driving that round, I’d check every single item was off my lorry before I ever got in that lift - because the last thing I’d want is a second trip. That’s not scepticism for its own sake. That’s just asking whether the excuse makes more sense than the truth.
It usually doesn’t. And that’s the tell worth remembering: if the excuse costs the driver more effort than simply producing the item, be suspicious of the excuse.
Ask yourself honestly: when did you last actually watch a delivery get checked, line by line, against the note? Not assume it happens. Watch it happen. A
lot of operators can’t answer that question, and that’s exactly why this topic gets waved off as boring, administrative, not-my-problem.
It doesn’t feel like the dramatic stuff. Nobody’s walking out the back door with something under their coat. But remember the GM from Part 1, actively watching, one route in, one driver she knew, and she still nearly missed it. If someone paying full attention nearly missed it, “my team obviously checks” isn’t the safe assumption it feels like.
This is the same play as the keg from Part 1, just running on pressure instead of disguise. No front door tricks here - just a line, delivered fast, banking on you not wanting to hold up the round. And it’s not rare. Ask most operators and they’ll tell you some version of the same sentence: “it’s all there mate, sign here.” Said with a bit of a push behind it. Said because the driver wants to finish his round and get home, and knows most sites won’t slow him down to find out.
Here’s the uncomfortable part. That’s coercion, and drivers know it’s coercion. You’re being pushed to sign for stock you haven’t verified, under time pressure that has nothing to do with your business and everything to do with theirs. And it works, most of the time, because most operators let it.
It isn’t just short-drops, either. Sometimes the trick runs the other way. I’ve seen it with a butcher trying to clear stock before it turned - ordered 5kg, delivered 8kg, hoping the extra 3kg would just get signed off without anyone checking against the order. You’re not being short-changed there. You’re being used to solve someone else’s stock problem, and paying full price for the privilege.
Both tricks fail against the same discipline: check the delivery note against what’s physically in front of you, and check that against the purchase order. Three things have to agree… what you ordered, what the note says, what’s actually there and prior to anyone signing anything. Miss any one of those checks and you’re exposed on one side or the other, either short on what you paid for or stuck with stock you never wanted.
A 900-room hotel operates with two dedicated goods-in staff and industrial scales on a loading bay. A pub with one delivery a week can’t. But the principle doesn’t shrink with the site - it’s still one delivery note, still one physical count, still ten minutes instead of none. The size of the check scales down. The requirement to do it at all doesn’t.
So the real question isn’t whether you’ve got the resources of a 900-room hotel. It’s whether you’ve built a habit of checking at all, on any site, of any size, or whether you’re the operator every driver on that round already knows will just sign.
That’s what actually makes the difference. Not headcount. Discipline.
I'm David Holden. I've spent 30 years working across hospitality audit and operations, helping hotels, pubs, restaurants and bars identify where profit is being lost and put practical controls in place to stop it.
If a driver's ever talked you into signing before you'd actually checked, get in touch. I'll help you build a receiving process that doesn't depend on catching every excuse in the moment, so it doesn't matter how convincing the next one is.
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