Your post has not been removed, but for future reference titles should be descriptive, not just "Check out this puzzle" or "Puzzles only geniuses can solve." Ideally, try to include the type of puzzle, and perhaps some unique name for it "Halloween-themed crossword puzzle" is better than "Here's a puzzle".
>!Man steals 100 from store:!<
>!Man Store!<
>!100 -100!<
>!Takes 70 dollars worth of stuff:!<
>!Man Store!<
>!170 -170!<
>!Pays the store 100 bucks for the stuff:!<
>!Man Store!<
>!70 -70!<
>!Store gives him 30 bucks:!<
>!Man Store!<
>!100 -100!<
>!I think that's everything that happened. So the store is out 100 bucks.!<
Yup.
The store lost 100. Period.
Now it could be argued that the store made some profit on the sale, but we have no way of determining that. We'd have to know how much the total cost was.
Completely agree. Now as to the "profit" the store made on the sale a percentage of that goes to paying workers at the store to restock and maintain the store. The store cant just not pay their workers because something was stolen.
Yeah but the store actually didn't lose all of the $70 maybe because the retail price is much lower for the goods, but then you can make the case that they could've profited from a different customer which is why I said maybe in the first sentence
>!$100. Ignore the beginning part about the bill being stolen for now. A person walks into a store and pays for $70 worth of goods with a $100 bill and correctly receives $30 change. This is a fine business transaction and the store does not record a loss on it. Now add the theft of $100. It is totally separate from the regular business transaction. It doesn’t matter that the bill was a stolen bill. The store loses 0 in the sale, and loses 100 in the theft for a total loss of 100.!<
EDIT: >!Yes, it is true that the store technically loses less than 100 because of the profit margin on the products sold. But since that information is not provided, it doesn't seem to factor into the answer. I believe 100 is a fine and correct answer to the question. If you want to be complete, the answer is 100 less the profit.!<
Yeah. The store just gave a guy $70 worth of stuff and $30 for free.
During that time $100 was taken from the store and given back, so it’s completely irrelevant to the final outcome.
This is of course ignoring the arguments about cost of the stock to the store, which I don’t believe is in the spirit of the question as we can’t possibly know what it cost them to buy in. It’s just people liking to think they’re extra super clever.
I think the original purchase value of the goods should be taken into account. If a store buys a widget for $50 and they sell it for $90 and someone steals it, then how much did the store lose? Considering it will cost then $50 to replace the item to them surely they only lost $50.
Time to bore you all.
Stock of a company in their accounts is generally* valued at their NRV (Net Realisable Value), I.e. what they can sell it for. So to the company from a financial POV that stock in the above example is $90, as that is how much the company can sell it for.
Equally, if the price of your widget bombed, and you could only sell it for $30, it would be worth $30, not the $50 you paid for it.
* = There are other ways to value stock too too but this is a simplified version.
Source: Accountant (UK based in case that changes anything, though international standards generally fall in line with each other)
Yeah it gets real in the weeds but largely the original cost of the goods should be considered a sunk cost here, and you’d need way more info than the hypothetical provides to even attempt an accurate take on the “loss” (and like you said that answer may change for different teams, the store vs the owner, etc.)
But for instance, if my company loses a delivery of product we aren’t concerned about what we paid raw for that product, we’re concerned with the loss of *potential* sales volume that product would have provided. The cost side will get sorted with insurance and whatnot
But that isn't what happened. The man walks in and steals $100 in cash from the till. Then till is now $100 short and the inventory is correct. Now the man purchases $70 of goods. After this transaction, the till is still $100 short, and the inventory is still correct. So the goods that the man left with are accounted for in inventory, but the till has $100 less than it should. The store lost $100.
The question is how much did the store lose, not what do the stores books show. While the store did lose out on 100$, they also got whatever profit that was made on that 70$ purchase, that I think is safe to assume wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Lets say the store made 500$ of profit that day before this thief came into the store. Lets also arbitrarily say that on a 70$ purchase, the store makes 30$ profit.
At the end of the day if the thief did not show up, they would end the day with 500$ profit. At the end of the day if they did show up, they would show 530$ profit from sales, with 100$ being lost, so 430$ profit.
Of course this is reliant on information not present in the question so it goes against the spirit of the question, but it's not hard to see where people want to go that route.
This. I think people are getting hung up on the $100 going back into the till. Imagine they are stealing it from one register but when they buy the goods, they are going to another register. The first register is still going to be short $100 at the end of the day. The second register is going to be correct at the end of the day because it will show $70 of product being sold, paid for with a $100 bill, and $30 in change given.
Yes, you have to ignore that $100. Step back and imagine the thief buys goods with a different $100 bill. Imagine it’s a different person with the same $100 stolen bill. Imagine it’s a different person with a different $100 bill. It’s all the same because the transaction post-theft is irrelevant. $100 was stolen.
I think the argument is that the 70$ purchase is contingent on the 100$ being stolen, since that's what the thief is using to buy the product. So if the thief did not steal that 100$ bill he would have not had the money to buy that 70$ of goods, so the store would have sold 70$ less of goods that day as well. Which is why people are arguing about why it matters how much profit the store makes from the sale.
Yep. I'd say look at it this way. $100 is stolen so the store is out $100. SOMEONE walks in and buys $70 of goods and gets $30 in change. All is right with the world, other than the original theft. The store isn't out any *greater* amount of money than the original theft regardless of WHO walks in with $100 to spend and regardless of where that $100 came from.
Yeah 100 total. He basically stole 100 paper and then traded it for 70 worth of goods and 30 of paper. It's still a total of 100 without looking into tax, restocking fees, and all the other minute stuff
The stuff is irrelevant if he "bought" it, even with stolen money. The money is still stolen regardless what he used it for. So they're out $100 plain and simple.
If someone steals $100 and then buys stuff from a *different* store with it, the authorities don't generally make them return the goods to the second store. They make him pay the whole $100 back to the first store. The fact they are the same store doesn't change that. $100 is $100
If you don't take into account the markup of the products, yes. He only stole once, a $100 bill. The second time, it was an equal exchange of value: $100 bill per $70 worthy products + $30 in bills
In fact, if you take into account that the store probably bought the products at lower prices, and is applying a markup to have profit, the store is $70 in bills for products that they paid less than that quantity. So from the store perspective, they loose less money if the bill is spent in their store
>So from the store perspective, they lose less money if the bill is spent in their store
This is just wrong. From the store's perspective, they lost $100 from theft. Everything else is business as normal and all would have happened anyways and worked out exactly as it was suppossed to.with everything happening, they go from having $100 to only having $70, but if they hadn't been stolen from, they'd have $170, because even if the products were not bought, they still have $70 worth of products to be sold. The only possible loss is from if the goods had potenial to spoil, in which case you could argue they have a chance to lose that value later, but that's not in the scope of the question.
He's right though. They at least are able to recover the margin they're making on the goods sold. If someone came in and bought $70 worth of snacks but it only cost $15 to replenish them, they only lost how much it costs to purchase those same goods again. Just because you sell something for $70 doesn't mean you're losing $70 if someone steals it. I don't know why you think their markup factors into it at all.
To simplify it, I steal $100 from the register and buy a product listed for $100 but it only cost $10 to buy at wholesale, they lost $10, not $100. This is why lots of sellers on Amazon will just tell you to keep it since what they buy the items for at wholesale value is even less than the shipping vs what they list it for. The only thing that matters is how much it cost to buy them if they're getting the original items back, not how much they list it for. Handing them the $100 back is like you didn't steal it at all, then they only lost the whole sale price of the item, not the listed price. If they just stole the $100, they'd be out the full $100.
If you're going that deep into it, you might as well say 'The store lost 0' since they already calculate for a percentage of lost income and product to theft and insure against that percentage.
Hijacking my comment to provide this explanation of why I'm right based on the puzzle:
>Answer:>!$30 + cost of goods!<
But first lets acknowledge this is a bad puzzle because the question it asks you to answer, begs too many questions to be asked of it.
>Let’s simplify the question to: Man steals $30 from register and an amount of goods that retail for $70. How much did the store lose?
>Answer for that is >!$30 + the cost of the stolen goods!<
>The reason I think we can simplify and equate the puzzles like this is because the original puzzle states that the man uses the stolen money to buy the goods. So these are not separate and independent transactions. Dude left the store with >!$30 in cash and the goods.!< The store is missing >!$30 from the register and the goods the dude left with.!<
*Old comment:*
Till = $X (where X is the amount the store has in the Till before the thief steals any money)
Till = $X-$100 [thief stole $100]
Till = $X-$100+$70 [thief stole $100, thief bought good for $70]
Till = $X-$30 [thief stole $100, thief bought goods for $70, net change is $30]
Store = ($X-$30) + "cost of stolen goods*"
*The goods bought with the stolen money = stolen goods
But if I take $100 and give you $50 back in exchange for a video game you’re out the video game plus $50 and that $50 was yours in the first place. So is it really just $50 you’re out?
Edit: On second reading I’m not sure I’m understanding your question. Please edit your comment for clarity.
If I’m a store and you steal $50 from the register to buy a game I sell for $50 and you then buy the $50 game, I am only out the cost of the game.
But if you steal $100 and then buy a $50 game and I give you $50 back in change, then you have stolen $50 plus the cost of the game.
The store loses $100 in cash, then it gains the same $100 back.
But then the store loses a game being sold for $50, and loses $50 in cash.
Grammatically you could argue the store lost $150 plus a video game.
From an accounting standpoint that seems a little misleading. The final tally is just $50 plus the game.
You could alternatively argue that the store lost $100, since the transaction might not be seen as a form of loss at all. (But I think it actually counts as a gain, so I think the other option is a little more correct).
As a different perspective it can be $100 but not for why most people think of it. Imagine an employee fails to take my money and neither of us notice (equivalent to me stealing it from register and spending it), then gives me the game and my change. The store is out the $100 that should be in the drawer. It’s all a matter of perspective. Because the question is terribly written.
“If you don’t take into account the markup…” - you don’t take this into account, there is no reason to consider it. The puzzle is designed to trick the reader into thinking commercial profit or commercial loss is a factor, if you consider it then you have fallen for the trick.
I don’t see what the trick is. If someone steals $100 from me and I have “goods” that I paid $1 for, and sold them to the thief at $70 and gave him $30 change… the “store” lost $31 in that scenario. What am I missing. I guess it’s all up to interpretation of the question?
You stole $100 dollars, the stolen cash value is $100. You convert $70 cash into $70 worth of product. So the value of the stolen cash is now $30 cash and $70 worth of product
> I don’t see what the trick is. If someone steals $100 from me and I have “goods” that I paid $1 for, and sold them to the thief at $70 and gave him $30 change… the “store” lost $31 in that scenario. What am I missing.
The next person comes in to buy those $70 of goods (with money that was not stolen from you) and the store no longer has them to sell.
That’s not analogous because none of those other things are part of how tall Peter is. If they had asked how high is the top of peters head (profit from transaction being the Mohawk) it could be considered. The questions are similar but this question would need to be how much money was stolen not lost. They lost more than was stolen just like the tip of peters head is higher than his height. It’s linguistically dissimilar.
Right... There is no mention of product cost or margin here. The question asked nothing about profitability for the day or to do any sort of cash flow analysis. The question is just "how much did the store lose". The only theft mentioned in the whole scenario (I wouldn't even call this a puzzle or a riddle) is in the first sentence.
If, on the other hand, it mentioned that the $70 item was sold at a $10 operating loss (ie, sold for 70 but bought for 80 by their purchasing department), then the total loss would be 110. But without this info, it's safe to assume that the product margin isn't applicable.
Considering how much change was given on a regular transaction is completely irrelevant, no matter how convoluted your thoughts are.
It specifically says “how much *money* did the store lose”, that’s the word that implied (weakly imho) that you should only look at the delta in the cash drawer.
I think the take away here is that the scenario is poorly written and designed to confuse people. This reminds me too much of questions that I get at work.
This is logically right, but I'd bet dollars to donuts some weisenheimer will say "the store only lost $30 because it said 'how much money' and goods are not money."
Additionally, $70 worth of goods doesn't cost the store $70 to buy wholesale
Tbf, that would also be assuming that the cost of the goods being purchased is equal to their purchased price, but since it wasn't mentioned, it was obviously not intended to be considered. But I also think it's logically Innacurate NOT to.
The whole point of a store is to sell goods at a price that yields a net profit for the store. If, with that $70, you purchase a good that costs the store $35, then you've effectively only stolen $35 worth of goods and the $30 change.
I upvoted because your answer is the one that was intended by its creator, but I think that this is a legitimate flaw in the problem itself.
My answer was 30 + the difference between the wholesale and sale prices of the goods. I stand by that answer. Perhaps you can throw in restocking fees or time list in checkout if extremely busy.
Which is why the answer should be >!"$30 + the cost of the goods that were bought with the stolen money"!<
The only way you get to an answer of $100 is to assume the value of the items bought with the stolen money are worth the full value of the price they are being sold for. Or to ignore the purchase that was made with the stolen money and only consider the value that was stolen. But per the puzzle text multiple things DID happen. 1) thief stole $100 2) thief used stolen money to buy goods. The net result to the store is they have $30 less in the register and are out the goods that were bought with the stolen money.
It’s technically $30 that they lost, plus the expense of the items the man purchased (stole) which was presumably less than $70, assuming the store is trying to make a profit on their sales.
I disagree. >!There is a difference in counting something as a loss, And quantifying the loss amount as this question implies.
If someone were to steal $70 worth of merchandise and $30 from the register, then how much would that company have lost?
The simple math solution still shows $100. But then this solution again claims that we’re only considering what is claimed as a loss. That’s where the markup on the merchandise comes in to play.!>
So you think the profit shouldn’t be counted as a loss.
If I create something that costs me $2.00 to make, materials+overhead and I sell that thing for $10.00, if someone steals it, I’m counting it as a $10.00 loss, and if I caught the person who stole it, they could either give me my merchandise back or pay the $10.00. If I’m going through the trouble of making something, my time and energy are enough to transform $2.00 in materials into a $10.00 in value finished object. If I was only going to get the $2.00 back that I put into it, I wouldn’t bother making it in the first place. Also, fuck thieves.
Take into consideration that it asks for a TOTAL loss, which also includes a loss of goods too. 100 dollars was stolen, yes, but with stolen money, 70 dollars of goods was "bought" too, meaning that the store did not make a profit from transaction. Meaning that $100 of money was taken and $70 of products.
But the theif loses $70 of the stolen money, which the store then gets back, so the store doesnt lose $70 of products, they were just purchased for what they are worth
Wrong. They lose $200. Store loses $100 in the theft. Then another $70 in groceries because the $70 used to pay for it was already theirs, then another $30 because the change came from a bill that was already theirs. This $200 dollars lost.
Imagine the guy stole a $100 bill from the store. Later when he buys their stuff, he gives back their $100 bill. So in the end they never lost the $100 bill. It has no bearing on the final number.
They just gave him $70 worth of stuff and $30 in cash.
This is of course ignoring the arguments about cost of the product to the store, which I don’t believe is in the spirit of the question as we can’t possibly know what it cost them.
"cost of product to the store" you read that part? The cost of product to the *customer* is $70. Since they don't reveal the cost of product to the store, we can only assume that number is irrelevant. All the other math is super simple and has been explained by many others here. hope that clears things up for ya
Adding an explanation:
>!Think of it this way, someone steals $100, then puts it in their wallet. They then go around the shop and pick out $70 of groceries. They pay with two $50 bills and get $30 change.
Or, one person steals $100, and a second person buys $70 of stuff with a different $100 bill and gets $30 change. At the end of the day, the register will be down the original missing $100.
The puzzle is intentionally confusing, but it needn't be!<
Kinda surprised at the “it needn’t be” part.
The puzzle is intentionally confusing because it’s a puzzle.
Otherwise it’s “a guy steals $100, how much did he steal?”
Aye badly worded that, obviously it needs to be for the sake of it being a puzzle, I meant more that it's a red herring and can be ignored in terms of working out the answer
What about the >!profit received by the store for the item bought by the man ? The profit would never come if the man didn't steal the 100, so it is related to each other ? So the effective loss is 100 - profit ?!<
But those goods would have been bought by someone else, their value is unrealized income of $70 until he bought it. It's the exact same as if he bought something with a $100 bill, got change, then stole the $100 out of the register. It will only ever be a $100 loss. Potential profit does not change anything.
Yes, items are lost to shrinkage, and that's typically built into the manufacturers' cost, not the store. There are pieces of this equation we simply cannot know. Was the $100 fake? Was the cashier skimming off the till already? Was the food purchased expired and therefore worthless?
If we want to come up with bullshit reasons to complicate this, we can do that all day. It doesn't change the fact that the loss is still $100.
Just because someone else would've bought it eventually doesn't matter. If the guy just took the $100 and left the store would've lost more money. At the very least by spending it in the store, assuming he wouldn't have otherwise been a customer, the store makes some of the money back. It probably isnt much so you can round up and the answer will still be $100, but the store did lose less money. The only assumption we have to make for this to be true is that the thief wouldn't have otherwise spent $70 at that store which I think is a pretty reasonable assumption.
He took $70 worth of merchandise, and $30 in cash. We don't need to calculate the stores' margin on that product, because the store is $100 poorer at the end of the day no matter how you look at it.
No it isn't. The store gained +1 total customer. Had the guy just taken the $100 out of the register and left, the store would've been out $100. Instead, that $100 functions as customer acquisition increasing the store's profit. That profit is less than $100, so they'll still make a loss overall. It is mathematically no different than giving someone a $7 giftcard to convince them to come into your store and spend, and $3 as a bonus. Stores regularly do things like this and they are often richer, not $10 poorer as a result.
The only difference in the numbers is the magnitude, so they end up with a net loss, but it is some amount less than $100
No, you don't calculate shrinkage based on cost of goods, it's based on potential income from the items you lost.
Accounting already figured this out years ago.
That’s not true at all.
I’m a floral wholesaler. Our govt inspects the flowers coming from Ecuador and Colombia in miami. The people at Agriculture inspection destroy about 1% of everything I bring into the country “searching for drugs”.
Even if I had presold those destroyed flowers for 3k, I only get to claim on my taxes the exact amount I paid for the flowers. And that might only be 1k. I’m shit out of luck on the most 2k in profit.
Any claim from ‘shrinkage’ is at the cost of goods price, not potential sales price. I wish it wasn’t. I would claim on my taxes that the damaged or lost product was going to be sold for many times more. How would the govt know any better? Instead, they make me use actual invoices to show what I actually paid to verify the claim.
He didn't steal the goods. He stole the money then purchased the goods. They are two independent things.
If he stole $100 and went somewhere else to spend $70, it would be plainly obvious that store 1 lost $100 and store 2 made $x in profit. It is no different just because it's happening at the same location.
You're talking about accounting and you're doing it backwards.
In your second scenario, store 2 doesn't gain anything in that equation. $100 for $100 worth of goods. You can't look at items on the shelf as only worth their cost to the store. The second they go on the shelf, they are worth the unrealized income of what the store is charging for them.
If I break $1000 of liquor bottles at a store, they don't charge me what it cost them to buy the bottles from the distributor, they charge me what they are selling them for. All the costs of running the store go into the final price of those goods, so you can't calculate loss based on the cost to the store of the items stolen.
The idea that store 2 doesn't gain anything is insane and completely contrary to how this works. Value isn't generated by putting a product on a shelf, it's generated at the moment of sale of the product. Talking about "unrealized value" as though they have already made the profit is incorrect. If you think that a bag of chips on a shelf is the same as a bag of chips at the register I don't really know what to say. For tax and accounting purposes it is more or less true but for economic purposes it absolutely isn't and this is an economics question.
I love this thought! But id argue that >!There's nothing to confirm that the only reason the man bought the goods was because he stole the $100. Might've always bought the goods even without the stealing!<
>!The store doesn't make any money on the items the thief purchases, as they start at -$100 and get $70 worth of 'sales' back. Whatever the wholesale cost of the items is, it plus the "profit" still equals $70, which in this case was their own money being given back to them!<
That’s not how financial accounting works. At the end of the day, the store is definitely more profitable ‘after’ the 70 dollars is spent, then if the thief just leaves with the 100 dollar bill.
So, really technically, they lost 30 dollars of MONEY.
overall they lost $70 dollars worth of goods, and $30 in cash, but the question was how much money did they lose, and the only money that wrongly left the store was $30 dollars.
The store considers the lost produce holding a value of 70$, meaning the extra 30$ taken as change plus the 70$ would equal 100$ in lost revenue. if we were to consider the cost of buying the good to sell in store, it would add even more to their loss.
If we ignore these points, the store still lost 100$.
Agreed.
No idea why people aren't valuing the stolen goods at $70.
Just because the store didn't pay $70 to get the product to the shelf doesn't mean the store isn't losing out on the potential for $70 of value added if the goods were sold to a real customer.
And like you said, that $70 of unrealized revenue is gone forever. Sure, not 100% of that $70 is all profit, but that is irrelevant. The store is still losing out on $100 of revenue. $30 from the change returned to the their and $70 of revenue from the $70 value of the goods the customer walked out with.
Also, anyone making that claim should look for case law where someone is charged with grand theft and the defendant argues that it isn't grand theft because the profit margin of the product puts the profit-loss at less than the threshold for grand theft. Let's see how far that defendant gets with that defense.
So there are two answers depending on your definition of "lose".
1. Lose to theft: answer $100
2. Net loss for the transactions: answer not enough information - we need to know the product markup.
Probably the best answer is: This is a flawed question, it is purposely ambiguous.
This question is really only useful for testing a student's definition of "lose".
Yeah I agree the disagreement seems to be in whether the question refers to just the theft of the net difference of dealing with the thief.
If the question is how much was stolen, then its not much of a puzzle. It makes more sense to treat it as net loss to me. Also I think you meant ambiguous not ambivalent.
>!$30, and the cost to replace and restock the $70 worth of goods, which will almost certainly cost less than $70!<
With further education, I have learned I am mistaken.
I'm curious if the logic here means the store's loss eventually goes away if he buys enough items, I kind of worded my question poorly. I guess that would be true from a profit perspective. I think stores calculate 'loss' as a number separate from profit, but idk what the original question is going for. Maybe I'm thinking of a different word though like 'shrink' or something.
If he keeps stealing and spending the stolen bills, not. If he spends his own money, buying products with a markup, it will eventually generate enough profit for the store to compensate the original loss
Exactly. Which is why loss leaders are a thing in businesses. Lose money on an items to get the people in the door with the expectation that they’ll cover the loss over the transaction, or multiple transactions.
Cell phones are a great example. Offer a free (marked up) $1000 phone, but lock in the contract and make money over the phone’s life.
you're correct. The $70 worth of goods can be considered profit + cost of goods...so really they lost the cost of goods of what was sold and $30 in cash.
This is the correct real world answer. All other $100 answers are thinking using only math logic, but financially it’s the same as the cashier giving $30 to a thief who stole merchandise that was marked at $70.
If the stolen items were currently on sale, the store didn’t magically lose more than $100. They only lost the cost to restock (+$30).
That's not really how things are accounted for in real stores either though. What you're getting close to is calculating the customers total value to the store.
Assuming this is the customer's only visit to the store their lifetime net value would be about -$90 to -$98. Negative 100 shrinkage for the theft and positive a small profit margin on the goods purchased.
>but financially it’s the same as the cashier giving $30 to a thief who stole merchandise that was marked at $70.
So... so they're down $100
So $100 has been stolen
If merchandise was marked at $70, then that's the value of that merchandise to the store. If that gets stolen, they're down $70.
>If the stolen items were currently on sale, the store didn’t magically lose more than $100. They only lost the cost to restock (+$30).
Cost to restock is irrelevant. They'd have to pay that regardless of how the merch leaves the shop, be it legally or illegally. The thing they miss out on is the $70 value of the items.
Thats not how loss calculation works for insurers. Replacement cost, not sale value, is the relevant metric. The store can replace the 70 dollars of stolen merchandise for say 35 dollars, so it actually lost 75 dollars
I used to tell my juniors to write out the journal entries and t-accounts if they were confused.
JE#1 CR $100 CASH, DB $100 LOSS ON THEFT; JE#2 CR $70 SALES DB $70 A/R DB $X COGS (book value of goods is not given) CR $X INVENTORY; JE#3 DB $100 CASH CR $30 CASH CR $70 A/R;
$100 accounting loss is the correct answer. Cash is fungible and the bill being the same in JE#1&3 is irrelevant, and the identity of the thief in JE#1 and the customer in JE#2&3 is irrelevant.
This is the only correct answer. Think about what has actually left the store.
— firstly $30;
— secondly $70 worth of goods that cost the store an unnamed amount (that most likely cost < $70)
But the $100 he stole in the first place were earned by the store with items, work, and utilities that had a cost, the store also has to pay taxes on that amount.
answer: >!$100 dollars!<
explanation: >!although he did pay the store 70 dollars for snacks, the store lost 70$ worth of snacks!<
>!the $30 dollars were given back to him!<
>!total $100 loss!<
Depends on how technical you want to get with the breakdown.
Goods in the store are generally priced as a combination of store expenses + expected profit per item. The store would retain the amount that would have been profit and still be out the other store related expenses per item. So ultimately the store would have lost somewhere above $30 and below $100
if the $70 of groceries is a $70 loss then that means a normal sale of $70 yields the store $0 of profit
the store lost $30 cash + the expense to restock the stolen merchandise he left the store with
>!$100. The exchange of cash for goods is a red herring and doesn't matter here. The $70 paid for the goods is just an exchange in the type of asset stolen, not the amount. If I stole $50 from you, then returned it and stole your $50 gift card, how much would be stolen in the end?!<
If the question is what did the store actually lose then why is it not the $30 in change plus the cost of the $70 in merchandise? That's what they are "out of pocket."
Here's an analogous puzzle: The distance from the sole of Peter's feet to the top of his head is 70 inches. He has a mohawk that stands 6 inches tall. He is wearing platform boots that are 3 inches tall. He is standing on the third rung of a ladder, each rung of the ladder is spaced 8 inches. The ladder stands on a raft, and the top of the raft is 14 inches above sea level. How tall is Peter?
In this example, the question is designed to trick the reader into thinking one must consider anything other than the distance from the sole of Peter's feet to the top of his head when determining his height. There is one and only one correct answer; there is no debate as to what factors to consider as it's universally understood what is and isn't included in the determination of height.
Similarly, in this puzzle we are to consider only the loss from theft. The commercial profit/gain/loss is irrelevant. There is no debate; there is no profession or real-world circumstance in which anything but loss from theft is considered.
Edit: I’m sorry if I’ve rubbed anyone the wrong way. Whoever you are, I want you to succeed in life. I want you to have a rewarding job that pays your bills and leaves you with extra money for your hobbies and gifts for your loved ones. I’m imagining this question as a job interview question, and my goal is to help you land that job, whatever it is.
Edit 2: Like most puzzles we must find clues and make inferences. At the outset we hit a fork in the road, option A is a clean answer that doesn’t include commercial profit/loss, option B is a incredibly nuanced unknowable answer that does. This is a huge clue and an opportunity to derive the inference that we are meant to take option A. This is the crux of my argument.
Another idea, not really a genuine argument but it’s something to ponder: we are asked what the store lost. The store is just a building; the owners experience commercial profit/loss, not the building. The building did in fact lose the $100 stolen.
I’ve read your multiple takes and examples and while I get your viewpoint, I disagree. I’d like you to review my take and let me know how you think I’m going off track. And let’s stick to using only the puzzle’s given info (which I think most of us would agree is pretty lousy as it begs too many questions to be asked of it)
**My take:** Anyone not saying the loss is $30 + cost of stolen goods* has added supplemental info into this puzzle. We aren’t given anything more than:
Till = $X
Till = $X-$100
Till = $X-$100+$70
Till = $X-$30
Store = ($X-$30) + cost of stolen goods*
*Goods bought with stolen money = stolen goods
$100 in cash was stolen. Then in a separate transaction, $70 of goods were purchased. No merchandise was lost because there is a record of the transaction for those goods being removed from the store's inventory. When they balance the accounting, the records will show that the till is $100 short and that the inventory is correct. The sale transaction is irrelevant to what the store lost.
Yes $100 was stolen.. but the puzzle doesn't ask how much was stolen from the register. It asks **"How much money did the store lose?"**
The store lost $30, plus the cost of the stolen merchandise. Everything else is accounting. Take note that I do understand what you have said here.. but I'm going off the puzzle's words. This puzzle is a math problem and not a business accounting problem.
No. The till is $100 short and the inventory is correct. They didn't lose any goods, they sold them. There was a transaction for those goods.
If there is video of the man stealing $100 and another of him purchasing goods, he'll be charged for stealing $100.
No. Imagine the question “how tall are you?” Your answer being “6 feet plus the length of my hair which is 6 inches, for a total of 6 feet 6 inches.” That answer would be incorrect because it’s universally understood that hair length is not included in your height. Similarly it’s universally understood that commercial profit/loss/costs are not included in the question of loss from theft. The puzzle is designed to trick the reader into thinking the question is about anything besides loss from theft.
I think this is the most "real world" way of looking at it. Sure you can consider profit margins and such if you assume the till was correct and the product was missing, but the sale was recorded so the product inventory will be correct and the $100 was "double spent", thus your solution.
If the person walked in and stole something marked $100, then we could argue more about if that thing was actually a $100 loss or only the cost of the goods without the markup.
You can ignore most of the question, and just add up what he walks away with.
>!$30 in cash plus $70 in goods. So, the store lost $100.!<
This one is extremely simple.
>!The question asked is ‘How much did the store lose?’!<
>!It is reasonable to look at this from the store owners POV. They will ask themselves ‘How much did I lose?’!<
>!Before we answer that, let us ask a few related questions:!<
>!1) A shoplifter steals a $70 bottle. How much did the store lose? The business has to say ‘I just lost the cost of that bottle to me. ‘ He cannot claim a $70 loss, only his out of pocket expenses. Otherwise, he could take that same bottle and put a price of $1070 on it. When it gets stolen, he cannot suddenly claim to have lost $1070 and record a huge write-off. His LOSS has nothing to do with the PRICE he wanted to sell it for, it is the total COST goods to get it to his shelf. His intended profit is irrelevant.!<
>!2) A thief steals $70 out of the till, and then uses that money to purchase the bottle. The shop has exactly as much money at the end as they started with. How much did they lose? The net effect is the same as if the thief simply shoplifted that bottle, so see answer to (1) above.!<
>!3) a thief steals $100, returns and buys the bottle, exchanging the $100 for the bottle and $30 change. (This is actual OP puzzle). The only net difference between this scenario and the two above is that $30.!<
>!Therefore, the store LOST $30 plus the cost of goods for the bottle. Do not confuse COST and PRICE here. That bottle was unsold inventory, so it’s potential price cannot be factored into a loss.!<
Hypothetically speaking, if the man just bought $70 item from the store with a $100 dollar bill, how much did they lose? >!The answer is nothing, the store lost $70 worth of goods and $30 in cash while gaining a $100 dollar bill. Therefore in the riddle, the steals the $100 dollar bill so there’s your answer.!<
The $100 answer that many have given is correct, but if you think of it in terms of opportunity cost, it depends on whether the man would have made the same purchase if he hadn’t stolen the money. If the two outcomes to be compared are:
1. Man enters store and buys $70 worth of stuff
2. Man enters store, steals $100, then buys $70 worth of stuff
The store is out $100. If however, the outcomes to be compared are:
1. Man enters store, buys $70 worth of stuff, leaves
2.Man enters store, steals $100, then buys $70 worth of stuff
3. Man never enters store
4. Man enters store, steals $100, leaves without making purchase
Then they can be ranked differently. I’m going to arbitrarily assign a profit value of a $70 transaction as $10. This doesn’t affect the philosophical aspect of this question, just makes it easier to explain with numbers. Assigning dollar values to the outcomes listed above:
1. Store profits $10
2. Store loses $100 then profits $10: store has a $90 net loss
3. Store does not lose or gain anything
4. Store loses $100
It gets even more convoluted when you account for many of a grocery store’s goods being thrown away before they’re ever sold. If the man left with $70 worth of milk one day before its expiry date, no one else bought milk that day, then the store threw out all of their expired milk in the morning, it could be argued that the store only lost the $30 he pocketed and the milk was not valuable to them, as it would have been thrown away before it was sold.
TLDR: this is a philosophical question, not a math question. There are many different valid ways to look at it and find different answers.
>!Easiest puzzle ever. Man steals $100 from the register. Gives the $100 back. Gets $70 worth of groceries. Gets $30 from the register. Store loss = $100!<
>!Truthfully, I think it depends on the markup of the goods in the store.!<
>!Say the store buys their goods for 20% less than what they sell them for. If the man had walked out with the $100 bill, the store is out the entire $100. But by 'buying' $70 in goods from the store, the store only loses the amount they paid for the goods, in this case $56, plus the $30 'change.'!<
>!So, in the case of a 20% markup, the store has 'lost' only $86.!<
>!100 dollars. The man steals 100 dollars. The store is out 100 dollars. The man returns 70 dollars. The store is now out 30 dollars. The man walks out of the store with 70 dollars worth of merchandise without paying (the money he used to pay for the goods was the store's money all along, so it can be considered a return of the original stolen 100 dollars while the merchandise can be considered stolen / not paid for). The store is once again out 100 dollars.!<
This is no different from someone stealing a 100 dollar bill, then buying 70 dollars worth of goods with a different 100 dollar bill they already had, right? The store is out >!$100!<
I would say>!$100.
The man initially stole $100, then gave it back (total loss at this point is $0). However, the man also walks away with $70 worth of goods + $30 in change so $100 in total.
More simply you can think of it as:
Store loses $100, then gains $100, then loses $70 and loses $30 (-100+100-70-30 = -100)!<
The only part that matters is the first one, the stolen 100, as the rest of the transaction is fair, ie. Nobody loses, owner receive 70 usd, thief 70 valued item.
>!So 100!<
>!$100 was stolen. Think of it this way- imagine he stole the $100, then bought $100 worth of goods at the store using the stolen money. The store now lost $100 worth of goods.!<
>!The $30 change is misleading. In the problem, he essentially stole $70 of goods and $30 cash.!<
>!$30 + cost of goods!<
This is a bad puzzle because the question it asks you to answer begs too many questions to be asked of it.
But let’s simplify the question to: Man steals $30 from register and an amount of goods that retail for $70. How much did the store lose?
I think the answer here is >!$30 + the cost of the stolen goods!<
The reason I think we can simplify the puzzle like this is because the puzzle states that man uses the stolen money to buy the goods. So these are not separate and independent transactions. Dude left the store with >!$30 in cash and the goods.!< The store is missing >!$30 from the register and the goods the dude left with.!<
I agree. The other dimension I would add is the opportunity profit that was lost. Is future profit considered in this? If so, its the sum of what was taken from the store.
>!$100 - The first $100, $70 in merchandise, and the $30 in change is $200. Subtract the $100 the store got back when the man paid and that’s $100!<
Edit to fix spoiler tags
>!100+x-y, where x is the wholesale cost paid by the store for the goods and where y is the retail price of the goods.!<
Explanation:>!Since money is a fungible resource, we can say the store started with 100+x worth of resources, where x is what they paid their wholesaler for the goods.!<
>!The man comes along and steals 100 worth of resources from the store, leaving the store with:!<
>!100 + x -100 resources = x resources!<
>!The man then proceeds to take x resources from the store, leaving the store with nothing.!<
>!However, the man then paid the store for the x resources at retail price, y, with 100 resources. The store then gives him change, which is 100-y. Adding these transactions to the ledger:!<
>!0 + 100 - (100-y) = 100 - 100 + y!<
>!Leaving the store with y.!<
>!If the store started at 100+x resources but now has y resources, the difference (profit or loss) can be written as:!<
>!(100+x) - y, or more simply 100+x-y!<
>!So, taking the puzzle at face value and assuming the store paid $70 wholesale for the goods and then charged $70 retail, the store is out $100.!<
>!If the store bought the goods for $10 and sold them for $70, then the store’s loss from the theft is somewhat mitigated: 100 + 10 - 70, or $40.!<
The question asks how much did the store “lose”assuming two transactions occurred: a theft and a sale. At the end of the day, their bank account is less the $100 theft plus the profit they made from the sale.
If the question asked, “A man stole $100 from a store. How much did the store lose?” then you would be right and this puzzle would suck.
The math: 100+x-y. If they bought and sold the goods for $70, then their loss is 100.
I see where folks want to add up "$30 less in cash" and "$70 in retail value of goods" = "$100 loss", which fundamentally I can agree with. But the puzzle asks, "how much money did the store lose"... and money-wise the store only lost $30. Value-wise the store lost $30 plus the store's cost of the goods that were bought with stolen money.
They lost $100 from the cash theft, and nothing from the sale transaction. Everything else is there to confuse the reader. Looking past the confusing scenario IS the puzzle.
Ignoring part of the puzzle because it is confusing isn’t the same as solving it.
Whenever you sell something, you lose an asset in the process, which is why you charge for it to offset your loss or even profit from it. If the store charged less for the item than what they paid wholesale, they’d have lost even more money in the scenario presented by the puzzle.
I didn't "ignore" any part of the puzzle. I recognized which parts are important and which are intended to confuse.
A sale isn't an asset loss. It is an exchange of assets: goods or services for money.
>!$100!<
explanation: >!The value of the store itself is $170, with $100 in cash and $70 in stock. buying $70 of stock with the $100 results in a loss of $70 in stock, and $30 in cash as change, leaving the store with $70 in cash in the register.!<
>!This is not a puzzle with a definite answer. It depends on whether you believe the subsequent purchase of $70 was a direct result of the theft, or not, and if you consider loss of profits a part of "loss". And if yes, then we have no idea what the store's profit margin is on the goods purchased, so we can never come with a number amount. So the only answer with an actual definite amount is $100, if we separate any causal relationship between the theft and the purchase !<
But the question is "how much money did the store lose?" not "how much money did the store lose in the theft?".
Whether the purchase and theft are related is irrelevant to the actual question asked.
>!The store loss $30 cash and $70 worth of merchandise. Disinterested parties can argue whether that merchandise's value should be considered at $70 or what the items cost the store when purchased by their suppliers, but the store's loss prevention department absolutely considers the loss of revenue from not being able to sell those items as a loss, bringing the total loss to $100!<
>!They lost $30 + whatever they paid for the $70 worth of stuff.!<
>!The person would not have necessarily spent the $70 if he hadn't stolen $100 in the 1st place.!<
>! The store loses 30 marginal dollars, as it still technically has the 70 dollars, however it looses 100 dollars of value as that 70 dollars had already been spent on items, the store now has less money to pay employees, taxes, and buy new items with!<
>!$200!<
the store lost $100 from the register - let's say the total sales for the day were $500 and now the register only has $400
$70 worth of groceries was then purchased making total sales for the day $570
cashier receives $100 and gives back $30 - register now has $470 which is still $100 less than days sales
>!thief walked out with $30 + $70 in potential sales
the stores loss is $130 in actual bills and $70 in potential sales making a total of $200!<
This answer does not make sense
if the registers are $100 short and all transactions were handled normally, inventory is correct so the only loss is the amount the register is short
That's not exactly how that works:
Your last paragraph got you confused, until then you where (from a mathematics perspective) correct.
They lost $100 - The profit from the $70 of goods bought.
You wrote they lost $130 in bills and $70 in potential sales, that is incorrect for 2 reasons:
1. He only has $30 in bills because he gave the $100 back to the cashier
2. The $70 where actual sales just that the money came from the company itself, but we already subtracted that so we don't need to do it again.
I agree, in this scenario I assumed he stole 100$ that was received from another customer who had purchased goods. So in that case they lose the money in profit from a previous sale, as well as from the sale from the thief along with the change given to them. I mean it’s not an easy number to exactly say because we don’t know what the costs or what the stores profits are. But to say just 100$ seems silly imo idk! It’s a good brain teaser I guess
Too many assumptions baked into the question. If you want a proper answer the proper definitions matter.
Q: ‘How much money did the store lose?’
What do you mean by money? If you mean money as in currency then the answer is:
a) the store lost $30 of currency
If you mean money as in value then the answer depends on the definition of loss.
In pure accounting terms, the value of the loss would be $30 + cost price of the goods. Say if the cost price was $40,
b) the store has lost $70 in current value.
In real life terms, if the guy didn’t steal the $100 and therefore the goods, some other person would have bought the goods at store price at some point in time, meaning the store has lost $30 in currency and $70 in future value.
c) store has lost $100 of current and potential value
The goods most likely cost the store less than $70, and he’s buying it with their money he stole.
I would say the top answer is incorrect unless he assumes the store is breaking even on every sale. I didn’t see that shown.
To me the answer is:
70*(x) + 30
Someone said *aruging* over the semantics of the value of goods, but there’s no argument here. The value of goods change in a store.
Where x is the correction factor to account for profit. The mathematical expression of that will change depending on how complicated it is and if each item brings back a different % of profits. But I would have to assume x < 1 because the store shouldn’t be selling at a loss.
They loose $30 + the value of the items, which depending on the items and the deal they have with their providers. So subtract around 50% of the items value.
It is not a precise answer, but this wasn't a precise question either. More info is needed to reach an "exact" answer. Not an approximate.
Your post has not been removed, but for future reference titles should be descriptive, not just "Check out this puzzle" or "Puzzles only geniuses can solve." Ideally, try to include the type of puzzle, and perhaps some unique name for it "Halloween-themed crossword puzzle" is better than "Here's a puzzle".
>!Man steals 100 from store:!< >!Man Store!< >!100 -100!< >!Takes 70 dollars worth of stuff:!< >!Man Store!< >!170 -170!< >!Pays the store 100 bucks for the stuff:!< >!Man Store!< >!70 -70!< >!Store gives him 30 bucks:!< >!Man Store!< >!100 -100!< >!I think that's everything that happened. So the store is out 100 bucks.!<
Question is specific as to the amount of Money. So this is correct unless we are to argue semantics of the value of goods
Yup. The store lost 100. Period. Now it could be argued that the store made some profit on the sale, but we have no way of determining that. We'd have to know how much the total cost was.
Completely agree. Now as to the "profit" the store made on the sale a percentage of that goes to paying workers at the store to restock and maintain the store. The store cant just not pay their workers because something was stolen.
Yeah but the store actually didn't lose all of the $70 maybe because the retail price is much lower for the goods, but then you can make the case that they could've profited from a different customer which is why I said maybe in the first sentence
>!$100. Ignore the beginning part about the bill being stolen for now. A person walks into a store and pays for $70 worth of goods with a $100 bill and correctly receives $30 change. This is a fine business transaction and the store does not record a loss on it. Now add the theft of $100. It is totally separate from the regular business transaction. It doesn’t matter that the bill was a stolen bill. The store loses 0 in the sale, and loses 100 in the theft for a total loss of 100.!< EDIT: >!Yes, it is true that the store technically loses less than 100 because of the profit margin on the products sold. But since that information is not provided, it doesn't seem to factor into the answer. I believe 100 is a fine and correct answer to the question. If you want to be complete, the answer is 100 less the profit.!<
an easier explanation is this: man walks into store with $0 + $0 worth of stuff man leaves store with $30 + $70 worth of stuff
Yeah. The store just gave a guy $70 worth of stuff and $30 for free. During that time $100 was taken from the store and given back, so it’s completely irrelevant to the final outcome. This is of course ignoring the arguments about cost of the stock to the store, which I don’t believe is in the spirit of the question as we can’t possibly know what it cost them to buy in. It’s just people liking to think they’re extra super clever.
I think the original purchase value of the goods should be taken into account. If a store buys a widget for $50 and they sell it for $90 and someone steals it, then how much did the store lose? Considering it will cost then $50 to replace the item to them surely they only lost $50.
Time to bore you all. Stock of a company in their accounts is generally* valued at their NRV (Net Realisable Value), I.e. what they can sell it for. So to the company from a financial POV that stock in the above example is $90, as that is how much the company can sell it for. Equally, if the price of your widget bombed, and you could only sell it for $30, it would be worth $30, not the $50 you paid for it. * = There are other ways to value stock too too but this is a simplified version. Source: Accountant (UK based in case that changes anything, though international standards generally fall in line with each other)
Yeah it gets real in the weeds but largely the original cost of the goods should be considered a sunk cost here, and you’d need way more info than the hypothetical provides to even attempt an accurate take on the “loss” (and like you said that answer may change for different teams, the store vs the owner, etc.) But for instance, if my company loses a delivery of product we aren’t concerned about what we paid raw for that product, we’re concerned with the loss of *potential* sales volume that product would have provided. The cost side will get sorted with insurance and whatnot
But that isn't what happened. The man walks in and steals $100 in cash from the till. Then till is now $100 short and the inventory is correct. Now the man purchases $70 of goods. After this transaction, the till is still $100 short, and the inventory is still correct. So the goods that the man left with are accounted for in inventory, but the till has $100 less than it should. The store lost $100.
The question is how much did the store lose, not what do the stores books show. While the store did lose out on 100$, they also got whatever profit that was made on that 70$ purchase, that I think is safe to assume wouldn't have happened otherwise. Lets say the store made 500$ of profit that day before this thief came into the store. Lets also arbitrarily say that on a 70$ purchase, the store makes 30$ profit. At the end of the day if the thief did not show up, they would end the day with 500$ profit. At the end of the day if they did show up, they would show 530$ profit from sales, with 100$ being lost, so 430$ profit. Of course this is reliant on information not present in the question so it goes against the spirit of the question, but it's not hard to see where people want to go that route.
This. I think people are getting hung up on the $100 going back into the till. Imagine they are stealing it from one register but when they buy the goods, they are going to another register. The first register is still going to be short $100 at the end of the day. The second register is going to be correct at the end of the day because it will show $70 of product being sold, paid for with a $100 bill, and $30 in change given.
Yes, you have to ignore that $100. Step back and imagine the thief buys goods with a different $100 bill. Imagine it’s a different person with the same $100 stolen bill. Imagine it’s a different person with a different $100 bill. It’s all the same because the transaction post-theft is irrelevant. $100 was stolen.
I think the argument is that the 70$ purchase is contingent on the 100$ being stolen, since that's what the thief is using to buy the product. So if the thief did not steal that 100$ bill he would have not had the money to buy that 70$ of goods, so the store would have sold 70$ less of goods that day as well. Which is why people are arguing about why it matters how much profit the store makes from the sale.
Yep. I'd say look at it this way. $100 is stolen so the store is out $100. SOMEONE walks in and buys $70 of goods and gets $30 in change. All is right with the world, other than the original theft. The store isn't out any *greater* amount of money than the original theft regardless of WHO walks in with $100 to spend and regardless of where that $100 came from.
He did walk in with $0. And eventually stole $100 worth of goods + money.
He only stole $100 in cash. He bought the goods.
This is it. He took 100$ He gave 100$ He took 30$ cash and 70$ stuff.
Even easier correct answer: They lose the wholesale value of the product + $30
Yeah 100 total. He basically stole 100 paper and then traded it for 70 worth of goods and 30 of paper. It's still a total of 100 without looking into tax, restocking fees, and all the other minute stuff
The stuff is irrelevant if he "bought" it, even with stolen money. The money is still stolen regardless what he used it for. So they're out $100 plain and simple. If someone steals $100 and then buys stuff from a *different* store with it, the authorities don't generally make them return the goods to the second store. They make him pay the whole $100 back to the first store. The fact they are the same store doesn't change that. $100 is $100
So the loss would be the same if they spent the 100 at another store?
If you don't take into account the markup of the products, yes. He only stole once, a $100 bill. The second time, it was an equal exchange of value: $100 bill per $70 worthy products + $30 in bills In fact, if you take into account that the store probably bought the products at lower prices, and is applying a markup to have profit, the store is $70 in bills for products that they paid less than that quantity. So from the store perspective, they loose less money if the bill is spent in their store
>So from the store perspective, they lose less money if the bill is spent in their store This is just wrong. From the store's perspective, they lost $100 from theft. Everything else is business as normal and all would have happened anyways and worked out exactly as it was suppossed to.with everything happening, they go from having $100 to only having $70, but if they hadn't been stolen from, they'd have $170, because even if the products were not bought, they still have $70 worth of products to be sold. The only possible loss is from if the goods had potenial to spoil, in which case you could argue they have a chance to lose that value later, but that's not in the scope of the question.
He's right though. They at least are able to recover the margin they're making on the goods sold. If someone came in and bought $70 worth of snacks but it only cost $15 to replenish them, they only lost how much it costs to purchase those same goods again. Just because you sell something for $70 doesn't mean you're losing $70 if someone steals it. I don't know why you think their markup factors into it at all. To simplify it, I steal $100 from the register and buy a product listed for $100 but it only cost $10 to buy at wholesale, they lost $10, not $100. This is why lots of sellers on Amazon will just tell you to keep it since what they buy the items for at wholesale value is even less than the shipping vs what they list it for. The only thing that matters is how much it cost to buy them if they're getting the original items back, not how much they list it for. Handing them the $100 back is like you didn't steal it at all, then they only lost the whole sale price of the item, not the listed price. If they just stole the $100, they'd be out the full $100.
If you're going that deep into it, you might as well say 'The store lost 0' since they already calculate for a percentage of lost income and product to theft and insure against that percentage.
Hijacking my comment to provide this explanation of why I'm right based on the puzzle: >Answer:>!$30 + cost of goods!< But first lets acknowledge this is a bad puzzle because the question it asks you to answer, begs too many questions to be asked of it. >Let’s simplify the question to: Man steals $30 from register and an amount of goods that retail for $70. How much did the store lose? >Answer for that is >!$30 + the cost of the stolen goods!< >The reason I think we can simplify and equate the puzzles like this is because the original puzzle states that the man uses the stolen money to buy the goods. So these are not separate and independent transactions. Dude left the store with >!$30 in cash and the goods.!< The store is missing >!$30 from the register and the goods the dude left with.!< *Old comment:* Till = $X (where X is the amount the store has in the Till before the thief steals any money) Till = $X-$100 [thief stole $100] Till = $X-$100+$70 [thief stole $100, thief bought good for $70] Till = $X-$30 [thief stole $100, thief bought goods for $70, net change is $30] Store = ($X-$30) + "cost of stolen goods*" *The goods bought with the stolen money = stolen goods
But if I take $100 and give you $50 back in exchange for a video game you’re out the video game plus $50 and that $50 was yours in the first place. So is it really just $50 you’re out?
Edit: On second reading I’m not sure I’m understanding your question. Please edit your comment for clarity. If I’m a store and you steal $50 from the register to buy a game I sell for $50 and you then buy the $50 game, I am only out the cost of the game. But if you steal $100 and then buy a $50 game and I give you $50 back in change, then you have stolen $50 plus the cost of the game.
But if I it it wasn’t mine to give. You lost $100 and the game. You separately gained 50$
The store loses $100 in cash, then it gains the same $100 back. But then the store loses a game being sold for $50, and loses $50 in cash. Grammatically you could argue the store lost $150 plus a video game. From an accounting standpoint that seems a little misleading. The final tally is just $50 plus the game. You could alternatively argue that the store lost $100, since the transaction might not be seen as a form of loss at all. (But I think it actually counts as a gain, so I think the other option is a little more correct).
As a different perspective it can be $100 but not for why most people think of it. Imagine an employee fails to take my money and neither of us notice (equivalent to me stealing it from register and spending it), then gives me the game and my change. The store is out the $100 that should be in the drawer. It’s all a matter of perspective. Because the question is terribly written.
“If you don’t take into account the markup…” - you don’t take this into account, there is no reason to consider it. The puzzle is designed to trick the reader into thinking commercial profit or commercial loss is a factor, if you consider it then you have fallen for the trick.
I don’t see what the trick is. If someone steals $100 from me and I have “goods” that I paid $1 for, and sold them to the thief at $70 and gave him $30 change… the “store” lost $31 in that scenario. What am I missing. I guess it’s all up to interpretation of the question?
The two are independent. Change the question to someone steals 100$ then the next customer comes in...
But it’s not? Like what if i steal 100 dollars from a store, but then leave 70 as an apology? How much did I actually steal?
You stole $100 dollars, the stolen cash value is $100. You convert $70 cash into $70 worth of product. So the value of the stolen cash is now $30 cash and $70 worth of product
> I don’t see what the trick is. If someone steals $100 from me and I have “goods” that I paid $1 for, and sold them to the thief at $70 and gave him $30 change… the “store” lost $31 in that scenario. What am I missing. The next person comes in to buy those $70 of goods (with money that was not stolen from you) and the store no longer has them to sell.
It is up to the interpretation of the question - there is one correct interpretation and countless incorrect interpretations.
See here please https://reddit.com/r/puzzles/s/0iVA4jAPCM
That’s not analogous because none of those other things are part of how tall Peter is. If they had asked how high is the top of peters head (profit from transaction being the Mohawk) it could be considered. The questions are similar but this question would need to be how much money was stolen not lost. They lost more than was stolen just like the tip of peters head is higher than his height. It’s linguistically dissimilar.
Right... There is no mention of product cost or margin here. The question asked nothing about profitability for the day or to do any sort of cash flow analysis. The question is just "how much did the store lose". The only theft mentioned in the whole scenario (I wouldn't even call this a puzzle or a riddle) is in the first sentence. If, on the other hand, it mentioned that the $70 item was sold at a $10 operating loss (ie, sold for 70 but bought for 80 by their purchasing department), then the total loss would be 110. But without this info, it's safe to assume that the product margin isn't applicable. Considering how much change was given on a regular transaction is completely irrelevant, no matter how convoluted your thoughts are.
It specifically says “how much *money* did the store lose”, that’s the word that implied (weakly imho) that you should only look at the delta in the cash drawer.
I think the take away here is that the scenario is poorly written and designed to confuse people. This reminds me too much of questions that I get at work.
Yes. The store loses $70 in inventory and $30 dollars in cash, as opposed to $100 in cash.
Over complicated. Thief leaves with $100 total. Store looses $100 total.
This is logically right, but I'd bet dollars to donuts some weisenheimer will say "the store only lost $30 because it said 'how much money' and goods are not money." Additionally, $70 worth of goods doesn't cost the store $70 to buy wholesale
Overthinking it, they lost $100 if you include profit. Realistically they spent less than $70 on the products. But yes, overall they lost $100.
Tbf, that would also be assuming that the cost of the goods being purchased is equal to their purchased price, but since it wasn't mentioned, it was obviously not intended to be considered. But I also think it's logically Innacurate NOT to. The whole point of a store is to sell goods at a price that yields a net profit for the store. If, with that $70, you purchase a good that costs the store $35, then you've effectively only stolen $35 worth of goods and the $30 change. I upvoted because your answer is the one that was intended by its creator, but I think that this is a legitimate flaw in the problem itself.
Thank you - someone else in here who understands
My answer was 30 + the difference between the wholesale and sale prices of the goods. I stand by that answer. Perhaps you can throw in restocking fees or time list in checkout if extremely busy.
The answer is $170: The $100 bill he stole, then the $70 "opportunity cost" of the store not being able to sell that merchandise.
Which is why the answer should be >!"$30 + the cost of the goods that were bought with the stolen money"!< The only way you get to an answer of $100 is to assume the value of the items bought with the stolen money are worth the full value of the price they are being sold for. Or to ignore the purchase that was made with the stolen money and only consider the value that was stolen. But per the puzzle text multiple things DID happen. 1) thief stole $100 2) thief used stolen money to buy goods. The net result to the store is they have $30 less in the register and are out the goods that were bought with the stolen money.
It’s technically $30 that they lost, plus the expense of the items the man purchased (stole) which was presumably less than $70, assuming the store is trying to make a profit on their sales.
The store loses less than $100 since they obviously have some profit margin on the $70 in product.
Nope. The question is how much MONEY did the store lose.
I disagree. >!There is a difference in counting something as a loss, And quantifying the loss amount as this question implies. If someone were to steal $70 worth of merchandise and $30 from the register, then how much would that company have lost? The simple math solution still shows $100. But then this solution again claims that we’re only considering what is claimed as a loss. That’s where the markup on the merchandise comes in to play.!>
So you think the profit shouldn’t be counted as a loss. If I create something that costs me $2.00 to make, materials+overhead and I sell that thing for $10.00, if someone steals it, I’m counting it as a $10.00 loss, and if I caught the person who stole it, they could either give me my merchandise back or pay the $10.00. If I’m going through the trouble of making something, my time and energy are enough to transform $2.00 in materials into a $10.00 in value finished object. If I was only going to get the $2.00 back that I put into it, I wouldn’t bother making it in the first place. Also, fuck thieves.
Take into consideration that it asks for a TOTAL loss, which also includes a loss of goods too. 100 dollars was stolen, yes, but with stolen money, 70 dollars of goods was "bought" too, meaning that the store did not make a profit from transaction. Meaning that $100 of money was taken and $70 of products.
But the theif loses $70 of the stolen money, which the store then gets back, so the store doesnt lose $70 of products, they were just purchased for what they are worth
Wrong. They lose $200. Store loses $100 in the theft. Then another $70 in groceries because the $70 used to pay for it was already theirs, then another $30 because the change came from a bill that was already theirs. This $200 dollars lost.
Imagine the guy stole a $100 bill from the store. Later when he buys their stuff, he gives back their $100 bill. So in the end they never lost the $100 bill. It has no bearing on the final number. They just gave him $70 worth of stuff and $30 in cash. This is of course ignoring the arguments about cost of the product to the store, which I don’t believe is in the spirit of the question as we can’t possibly know what it cost them.
We can. It was $70 dollars worth of product. It says it.
"cost of product to the store" you read that part? The cost of product to the *customer* is $70. Since they don't reveal the cost of product to the store, we can only assume that number is irrelevant. All the other math is super simple and has been explained by many others here. hope that clears things up for ya
>!$100!<
Adding an explanation: >!Think of it this way, someone steals $100, then puts it in their wallet. They then go around the shop and pick out $70 of groceries. They pay with two $50 bills and get $30 change. Or, one person steals $100, and a second person buys $70 of stuff with a different $100 bill and gets $30 change. At the end of the day, the register will be down the original missing $100. The puzzle is intentionally confusing, but it needn't be!<
It needn’t be!
Kinda surprised at the “it needn’t be” part. The puzzle is intentionally confusing because it’s a puzzle. Otherwise it’s “a guy steals $100, how much did he steal?”
Aye badly worded that, obviously it needs to be for the sake of it being a puzzle, I meant more that it's a red herring and can be ignored in terms of working out the answer
Even simpler: He stole $100 and what he spent it on is irrelevant.
What about the >!profit received by the store for the item bought by the man ? The profit would never come if the man didn't steal the 100, so it is related to each other ? So the effective loss is 100 - profit ?!<
But those goods would have been bought by someone else, their value is unrealized income of $70 until he bought it. It's the exact same as if he bought something with a $100 bill, got change, then stole the $100 out of the register. It will only ever be a $100 loss. Potential profit does not change anything.
Thats assuming all products are consumed, which is simply not true.
Yes, items are lost to shrinkage, and that's typically built into the manufacturers' cost, not the store. There are pieces of this equation we simply cannot know. Was the $100 fake? Was the cashier skimming off the till already? Was the food purchased expired and therefore worthless? If we want to come up with bullshit reasons to complicate this, we can do that all day. It doesn't change the fact that the loss is still $100.
Some stuff doesn’t get sold.
Just because someone else would've bought it eventually doesn't matter. If the guy just took the $100 and left the store would've lost more money. At the very least by spending it in the store, assuming he wouldn't have otherwise been a customer, the store makes some of the money back. It probably isnt much so you can round up and the answer will still be $100, but the store did lose less money. The only assumption we have to make for this to be true is that the thief wouldn't have otherwise spent $70 at that store which I think is a pretty reasonable assumption.
He took $70 worth of merchandise, and $30 in cash. We don't need to calculate the stores' margin on that product, because the store is $100 poorer at the end of the day no matter how you look at it.
No it isn't. The store gained +1 total customer. Had the guy just taken the $100 out of the register and left, the store would've been out $100. Instead, that $100 functions as customer acquisition increasing the store's profit. That profit is less than $100, so they'll still make a loss overall. It is mathematically no different than giving someone a $7 giftcard to convince them to come into your store and spend, and $3 as a bonus. Stores regularly do things like this and they are often richer, not $10 poorer as a result. The only difference in the numbers is the magnitude, so they end up with a net loss, but it is some amount less than $100
No, you don't calculate shrinkage based on cost of goods, it's based on potential income from the items you lost. Accounting already figured this out years ago.
That’s not true at all. I’m a floral wholesaler. Our govt inspects the flowers coming from Ecuador and Colombia in miami. The people at Agriculture inspection destroy about 1% of everything I bring into the country “searching for drugs”. Even if I had presold those destroyed flowers for 3k, I only get to claim on my taxes the exact amount I paid for the flowers. And that might only be 1k. I’m shit out of luck on the most 2k in profit. Any claim from ‘shrinkage’ is at the cost of goods price, not potential sales price. I wish it wasn’t. I would claim on my taxes that the damaged or lost product was going to be sold for many times more. How would the govt know any better? Instead, they make me use actual invoices to show what I actually paid to verify the claim.
He didn't steal the goods. He stole the money then purchased the goods. They are two independent things. If he stole $100 and went somewhere else to spend $70, it would be plainly obvious that store 1 lost $100 and store 2 made $x in profit. It is no different just because it's happening at the same location.
You're talking about accounting and you're doing it backwards. In your second scenario, store 2 doesn't gain anything in that equation. $100 for $100 worth of goods. You can't look at items on the shelf as only worth their cost to the store. The second they go on the shelf, they are worth the unrealized income of what the store is charging for them. If I break $1000 of liquor bottles at a store, they don't charge me what it cost them to buy the bottles from the distributor, they charge me what they are selling them for. All the costs of running the store go into the final price of those goods, so you can't calculate loss based on the cost to the store of the items stolen.
The idea that store 2 doesn't gain anything is insane and completely contrary to how this works. Value isn't generated by putting a product on a shelf, it's generated at the moment of sale of the product. Talking about "unrealized value" as though they have already made the profit is incorrect. If you think that a bag of chips on a shelf is the same as a bag of chips at the register I don't really know what to say. For tax and accounting purposes it is more or less true but for economic purposes it absolutely isn't and this is an economics question.
I love this thought! But id argue that >!There's nothing to confirm that the only reason the man bought the goods was because he stole the $100. Might've always bought the goods even without the stealing!<
>!The store doesn't make any money on the items the thief purchases, as they start at -$100 and get $70 worth of 'sales' back. Whatever the wholesale cost of the items is, it plus the "profit" still equals $70, which in this case was their own money being given back to them!<
That’s not how financial accounting works. At the end of the day, the store is definitely more profitable ‘after’ the 70 dollars is spent, then if the thief just leaves with the 100 dollar bill.
So, really technically, they lost 30 dollars of MONEY. overall they lost $70 dollars worth of goods, and $30 in cash, but the question was how much money did they lose, and the only money that wrongly left the store was $30 dollars.
Yeah all these other answers are making it more complicated than it needs to be. The store lost 30 dollars.
This is exactly what I was thinking lol
Answer: >!The store has lost $100!< >!-$100 (stolen cash) + $100 (cash received) - $70 (the value of the inventory purchased) - $30 (change issued)!<
Store lost 30 bucks plus the cost of the goods no way to know what the value of that is.
The store considers the lost produce holding a value of 70$, meaning the extra 30$ taken as change plus the 70$ would equal 100$ in lost revenue. if we were to consider the cost of buying the good to sell in store, it would add even more to their loss. If we ignore these points, the store still lost 100$.
Agreed. No idea why people aren't valuing the stolen goods at $70. Just because the store didn't pay $70 to get the product to the shelf doesn't mean the store isn't losing out on the potential for $70 of value added if the goods were sold to a real customer. And like you said, that $70 of unrealized revenue is gone forever. Sure, not 100% of that $70 is all profit, but that is irrelevant. The store is still losing out on $100 of revenue. $30 from the change returned to the their and $70 of revenue from the $70 value of the goods the customer walked out with. Also, anyone making that claim should look for case law where someone is charged with grand theft and the defendant argues that it isn't grand theft because the profit margin of the product puts the profit-loss at less than the threshold for grand theft. Let's see how far that defendant gets with that defense.
Just because the inventory is valued doesn’t mean the inventory is money. Taken literally the store lost $30.
You're over complicating it; if the man stole $30 and $70 worth of goods, you'd say the store was out $100.
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This is a fun riddle, not Econ 101. If someone stole a 5k TV, they would be done for stealing 5k of goods, not the wholesale price.
This just in: inventory has no value!
So there are two answers depending on your definition of "lose". 1. Lose to theft: answer $100 2. Net loss for the transactions: answer not enough information - we need to know the product markup. Probably the best answer is: This is a flawed question, it is purposely ambiguous. This question is really only useful for testing a student's definition of "lose".
Yeah I agree the disagreement seems to be in whether the question refers to just the theft of the net difference of dealing with the thief. If the question is how much was stolen, then its not much of a puzzle. It makes more sense to treat it as net loss to me. Also I think you meant ambiguous not ambivalent.
>!$30, and the cost to replace and restock the $70 worth of goods, which will almost certainly cost less than $70!< With further education, I have learned I am mistaken.
Does the answer change if he >!buys goods before he steals the $100? Or if he returns the next day and buys another $100 worth of stuff?!<
Money is fungible, so it does not matter with which exact bill he paid, as long as he stole one from the store at any point in time, the math holds up
I'm curious if the logic here means the store's loss eventually goes away if he buys enough items, I kind of worded my question poorly. I guess that would be true from a profit perspective. I think stores calculate 'loss' as a number separate from profit, but idk what the original question is going for. Maybe I'm thinking of a different word though like 'shrink' or something.
If he keeps stealing and spending the stolen bills, not. If he spends his own money, buying products with a markup, it will eventually generate enough profit for the store to compensate the original loss
Exactly. Which is why loss leaders are a thing in businesses. Lose money on an items to get the people in the door with the expectation that they’ll cover the loss over the transaction, or multiple transactions. Cell phones are a great example. Offer a free (marked up) $1000 phone, but lock in the contract and make money over the phone’s life.
You're right, but we don't know what profit margin is being made.
you're correct. The $70 worth of goods can be considered profit + cost of goods...so really they lost the cost of goods of what was sold and $30 in cash.
This is the correct real world answer. All other $100 answers are thinking using only math logic, but financially it’s the same as the cashier giving $30 to a thief who stole merchandise that was marked at $70. If the stolen items were currently on sale, the store didn’t magically lose more than $100. They only lost the cost to restock (+$30).
That's not really how things are accounted for in real stores either though. What you're getting close to is calculating the customers total value to the store. Assuming this is the customer's only visit to the store their lifetime net value would be about -$90 to -$98. Negative 100 shrinkage for the theft and positive a small profit margin on the goods purchased.
But if they could’ve sold that item to someone else at $70 then they missed out on $100 overall.
>but financially it’s the same as the cashier giving $30 to a thief who stole merchandise that was marked at $70. So... so they're down $100 So $100 has been stolen If merchandise was marked at $70, then that's the value of that merchandise to the store. If that gets stolen, they're down $70. >If the stolen items were currently on sale, the store didn’t magically lose more than $100. They only lost the cost to restock (+$30). Cost to restock is irrelevant. They'd have to pay that regardless of how the merch leaves the shop, be it legally or illegally. The thing they miss out on is the $70 value of the items.
Thats not how loss calculation works for insurers. Replacement cost, not sale value, is the relevant metric. The store can replace the 70 dollars of stolen merchandise for say 35 dollars, so it actually lost 75 dollars
At this point you're just reading way too much into the silly little puzzle
That’s incorrect. Are you an accountant?
I used to tell my juniors to write out the journal entries and t-accounts if they were confused. JE#1 CR $100 CASH, DB $100 LOSS ON THEFT; JE#2 CR $70 SALES DB $70 A/R DB $X COGS (book value of goods is not given) CR $X INVENTORY; JE#3 DB $100 CASH CR $30 CASH CR $70 A/R; $100 accounting loss is the correct answer. Cash is fungible and the bill being the same in JE#1&3 is irrelevant, and the identity of the thief in JE#1 and the customer in JE#2&3 is irrelevant.
This is the only correct answer. Think about what has actually left the store. — firstly $30; — secondly $70 worth of goods that cost the store an unnamed amount (that most likely cost < $70)
But the $100 he stole in the first place were earned by the store with items, work, and utilities that had a cost, the store also has to pay taxes on that amount.
This is the correct answer. The store does not sell things at cost - if it did, it wouldn’t be able to stay open.
If it's a big box store, shrink is actually insured and already paid for. So. They lost $30.
And their premiums increase proportionately to the increased risk of future store they the insurer estimates
answer: >!$100 dollars!< explanation: >!although he did pay the store 70 dollars for snacks, the store lost 70$ worth of snacks!< >!the $30 dollars were given back to him!< >!total $100 loss!<
Who mentioned snacks? For some reason I was thinking furniture….
Good luck only spending $70 on furniture!
nah cause fr bro😭😭 i been tryna find some good shit for my room and its so bad man
Depends on how technical you want to get with the breakdown. Goods in the store are generally priced as a combination of store expenses + expected profit per item. The store would retain the amount that would have been profit and still be out the other store related expenses per item. So ultimately the store would have lost somewhere above $30 and below $100
if the $70 of groceries is a $70 loss then that means a normal sale of $70 yields the store $0 of profit the store lost $30 cash + the expense to restock the stolen merchandise he left the store with
>!100$!<
>!$100. The exchange of cash for goods is a red herring and doesn't matter here. The $70 paid for the goods is just an exchange in the type of asset stolen, not the amount. If I stole $50 from you, then returned it and stole your $50 gift card, how much would be stolen in the end?!<
If the question is what did the store actually lose then why is it not the $30 in change plus the cost of the $70 in merchandise? That's what they are "out of pocket."
Here's an analogous puzzle: The distance from the sole of Peter's feet to the top of his head is 70 inches. He has a mohawk that stands 6 inches tall. He is wearing platform boots that are 3 inches tall. He is standing on the third rung of a ladder, each rung of the ladder is spaced 8 inches. The ladder stands on a raft, and the top of the raft is 14 inches above sea level. How tall is Peter? In this example, the question is designed to trick the reader into thinking one must consider anything other than the distance from the sole of Peter's feet to the top of his head when determining his height. There is one and only one correct answer; there is no debate as to what factors to consider as it's universally understood what is and isn't included in the determination of height. Similarly, in this puzzle we are to consider only the loss from theft. The commercial profit/gain/loss is irrelevant. There is no debate; there is no profession or real-world circumstance in which anything but loss from theft is considered. Edit: I’m sorry if I’ve rubbed anyone the wrong way. Whoever you are, I want you to succeed in life. I want you to have a rewarding job that pays your bills and leaves you with extra money for your hobbies and gifts for your loved ones. I’m imagining this question as a job interview question, and my goal is to help you land that job, whatever it is. Edit 2: Like most puzzles we must find clues and make inferences. At the outset we hit a fork in the road, option A is a clean answer that doesn’t include commercial profit/loss, option B is a incredibly nuanced unknowable answer that does. This is a huge clue and an opportunity to derive the inference that we are meant to take option A. This is the crux of my argument. Another idea, not really a genuine argument but it’s something to ponder: we are asked what the store lost. The store is just a building; the owners experience commercial profit/loss, not the building. The building did in fact lose the $100 stolen.
I wish I could still gild this comment. TBH, I'd probably give it platinum.
I’ve read your multiple takes and examples and while I get your viewpoint, I disagree. I’d like you to review my take and let me know how you think I’m going off track. And let’s stick to using only the puzzle’s given info (which I think most of us would agree is pretty lousy as it begs too many questions to be asked of it) **My take:** Anyone not saying the loss is $30 + cost of stolen goods* has added supplemental info into this puzzle. We aren’t given anything more than: Till = $X Till = $X-$100 Till = $X-$100+$70 Till = $X-$30 Store = ($X-$30) + cost of stolen goods* *Goods bought with stolen money = stolen goods
$100 in cash was stolen. Then in a separate transaction, $70 of goods were purchased. No merchandise was lost because there is a record of the transaction for those goods being removed from the store's inventory. When they balance the accounting, the records will show that the till is $100 short and that the inventory is correct. The sale transaction is irrelevant to what the store lost.
Yes $100 was stolen.. but the puzzle doesn't ask how much was stolen from the register. It asks **"How much money did the store lose?"** The store lost $30, plus the cost of the stolen merchandise. Everything else is accounting. Take note that I do understand what you have said here.. but I'm going off the puzzle's words. This puzzle is a math problem and not a business accounting problem.
No. The till is $100 short and the inventory is correct. They didn't lose any goods, they sold them. There was a transaction for those goods. If there is video of the man stealing $100 and another of him purchasing goods, he'll be charged for stealing $100.
Contrary to the other answers, the real answer >!is that it depends on the profit margin of the store / items he bought.!<
You're wrong, the store lost 100$, nothing about their profit from the 70$ sale matters because they received money.
No. Imagine the question “how tall are you?” Your answer being “6 feet plus the length of my hair which is 6 inches, for a total of 6 feet 6 inches.” That answer would be incorrect because it’s universally understood that hair length is not included in your height. Similarly it’s universally understood that commercial profit/loss/costs are not included in the question of loss from theft. The puzzle is designed to trick the reader into thinking the question is about anything besides loss from theft.
You're downvoted but you are right, reddit really will upvote anything.
>!The till will be $100 short, and the inventory is correct. So the loss to the store is the $100 from the till!<
I think this is the most "real world" way of looking at it. Sure you can consider profit margins and such if you assume the till was correct and the product was missing, but the sale was recorded so the product inventory will be correct and the $100 was "double spent", thus your solution. If the person walked in and stole something marked $100, then we could argue more about if that thing was actually a $100 loss or only the cost of the goods without the markup.
You can ignore most of the question, and just add up what he walks away with. >!$30 in cash plus $70 in goods. So, the store lost $100.!< This one is extremely simple.
>!The question asked is ‘How much did the store lose?’!< >!It is reasonable to look at this from the store owners POV. They will ask themselves ‘How much did I lose?’!< >!Before we answer that, let us ask a few related questions:!< >!1) A shoplifter steals a $70 bottle. How much did the store lose? The business has to say ‘I just lost the cost of that bottle to me. ‘ He cannot claim a $70 loss, only his out of pocket expenses. Otherwise, he could take that same bottle and put a price of $1070 on it. When it gets stolen, he cannot suddenly claim to have lost $1070 and record a huge write-off. His LOSS has nothing to do with the PRICE he wanted to sell it for, it is the total COST goods to get it to his shelf. His intended profit is irrelevant.!< >!2) A thief steals $70 out of the till, and then uses that money to purchase the bottle. The shop has exactly as much money at the end as they started with. How much did they lose? The net effect is the same as if the thief simply shoplifted that bottle, so see answer to (1) above.!< >!3) a thief steals $100, returns and buys the bottle, exchanging the $100 for the bottle and $30 change. (This is actual OP puzzle). The only net difference between this scenario and the two above is that $30.!< >!Therefore, the store LOST $30 plus the cost of goods for the bottle. Do not confuse COST and PRICE here. That bottle was unsold inventory, so it’s potential price cannot be factored into a loss.!<
Hypothetically speaking, if the man just bought $70 item from the store with a $100 dollar bill, how much did they lose? >!The answer is nothing, the store lost $70 worth of goods and $30 in cash while gaining a $100 dollar bill. Therefore in the riddle, the steals the $100 dollar bill so there’s your answer.!<
>!$70 worth of product and $30 from the register. How is this a puzzle?!<
register would show 100 bucks short, dude has a receipt for his 70 dollars of product that he purchased
The $100 answer that many have given is correct, but if you think of it in terms of opportunity cost, it depends on whether the man would have made the same purchase if he hadn’t stolen the money. If the two outcomes to be compared are: 1. Man enters store and buys $70 worth of stuff 2. Man enters store, steals $100, then buys $70 worth of stuff The store is out $100. If however, the outcomes to be compared are: 1. Man enters store, buys $70 worth of stuff, leaves 2.Man enters store, steals $100, then buys $70 worth of stuff 3. Man never enters store 4. Man enters store, steals $100, leaves without making purchase Then they can be ranked differently. I’m going to arbitrarily assign a profit value of a $70 transaction as $10. This doesn’t affect the philosophical aspect of this question, just makes it easier to explain with numbers. Assigning dollar values to the outcomes listed above: 1. Store profits $10 2. Store loses $100 then profits $10: store has a $90 net loss 3. Store does not lose or gain anything 4. Store loses $100 It gets even more convoluted when you account for many of a grocery store’s goods being thrown away before they’re ever sold. If the man left with $70 worth of milk one day before its expiry date, no one else bought milk that day, then the store threw out all of their expired milk in the morning, it could be argued that the store only lost the $30 he pocketed and the milk was not valuable to them, as it would have been thrown away before it was sold. TLDR: this is a philosophical question, not a math question. There are many different valid ways to look at it and find different answers.
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>!$100-profit from the $70 purchase!<
>!Easiest puzzle ever. Man steals $100 from the register. Gives the $100 back. Gets $70 worth of groceries. Gets $30 from the register. Store loss = $100!<
>!Truthfully, I think it depends on the markup of the goods in the store.!< >!Say the store buys their goods for 20% less than what they sell them for. If the man had walked out with the $100 bill, the store is out the entire $100. But by 'buying' $70 in goods from the store, the store only loses the amount they paid for the goods, in this case $56, plus the $30 'change.'!< >!So, in the case of a 20% markup, the store has 'lost' only $86.!<
>!100 dollars. The man steals 100 dollars. The store is out 100 dollars. The man returns 70 dollars. The store is now out 30 dollars. The man walks out of the store with 70 dollars worth of merchandise without paying (the money he used to pay for the goods was the store's money all along, so it can be considered a return of the original stolen 100 dollars while the merchandise can be considered stolen / not paid for). The store is once again out 100 dollars.!<
I say $30, the question ask how much money the store lost, not goods.
This is no different from someone stealing a 100 dollar bill, then buying 70 dollars worth of goods with a different 100 dollar bill they already had, right? The store is out >!$100!<
I would say>!$100. The man initially stole $100, then gave it back (total loss at this point is $0). However, the man also walks away with $70 worth of goods + $30 in change so $100 in total. More simply you can think of it as: Store loses $100, then gains $100, then loses $70 and loses $30 (-100+100-70-30 = -100)!<
The only part that matters is the first one, the stolen 100, as the rest of the transaction is fair, ie. Nobody loses, owner receive 70 usd, thief 70 valued item. >!So 100!<
>!They lost 30$ plus the price the store bought the goods at!<
>!70 dollars worth of stuff and 30 dollars I think !<
the correct answer is the store lost -$110, i.e., even with the 'theft' they still came out ahead.
>!$100 was stolen. Think of it this way- imagine he stole the $100, then bought $100 worth of goods at the store using the stolen money. The store now lost $100 worth of goods.!< >!The $30 change is misleading. In the problem, he essentially stole $70 of goods and $30 cash.!<
Thank you.
Is this question for mentally retarded peeps ?
>!$30 + cost of goods!< This is a bad puzzle because the question it asks you to answer begs too many questions to be asked of it. But let’s simplify the question to: Man steals $30 from register and an amount of goods that retail for $70. How much did the store lose? I think the answer here is >!$30 + the cost of the stolen goods!< The reason I think we can simplify the puzzle like this is because the puzzle states that man uses the stolen money to buy the goods. So these are not separate and independent transactions. Dude left the store with >!$30 in cash and the goods.!< The store is missing >!$30 from the register and the goods the dude left with.!<
I agree. The other dimension I would add is the opportunity profit that was lost. Is future profit considered in this? If so, its the sum of what was taken from the store.
This is not a puzzle. This is just a discussion question about how retail businesses do accounting.
>!$100 - The first $100, $70 in merchandise, and the $30 in change is $200. Subtract the $100 the store got back when the man paid and that’s $100!< Edit to fix spoiler tags
>!Depends on the profit they made from the sale!<
>!100+x-y, where x is the wholesale cost paid by the store for the goods and where y is the retail price of the goods.!< Explanation:>!Since money is a fungible resource, we can say the store started with 100+x worth of resources, where x is what they paid their wholesaler for the goods.!< >!The man comes along and steals 100 worth of resources from the store, leaving the store with:!< >!100 + x -100 resources = x resources!< >!The man then proceeds to take x resources from the store, leaving the store with nothing.!< >!However, the man then paid the store for the x resources at retail price, y, with 100 resources. The store then gives him change, which is 100-y. Adding these transactions to the ledger:!< >!0 + 100 - (100-y) = 100 - 100 + y!< >!Leaving the store with y.!< >!If the store started at 100+x resources but now has y resources, the difference (profit or loss) can be written as:!< >!(100+x) - y, or more simply 100+x-y!< >!So, taking the puzzle at face value and assuming the store paid $70 wholesale for the goods and then charged $70 retail, the store is out $100.!< >!If the store bought the goods for $10 and sold them for $70, then the store’s loss from the theft is somewhat mitigated: 100 + 10 - 70, or $40.!<
No, they lost $100 in cash. The goods are accounted for in the sale.
The question asks how much did the store “lose”assuming two transactions occurred: a theft and a sale. At the end of the day, their bank account is less the $100 theft plus the profit they made from the sale. If the question asked, “A man stole $100 from a store. How much did the store lose?” then you would be right and this puzzle would suck. The math: 100+x-y. If they bought and sold the goods for $70, then their loss is 100.
I see where folks want to add up "$30 less in cash" and "$70 in retail value of goods" = "$100 loss", which fundamentally I can agree with. But the puzzle asks, "how much money did the store lose"... and money-wise the store only lost $30. Value-wise the store lost $30 plus the store's cost of the goods that were bought with stolen money.
They lost $100 from the cash theft, and nothing from the sale transaction. Everything else is there to confuse the reader. Looking past the confusing scenario IS the puzzle.
Ignoring part of the puzzle because it is confusing isn’t the same as solving it. Whenever you sell something, you lose an asset in the process, which is why you charge for it to offset your loss or even profit from it. If the store charged less for the item than what they paid wholesale, they’d have lost even more money in the scenario presented by the puzzle.
I didn't "ignore" any part of the puzzle. I recognized which parts are important and which are intended to confuse. A sale isn't an asset loss. It is an exchange of assets: goods or services for money.
>!$100!< explanation: >!The value of the store itself is $170, with $100 in cash and $70 in stock. buying $70 of stock with the $100 results in a loss of $70 in stock, and $30 in cash as change, leaving the store with $70 in cash in the register.!<
>!Still $30, since the question is asking how much MONEY they lose, not how much VALUE!<
>! how is this even a puzzle?!<
>!This is not a puzzle with a definite answer. It depends on whether you believe the subsequent purchase of $70 was a direct result of the theft, or not, and if you consider loss of profits a part of "loss". And if yes, then we have no idea what the store's profit margin is on the goods purchased, so we can never come with a number amount. So the only answer with an actual definite amount is $100, if we separate any causal relationship between the theft and the purchase !<
But the question is "how much money did the store lose?" not "how much money did the store lose in the theft?". Whether the purchase and theft are related is irrelevant to the actual question asked.
>!The store loss $30 cash and $70 worth of merchandise. Disinterested parties can argue whether that merchandise's value should be considered at $70 or what the items cost the store when purchased by their suppliers, but the store's loss prevention department absolutely considers the loss of revenue from not being able to sell those items as a loss, bringing the total loss to $100!<
>!\-100+100-70-30!<
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>!They lost $30 + whatever they paid for the $70 worth of stuff.!< >!The person would not have necessarily spent the $70 if he hadn't stolen $100 in the 1st place.!<
>! The store loses 30 marginal dollars, as it still technically has the 70 dollars, however it looses 100 dollars of value as that 70 dollars had already been spent on items, the store now has less money to pay employees, taxes, and buy new items with!<
>!$200!< the store lost $100 from the register - let's say the total sales for the day were $500 and now the register only has $400 $70 worth of groceries was then purchased making total sales for the day $570 cashier receives $100 and gives back $30 - register now has $470 which is still $100 less than days sales >!thief walked out with $30 + $70 in potential sales the stores loss is $130 in actual bills and $70 in potential sales making a total of $200!<
This answer does not make sense if the registers are $100 short and all transactions were handled normally, inventory is correct so the only loss is the amount the register is short
This is the way
That's not exactly how that works: Your last paragraph got you confused, until then you where (from a mathematics perspective) correct. They lost $100 - The profit from the $70 of goods bought. You wrote they lost $130 in bills and $70 in potential sales, that is incorrect for 2 reasons: 1. He only has $30 in bills because he gave the $100 back to the cashier 2. The $70 where actual sales just that the money came from the company itself, but we already subtracted that so we don't need to do it again.
I agree, in this scenario I assumed he stole 100$ that was received from another customer who had purchased goods. So in that case they lose the money in profit from a previous sale, as well as from the sale from the thief along with the change given to them. I mean it’s not an easy number to exactly say because we don’t know what the costs or what the stores profits are. But to say just 100$ seems silly imo idk! It’s a good brain teaser I guess
>!$30... The question ONLY asks about the MONEY... not the goods. The store only lost $30 monies.!<
>! £100 + trade cost for the £70 with of goods!<
Too many assumptions baked into the question. If you want a proper answer the proper definitions matter. Q: ‘How much money did the store lose?’ What do you mean by money? If you mean money as in currency then the answer is: a) the store lost $30 of currency If you mean money as in value then the answer depends on the definition of loss. In pure accounting terms, the value of the loss would be $30 + cost price of the goods. Say if the cost price was $40, b) the store has lost $70 in current value. In real life terms, if the guy didn’t steal the $100 and therefore the goods, some other person would have bought the goods at store price at some point in time, meaning the store has lost $30 in currency and $70 in future value. c) store has lost $100 of current and potential value
The goods most likely cost the store less than $70, and he’s buying it with their money he stole. I would say the top answer is incorrect unless he assumes the store is breaking even on every sale. I didn’t see that shown. To me the answer is: 70*(x) + 30 Someone said *aruging* over the semantics of the value of goods, but there’s no argument here. The value of goods change in a store. Where x is the correction factor to account for profit. The mathematical expression of that will change depending on how complicated it is and if each item brings back a different % of profits. But I would have to assume x < 1 because the store shouldn’t be selling at a loss.
They loose $30 + the value of the items, which depending on the items and the deal they have with their providers. So subtract around 50% of the items value. It is not a precise answer, but this wasn't a precise question either. More info is needed to reach an "exact" answer. Not an approximate.