A restaurant owner claims a job candidate stole money from the tip jar while they were waiting to be interviewed

• A restaurant owner said a job candidate stuck their hand in the tip jar while waiting for their interview.
• Staff noticed a $5 bill was missing from the tip jar at Bubba's Shrimp Shack in Virginia Beach, its owner told BI.
• More recently, a person who came in to use the restroom walked off with the whole tip jar, she said.

A restaurant owner in Virginia said that some diners and passers-by have been helping themselves to staff's takings, including one job candidate who she claimed stuck their hand in the tip jar on the way into their interview.

Kendall Turbeville, the owner of Bubba's Shrimp Shack in Virginia Beach, told Business Insider that after repeated problems she added a lid to the tip jar to make it harder for people to help themselves to cash.

"I tried to fix the problem by just making it less enticing, so people aren't just standing there staring at money that's easy to grab," she said.

But one person who recently came in to use the restaurant's restroom got around this by simply walking off with the entire jar, which had "probably $40" in, Turbeville said.

"I can't imagine this happening again," she said. "But I never thought it would happen in the first place. But it's also just kind of part of the gig."

The City of Virginia Beach Police Department told BI that it had received a report of an incident involving larceny from a tip jar at the restaurant in January. Local NBC affiliate WAVY first reported on the theft.

Turbeville said that she didn't report the job candidate she claimed stole money to the police.

After interviewing the candidate, the restaurant's manager noticed that the $5 bill that had been in the tip jar had disappeared, Turbeville told BI. "So we watched the cameras and saw that it was actually him while she went to get his résumé and prepare for the interview," she said.

Turbeville added that she later called the candidate to reject him for the job and told him she'd spotted him taking the money. He offered to return the $5 bill but never did, she said.

The police department told BI that it sometimes received reports of crimes involving staff's tips being stolen, but that it hasn't noticed a "spree."

Virginia's minimum wage is $12 an hour. For tipped staff, tips can make up up to $9.87 of this, but employers have to pay these workers at least $2.13 an hour.

Turbeville said that her staff make the minimum wage, though some long-tenured employees earn more, and that they place tips in the jar, which are then "evenly distributed for everyone that works that entire day."

"I don't want to take away the jar," she said. "A lot of the time my employees get two to three extra dollars an hour just from cash tips, so I don't want to get rid of it."

Turbeville said that the restaurant had had to put a bell on its drinks fridge so that staff knew when someone opened it because "people were coming in and just taking Pepsis." The restaurant also stopped storing desserts in a mini-fridge at the front because some people stole them, she said.

"It's really unfortunate that we can't even just trust people to do the right thing," Turbeville said. But since the restaurant posted a video of the tip jar being stolen on Instagram, "everyone's been really supportive of us, she said.

Are you a restauranteur who has struggled with tip theft? Or an employee frustrated over how little in tips you earn? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.