When I started at Thermofrost Cryo PLC, I was thrown in at the deep end.
My first task? Rebuild a batch of air handling units that had been cannibalized to get spares out to customers in a hurry. I was told there was £68,000 worth of units ready to be reassembled and returned to sale. Somewhere, supposedly, was a stockpile of units and a box of PCBs to get me started.
But from the moment I started looking, things didn’t add up.
There were no units, and the box of PCBs was nowhere to be found. I asked around. The answer was always the same: “They’re out there… somewhere.”
The stores were scattered across multiple warehouse locations, and Richard — the manager — was an affable, frequently drunk old hand who swore blind he knew where everything was. His team backed him up with the same defiant loyalty. “We know where stuff is,” they’d say, like a secret society guarding hidden treasure.
Over the next few months, I observed the strange choreography of the stock movements. Ten units would come in. Four would go to one warehouse. Six to another. Then the Friday night magic would begin.
Stocktakes always started on a Friday evening. The front warehouse crew would count up and lock up. Then, under the cover of the weekend, those freshly counted units would quietly be split — four moved to the back warehouse. On Saturday, they’d be counted again. Now, ten units had magically become fourteen.
Repeat that process long enough and it was easy to see how things had spiraled. And that £68,000 worth of stock? Still missing.
Eventually, we were given a new dedicated warehouse a few blocks away. Clean, secure, modern. Things started to feel like they were getting on track. Michael, one of the forklift drivers, seemed to be living the dream — Spearmint Rhino on weeknights, Cornwall on the weekends. For a guy on warehouse wages, it raised eyebrows. But hey, who was counting?
Then one day, a contractor stormed into the office. He was fuming. He slapped a list of serial numbers on the desk and demanded to know why we were selling direct to his installers. He’d been undercut on several jobs — by the very installers he was supposed to be supplying.
That set off alarm bells.
You see, our stores team refused to log serial numbers. It was too slow, they said. But LG knew exactly what they had shipped us. And those serials? They matched their records. Problem was, we’d never booked them into our system.
Within a week, I traced over £250,000 of “missing” stock.
Michael and Ron were fired. Richard drank more. But no police were called. No statements. No headlines. Just silence. It became clear that the warehouse deals weren’t just internal. This went deeper. The ARTCool unit above Sloper’s Bed? That too had mysteriously fallen off the back of a truck.
What I learned: You can have the fanciest warehouse and the latest systems, but if the culture’s broken — if you don’t control what’s going in and out — you’re not running a business. You’re running a buffet.
And somewhere, a contractor is still wondering why he’s losing bids to guys who always seem to have the right gear, at the right price, and no paper trail