Barkwood Winery (BW) is a small winery located in the Niagara region of Ontario. The winery used to be closed to the public as the wines were solely for distribution to wholesalers. Recently, its owner, Edmond Tang, built a tasting room on the premises such that the vineyard could be open to the public for wine tasting. Edmond was hoping the opening of the new tasting room would generate additional revenue for the company through tasting fees as well as retail sales at the tasting room.
Edmond believed it may take some time for customers to learn about the BW tasting room. Hence, in its first six months of operations, he expected the tasting room to be less busy so he hired only one full-time employee. The employee worked by himself from Monday to Friday and was responsible for everything from serving the wine to making sales and recording these sales transactions. The employee was also responsible for keeping track of the wines consumed and sold. On weekends, the full-time employee would have his days off and Edmond would run the tasting room himself with a part-time employee. However, there was no separation of duties between Edmond and the part-time employee, and both of them would be serving wine to customers, making sales, and recording sales transactions. Edmond and his full-time and part-time employees all shared the same cash register with a single cash drawer. Edmond would count the cash once a week on Sunday night and would make the bank deposit on Monday morning. The wines were stored in the 1,000-bottle wine cellar behind the tasting room, and Edmond did an inventory count at the end of each month and replenished the wine cellar to its full capacity for the next month.
Since the tasting fee was only $5 per person, customers would typically pay cash for the tasting fee, and they would pay by credit card only when they decided to make a wine purchase. The company would issue receipts and retain a copy of the receipts for wine purchase, but not for tasting. So far, most customers who visited the winery were more into the wine tasting than buying the wine.

Required:
a. Based on the information provided above, discuss the internal control weaknesses (if any) of BW.
b. Discuss whether you think internal control mechanisms would be stronger on the weekend operation of the tasting room when compared to the weekday operation.
c. Do you think the employees would be more likely to misappropriate cash or inventory in this situation? Explain your position.