About a decade ago, I moved from one coast to the other for work. My cell phone provider didn’t have great coverage in my new location, so once my contract was up (after about two months), I switched providers.

All was well until about four months later when I got an email from my previous provider telling me I owed them almost $400. Confused, I called them up.

Representative: “I see here that you ordered a [Smartphone].”

Me: “What? No, I didn’t. My account is closed. It’s been closed for six months.”

Representative: “The item was ordered from your account and shipped to [City in my previous state].”

Me: *Annoyed and in disbelief* “Are you telling me that your company accepted an order from a closed account and shipped it to a state that your own records show I don’t live in anymore?”

There was a long pause.

Representative: “Okay, you don’t need to worry about this. We’ll take care of it.” *Click*

Sure enough, I never heard about it again.

Two teenage girls are making a large purchase (lots of flashy designer items), and the total comes to almost $3,000. They hand over an American Express card to pay for it, and I notice the card has a man’s name.

Me: “Is this you?”

Customer: “No, that’s our dad.”

Me: “Is he around?”

Customer: “Oh, he died yesterday. I’m just trying to max out his credit card before we report it.”

Me: *Instant look of horror* “Why would you tell me that?!”

Customer: “You’re minimum wage! Why should you care? I work in a [Dollar Store] and let people get away with all kinds of s***.”

Me: “I’m a manager, and you realize I’m gonna have to report this now, right?”

Customer: “Why you gotta ruin all our fun?”

Me: “Fun?! Your dad just died!”

Customer: “Noooo, he died yesterday. Weren’t you listening?”

Me: “I listened to the part where you admitted to committing fraud and the non-reporting of a dead body.”

Customer: “Fraud? What fraud?” 

Me: “Dead people can’t use credit cards.”

Customer: “He’s not using it. I am!”

She just… didn’t get it. She still didn’t get it when the police were escorting them away. 

Related:
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 17
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 16
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 15
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 14
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 13

Back in the mid-1990s, I worked in the warehouse for a company famous for its outdoor clothing and a trim level of a popular SUV.

For some reason lost to history, the designer of the building decided that the best place to install the main employee time clocks was directly beneath a forklift access gate to a mezzanine level. This gate allows the forklift to raise or lower pallets from this level, but doing so blocks access to the time clocks. Obviously, the forklift operators do their utmost to avoid using the gate when people are likely to use the clocks, but tardy employees happen, so the area is roped off while the forklifts move pallets.

A memo goes around the building one day after an incident involving an employee being “injured” by one of the forklifts using the gate. The lift operator had just lifted a pallet to the mezzanine when a tardy employee ducked under the rope and began to clock in. The lift operator could not see this, and as he moved slowly forward, the employee was gently brushed by the side of the forklift. 

She was uninjured but insisted on filling out a report on the incident. This resulted in an investigation and check of the security cameras, which revealed that she had, in fact, moved under the rope and violated safety protocols.

This level of infraction usually resulted in a written warning, but she was fired the next day. During the course of the investigation, a memo was sent to her immediate supervisor noting that “Jane Doe” was involved in the incident. The supervisor responded with a “Who the heck is this Jane Doe person? I don’t have a Jane Doe in my department.”

After a lot of scrambling around, it developed that “Jane Doe” may have been EMPLOYED, but she wasn’t WORKING. Every day, she would enter the building, clock in, and then leave. At the end of the shift, she would re-enter, clock out, and leave again. Nobody noticed because of the crowd of people at shift change going back and forth.

It further developed that a relative of “Jane Doe” in Human Resources had been actively deleting her name from personnel records along with two other people to hide their existence while they collected paychecks from NOT working. This scheme had apparently been going on for around thirty months at the time…

The final fallout was all four were terminated and criminally charged. If “Jane Doe” had not insisted on the incident report being made, they would likely have gotten away with their fraud for years further.

I work for a retail company. We get an employee discount in stores and online, but if you want to use your discount online, you have to use [Company] tender — meaning either a store gift card or a credit card.

I don’t have a store card, but any time I need to order something online, I try to go to the store and order at the register. It’s a couple of extra steps, but basically, I work with the cashier and we figure out the cost with my discount, I purchase a gift card for that amount right there, and we turn around and use the gift card to order. Again, it’s a couple of extra steps, but since I don’t order online from us all that often, I’m not too upset by it.

One time, I go to the store and try to get a couple of things in different colors. This location doesn’t have one of the colors in my size, so I say I’ll order it online and grab a gift card. The cashier looks confused. I figure she’s new, so I explain it to her.

Me: “We’ll just figure out the total with taxes and shipping with the discount, and then I’ll put that amount on this gift card. Then, you can use [Ordering System] to place it, and I’ll just pay for it with the gift card.”

I work for corporate, so while I know the systems and have a decent idea of how they work, I technically don’t have permission to be behind the counter and place the order myself

Cashier: “No, I don’t think that’s what you do.”

Me: “Uh, yes, it is. Since you can only use your discount with [Company] tender, and I don’t have a store credit card, using the gift card is the way to go.”

Cashier: “Is that a new process? I’ve never heard of that.”

Me: “Well, it’s been the process as long as I’ve been here. I know they used to have a [Company] debit card that you could get, but they stopped that shortly after I started. So, it’s a credit card or a gift card.”

Cashier: “No, I’m pretty sure that’s not it. But you should just do what I do: I order it online, and then when it gets here, I return it and buy it again with my discount.”

Me: *Stares in eye-twitch*

I end up just purchasing the one item that they have in my size/color and not getting the other one.

The next day, I message a coworker who used to work in one of the accounting departments.

Me: “Hey, do you know if they changed the process for using your discount online?”

Coworker: “Not that I know of. Why?”

Me: “Well, I was just at one of the stores yesterday, and I wanted to purchase something online. I had to explain to the cashier about purchasing online with a gift card since I don’t have a credit card. She told me that she just ordered things, and when they showed up, she’d return them at the store and then immediately purchase them again at her discount. I feel like that’s a bad thing.”

Coworker: “You just made [Husband] spit out his drink. He’s laughing so hard.”

Her husband used to be a manager at a couple of different locations.

Me: “Happy to provide entertainment?”

Coworker: “He says that not only is that not the process, but they probably need to be careful because the store can get hit for fraud if they do it too much. But also, they still take the hit on the return even if she immediately repurchases it.”

Me: “I thought there was something weird with her saying that, but when I tried to explain it to her, she told me that’s what she was told.”

Coworker: “Yeah, you might want to talk to [Manager] and see if she’s got any suggestions for who to reach out to. If that’s what that store is saying in their training, they need to be retrained. But it should be on all the documentation, so I wonder where someone got that idea.”

I did mention something to my manager, but I don’t know if anything has been done. The store is still operating, but there are new people there almost every time I go in, and I have no idea if it’s because I’m never there at the same time, or because people are leaving or going to different departments, or what. I have decided that if someone tries to tell me that again, I’m going to get the names of who’s giving them that information so that people can look into things.

I’m a teller at a bank. A man comes in with $5,000 cash.

Customer: “Can I please put this into my account?”

Me: “Absolutely. What are the account details, please?”

He hands me over a piece of paper with an account number written on it.

Me: “Is this your account?”

Customer: “No, it’s my friends.”

Me: “What’s the money for?”

Customer: “I don’t actually know.”

Me: “Oh? So, just a favor, then?”

Customer: “I don’t know. People keep giving me money.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Customer: “People keep giving me money and telling me to go put them into different accounts, and then I can keep some for myself. I don’t understand it all myself.”

Red flag!

Me: “I… see… How often do you do this?”

Customer: “Oh, three or four times a week, I’d say.”

Me: “And you do this for a friend?”

Customer: “Well… for my cousin. I get a cut of what I put into the account, which means I don’t have to take more shifts at the grocery store, so I get more time to play on my phone! Score!”

Me: “Right. Do you mind if I just check something with my manager real quick?”

Customer: “I don’t mind.”

I go over to my manager to let him know about this very possible money laundering operation going on. I tell him I am convinced that the poor guy at my counter is either too ignorant or too stupid to be aware of what he’s actually doing. My manager checks the account number provided and notices some suspicious activity.

Manager: “Excuse me, sir, you said you’ve helped your cousin deposit cash into multiple accounts. Do you know those other accounts?”

Customer: “Oh, actually, yeah! I wrote them down as I’m not too good with numbers. He told me not to, but I always make mistakes, so I did.”

Manager: “Can I see those accounts? It will help us out!” 

Customer: “Sure! I don’t understand all this banking stuff, personally. I hope my cousin asked the right person to do this!

Manager: “Oh, no, sir, he asked the absolutely best person for the job!”

The poor guy was beaming with pride while my manager reported each and every account to the fraud department.

Criminals out there: never trust a job to your dumb cousin!