I serve at a restaurant in Honolulu. I drop a drink off for a customer at a table my friend is serving, and the customer has this kind of unique manner of saying “thank you” that stands out to me. He ends up dine-and-dashing, running out on a tab of over $100. At my restaurant, they make the server (my friend) pay.

Over a month later, I’m serving this guy and he says “thank you” in the same exact way that jogs my memory. I slyly snap a picture of him and send it to my friend. She confirms it.

Now I’m watching this guy like a hawk. He continually gets up and heads for the door, but each time he does, I ask him how he’s doing and if he needs anything. Every time, he nervously just tells me he needs another beer and then goes and sits back down.

After about three or four times of doing this, he gets up again and tells me:

Customer: “I need to make a phone call outside.”

Me: “Okay.”

I follow him out as he walks down the stairs. Once he realizes that I’m standing there watching him, he pretends to pull a phone out of his pocket and make a call, but after ten seconds, he abandons the charade and comes back up the stairs, tripping on the way up because he’s clearly flustered.

He then continues to rubber-neck in his seat for the next thirty minutes, but I’ve got everyone in the restaurant watching him now.

Finally, while I’m talking to a table, he decides to make a break for it, but I’m faster and beat him down the stairs.

Me: “Sir, you’re not allowed to go anywhere until you pay your bill.”

Customer: “Well, I’m not done eating yet.”

Me: “Get back inside and finish your food, then.”

At that point, I was getting pretty irate that the on-duty manager wasn’t doing anything about the matter, and I was waiting for the next manager to come in. She showed up, I told her what had happened, and she immediately walked up to the fella, took a close-up picture of him, and called the cops.

The cops showed up and immediately recognized the guy. The guy broke down and started crying in front of the whole restaurant.

It’s not much, but in that moment, it felt pretty good getting to play a part in serving up some justice.

CONTENT WARNING: Drug Use 

I’m a cashier at a grocery store in a pretty bad neighborhood — bulletproof glass walls between you and the customers. A customer comes in and asks:

Customer: “Do you sell ziplock bags?”

Me: *Pointing to the sandwich-size zip locks.* “Yes, sir.” 

Customer: “No, I need something smaller, like this…” 

He pulls out a drug baggie filled with a brownish powder. Without us even asking him what it is, he says:

Customer: “You know this s***, man?”

Me: “Uh… cocaine?”

Customer: “Nah, man, that’s heroin. Gotta hustle, man, make a dolla like y’all.”

I couldn’t believe this guy was dumb enough to (1) show us the bag, (2) tell us what it was, and (3) admit to selling it. Even at 4:00 am.

We saw him the next day walking around our store’s block for hours, approaching potential customers. The fact that he was selling this stuff was a deal breaker for us because we’re a few blocks away from a high school. We didn’t want to enable him selling heroin to kids, so we told our manager, who called the cops and left an anonymous tip. I don’t know what happened next exactly, but we heard that the guy got arrested a few days later. We never saw him again.

Customers buying plane tickets at the airline’s customer service desk at the airport rarely happens outside of the movies, but it does happen occasionally.

Customer: “I need the next flight out; it’s urgent.”

Me: “What is your destination, sir?”

Customer: “It doesn’t matter! Just your next flight!” 

Me: “Uh… well, that would be Chicago in about forty minutes.”

Customer: “No, you idiot! International flight!”

Me: “That would be London Heathrow in about seventy minutes.”

Customer: “London, as in England?”

Me: “The United Kingdom, yes.”

Customer: “Do they have extradition treaties with the US?”

Me: “I… believe they do, sir.”

Customer: “S***! When is the next flight out to a country that doesn’t have extradition rights with the US?”

Me: “I… don’t have that knowledge to hand, sir.”

Customer: “Ugh! Useless! Fine, I’ll take the flight to London, but if they find me when I get there, I’ll complain!”

This guy spent $3,000 for a last-minute economy ticket to London, one-way. Just to be safe, I told my manager, who in turn told airport security and TSA, but I don’t know what came of it.

I wonder if “they” found him?

Many years ago, I was a delivery driver and trainer at a popular pizza delivery store. One of our general rules was to carry only enough money to make change from $20. We had lockboxes in the store where we’d drop money (cash or checks) after a delivery. We would get tips (usually) for our deliveries, and we’d put those into the boxes, as well. At the end of our shifts, we’d turn in the money for our deliveries. Any excess would be our tip money, plus the 6% commission from the orders. I would write down how much tip I got from each delivery, rounding to the nearest $0.25. This would usually be within a dollar of my actual tips, which greatly simplified the math.

One young driver I trained didn’t get the concept that you’d get your tips at the end of the shift after subtracting your delivery total from the lockbox receipts. He would meticulously figure his tip, count it out in his car after the delivery, and place it in his own personal lockbox in his car.

When I found out he was doing this, I made a strong suggestion.

Me: “You really should drop all your money at the store so you don’t have over $20 in your car at any time.”

New Driver: “The tips I get are mine. I’ll lose them if I put them in the store lockbox.”

It was simple subtraction to prove that this wasn’t the case, but he wouldn’t listen.

One evening, he took a delivery into one of the sketchier neighborhoods in our area. When he returned to the car and dug out his personal lockbox, a couple of teens ran up to him as he had his car door open and grabbed his lockbox. He gave chase, but they were faster. So, he lost his tips for the night.

He reported it to the manager, who called the police. Sadly, there was little they could do to track down the thieves. The manager gave him the rest of the night off, and I was assigned to check him out.

At the end, he was upset that he only had $6 more than what he started with, which was his commission.

New Driver: “What about my tips?”

Me: “Since the cash was in your car instead of in the store lockbox, management isn’t responsible for your loss.”

I then worked him through how putting his tip money in the store lockbox would not only keep it safe but he’d have that money consolidated in larger bills. I also showed him how I rounded the tips to the nearest quarter dollar, which gave me a reasonable estimate of what my nightly tips should be.

He finally got it, and it just cost him one night’s tips.

My first official job was bagging groceries at a local grocery store. The management was bad, the hours were okay, and the pay was minimum wage; I suppose it was just your typical job for most high school kids.

A lot of the staff for cashiers and baggers were high school kids. We were given the bottom-of-the-totem-pole jobs — running carts, bagging, and cleaning — and if you were sixteen or older, you got to do cashier work, too.

We were overused and underpaid, and some of the teenage staff took advantage of their knowledge of the store for some five-finger discounts. I can’t say I was helpful on either end because I never spoke up against those that did it, but I never helped them, either. This behavior went on for the last eight to ten months or so that I worked there.

I, along with a handful of other high schoolers, ended up quitting and going on to different jobs at the same time.

About a month after I quit, I stopped into [Grocery Store] to pick up some candy. As I was walking through, I passed my friend who had worked there but quit when I did. He (sixteen years old) was there with his younger brother (thirteen) and sister (fifteen). I headed back toward the candy aisle, browsed for a bit, picked out some stuff, and just kind of wandered for a few minutes and said hi to a couple of folks I used to work with.

I made my way to the front of the store, and I saw my friend and his siblings off to the side, near the front office. My friend was nearly in tears and was freaking out, and his siblings were crying. I walked over to him quickly.

Me: “What happened?!”

Friend: “[Floor Manager] caught us stealing. Now the store is trying to decide what they want to do about it.”

I didn’t stay to see the outcome, but I would later hear from him about it.

My friend was one of the high schoolers who would steal things, and since he did it so much and never got caught while he worked there, he decided to show his brother and sister how to do it. I guess his cockiness got the best of him because he got caught and was now facing consequences.

In the end, his parents were called to the store. My friend had to pay for everything they tried to steal that day, and then he and his siblings were banned from the store forever. Cops would not be involved as long as they don’t come back to the store.

He was also grounded for three months, and his parents forced him to donate his free time to their church, where he had to do janitorial work under the supervision of the pastor and the head janitor. So, when he wasn’t at school or his current job, he was at the church donating his time.