A customer pays for a couple of items and hands me a five-dollar bill. I lay it on top of my register, hand back his change, and then put the bill in with the rest of the fives and close the drawer.

After the drawer is closed:

Customer: “I gave you a fifty!”

Me: “It was a five; I don’t have any fifties in my drawer.”

Customer: “Well, I gave you a fifty, so I don’t know what you did with it, but I want my change back.”

Me: “Hold on. Let me go watch the video and double-check that way.”

I watch the video, and it clearly shows him handing me a five. I go back to him and tell him and invite him to come watch the video.

Customer: “No, just give me my money back.”

If it had only been a couple of dollars, I would have just given it to him to get him to leave, but I am not going to just hand over forty-five dollars out of the drawer.

Me: “Sir, as you are getting very angry and disruptive, you will need to leave.”

Customer: “Fine, but I’ll be back later with the cops!”

The next day, he comes back in with a cop, accusing me of stealing from him. I tell the cop everything that happened yesterday. The cop requests to watch the video. We invite the accuser to come watch it, but he still refuses.

I take the cop back and we watch the video, and he agrees with me that the guy handed me a five. The cop goes out to the guy.

Cop: “I can’t do anything to get your money back until you watch the video. too.”

He finally agrees, and we bring him back and play the video. It shows the guy handing me a five out of his wallet and me placing it on the register.

Customer: “He swapped out the fifty for a five at some point! The video is lying!”

Me: “Do you really think that if I could change out money before it is even given to me that I would still be working here?”

The guy starts throwing a temper tantrum and I politely ask him to leave. He refuses, so I ask the cop to get the guy off our property.

Cop: “I’ll do you one better.”

He arrested the guy for trespassing.

I receive a friend request from someone I used to work with, so I accept it. Almost immediately, they message me.

Friend: “Hello, [My Name]. God’s blessings to you on this beautiful day!”

A notification pops up from the app saying I am chatting with someone who has a similar name to a friend I already have. I look and, sure enough, this profile has the same name and same photo as my coworker. Now I have two friends with identical profiles.

I go to look at the new friend and see that they only have five friends and just opened the profile today. If this doesn’t scream “scam,” I don’t know what does. But I don’t have much to do today, so I decide to play along.

Me: “Hi, [Friend]. Why do you have two profiles?”

Friend: “I am good, thank you for asking. This is a wonderful day to be alive and I am grateful. I hope you are well?”

Me: “Why do you have two profiles?”

Friend: “This is a glorious time, to be certain. Have you heard of DHHS?”

Me: “Answer my question or I’ll report you.”

I could see that my message had been read, but there was no reply. Five minutes passed, and then ten. Meanwhile, I searched “DHHS Scam” and found that it was a common one — copying a profile picture and adding friends of the original person, then asking the friends for personal information under the guise of applying for a grant on their behalf.

I reported the fake profile for pretending to be someone else but decided not to block just to see what would happen. Within minutes, the profile was no longer available. Whether I was blocked for knowing what was going on or the profile was taken down, I’ll never know.

This story involves my husband’s uncle and great-uncle; I’ll call them George and Fred.

George and Fred lived around the corner from each other but in a rural area where “around the corner” means a mile or two away. On this fine day, they were talking to each other on the phone. It should be noted that this was well before the days of phone GPS.

George: “Hang on, Fred. There’s someone at the door.”

He went to answer the door and came back a few minutes later.

George: “Just some people asking for directions to [Nearest City, about thirty minutes away].”

They continued their conversation. About ten minutes later:

Fred: “Hang on. There’s someone at the door.”

He came back a few minutes later.

Fred: “So, that was also someone asking for directions to [City].”

They compared notes and found that it was the same car and couple, at which point, they called the police.

The police found them a few houses down, removing things from someone’s house. They had been going along knocking to see if people were home. If someone answered the door, they’d ask for directions, but if no one was home, they’d break in. And they’d probably have gotten away with it if George and Fred hadn’t thought it was suspicious that two cars would both need directions to [City] in the space of ten minutes.

This was around five years ago, during my first tenure with a national shopping chain. I tended to work in the toy department at this chain. Over the span of a few weeks one summer, I’d be stocking the shelves or tidying up my area, and I noticed that some of the Lego sets had been opened, or that the counts were off. It wasn’t just the ten-dollar sets; often times it would be the big sets for $100 or over.

What’s especially interesting is that Lego packages their products so that there isn’t just one side of tape you have to cut through or fold open. You quite literally have to tear open the side of the box with some perforated areas.

It got noticeable to the point where I knew it was a serial offender, not just a random passerby who wanted to yoink a few random mini-figures out of a set. Our security team was notified and they started to keep a more careful watch.

A bit of time passed, and finally, one of the workers in electronics asked me if I had heard about the Lego thief. I hadn’t seen anything go missing for over a week, and I asked if he knew anything new.

It turns out that the security team caught the perpetrator one afternoon trying to take a few sets into the restroom area. It was a minor who was trying to stuff the sets (sans boxes) into his backpack. Apparently, the day he was caught, he was trying to lift two sets worth approximately $250.

What’s even nuttier is how this kid went about his business. See, the kid was supposed to be at a swim class up the road a mile and a half away. He would show up for his lesson with his parents, presumably, and then dip out immediately with his backpack, walk for nearly half an hour one way to our store, slip Lego into his pack, and then walk back in time to meet his parents at the end of his scheduled lesson.

I’d estimate that this kid got to near-felony levels of shoplifting. But incredibly, I suspect his parents didn’t even know he had this treasure trove of Lego in his room after every lesson. They didn’t hear the plastic jingling, or heck, even know that his swim trunks and towel were probably dry after every lesson.

By far, this was one of the most meticulous thieves I’ve ever seen working in retail for nearly a decade.

I work at the front desk at a hotel. Some guys came down to the desk just as I was closing up one night, blitzed out of their minds.

Guy: “Hey, we just got invited to room [number], and they had a ton of drugs and they shared with us, but they also had a lot of guns. Just thought you should know!”

And they walked out. Absolutely no further information to be had.

Welp. It was late, and I was not about to Rambo myself into a room unarmed with an unknown number of armed people. So, I was left with the conundrum, “Do I do something about this or go home and hope they don’t do anything else and leave?”

But since someone took the time to tell me, I figured it might be serious. I grabbed the night security guy and we called the cops. They had like six cops over to us really quickly, and we all went up.

They knocked. Some guy who legitimately couldn’t function answered the door. He didn’t even understand what the cops are saying, but he managed to nod his head yes when the cops asked if they could come in. That was all they needed.

They popped in, and this group of people had at least seven or eight guns laying around and — I’m not kidding — a Rubbermaid tote FULL of pills of some sort. I don’t remember how many gallons, but it was one of those big ones that everybody has in their attic with clothes they’re never going to wear again.

It actually made the news as one of the largest drug busts the county has ever had. Tons of cash. You name it. There were so many laws being broken I don’t even know all that they got charged with.

I said to myself, “Well, f***. All I wanted to do was go home, but now I’m stuck here with the cops and multiple arrests and writing reports.” I finally got to go home at around 2:00 am.

I never got any information on the guys that reported it, but I didn’t care, and the cops didn’t care; they got the score of a lifetime.