START, it’s fucking stealing. “Clever” is a word used in a positive sense. The word you want hear is “dishonest.” If it makes your friend clever to take advantage of customers who are trusting him to be fair with them, as opposed to an asshole, then yes, he’s clever. I hope your clever friend gets what’s coming to him.
Besides what everyone else has mentioned about this being STEALING, a CRIME, hurting TWO SMALL BUSINESSES (one of which has put their trust in a crook), and being flabbergasted that someone would actually stand by and let this happen, every fast food place I’ve ever been to has given me a reciept afterwards. Unless this person is gonna do something to the register, how long will it be until someone actually looks at his/her reciept? Granted, most of these places are national chains, but still, I can’t imagine that withholding a reciept is any business’s SOP, fast food or not.
Start you were apparently asleep the day they taught the concept of “If you have to ask if it’s OK, it most likely isn’t.” Stop being a boob, please.
Your friends suck. Get new ones.
I think that if I wrote this thread and said that I told on the guy and got him in major trouble with the law and he lost his job then everybody would pile on and say that I should mind my own damn business… so I ask what will happen out of curiosity and I still get beat up and thrown into the pit nonetheless.
Then people are saying I am an accessory to a crime, I didn’t help him think of this or cover this up, If I am an accessory to a crime then so is everybody else he told that didn’t do anything.
I actually would tell but I don’t want him to lose his job because of me, I said* I * was poor before but he makes me look rich, believe me he *needs * that job.
If I did decide to tell, I wouldn’t want anyone to know that I did, think about it would you want to work with someone everyday that knows you got them in major trouble?
It’s not like if I tell on him he is going to get fired from school, I’d still have to be around him 5 days a week and live in the same neighborhood.
I kind of want to back off from that situation and not become any more involved than I am (knowing it is taking place) and when this dude tells me that he got caught I’ll say “I told you so” and I did.
Apparently you were asleep when you read the thread…I never asked if it was OK.
I said will it work. I am aware it’s not OK, I was just asking if his miniminum 9.50 an hour would/could actually work. I personally think it will but only for a short time and I was just asking what all of you “Dopers” thought.
I think you should do what you can to make sure it won’t.
Well, between this and the thread where you wanted to know whether it was okay to make fun of a poor person, I imagine a lot of us think that you’re a whiny little bastard who is embarrassing to other Christians.
Stop asking us whether stuff you do is OK. It’s not okay to destroy other’s property (yes, even annoying fat kids), it’s not okay to ridicule the poor (since you’re still living off your parents and therefore have no right to ridicule even the laziest of poor people) and it’s not okay to steal from small businesses! If your friend’s faith allows him to do that, he’s a prick and his faith is worthless. If you tolerate that, you’re no better, nor your faith.
I should stress that I don’t have a problem with Christianity as practiced by people who aren’t you. In fact, I’m pretty sure Jesus would strike you with a whip were he to meet you.
Not wishing to join the pile-on, but you asked two questions, START, which I will attempt to answer coldly and rationally:
Q: Is it clever?
(my)A: I’m not sure how it could be described as clever; it certainly isn’t anything new; widely distributing unnoticeably small acts of theft has been done before, a lot; OK, each act is almost trivila, but there are a heck of a lot of them, which significantly increases the chances of it being detected.
Q: Will it work?
A: Possibly, but probably not in the long run; he’s ripping off more or less everybody - sooner or later, people will notice and start to complain and at that point, it may be too big a problem to brush off; also quite likely is that he will become so flippant about it that he will slip up and the dishonesty will be noticed by his employer.
I’m trying really hard not to jump on my moral high-horse here or get all screechy, but I do have to agree with the others in the thread; what this person is doing is dishonest, foolish and quite likely to have bigger implications for his future job prospects than he imagines.
Anecdote time: When I was a teenager, I was employed on a government initiative called the Youth Training Scheme - toward the end of this, I went on ‘work experience’ with a local company maintaining, repairing and installing coin-operated machines, mostly fruit machines.
On decommissioning a machine, the coin boxes would already have been emptied by a collector, but we would invariably find that during the machine’s lifetime, coins had missed the coin tubes and accumulated inside the casing; we would open the machine in the back of the van and typically would find quite a tidy sum in the back; I was old enough, but not smart enough, to know better, but it seemed to be something that everybody just ‘did’, so I went along with it.
Only a week passed and (I’m not sure how) management got suspicious and carried out a sudden search of the vans; they found my jacket, pockets stuffed with coins; same story for my co-worker, who was a full-time employee.
Long story short; he was fired and prosecuted for theft, I was dismissed from the scheme and given a police caution; the relationship between the company and the YTS broke down completely, so no more work experience placements were made available; the only employment I could get was manual labour in a warehouse. Without a clean record, I couldn’t get references and so I just had to bide my time and try to work my way back up again (I did in the end and I now have quite a good job, but recovering from those brief moments of greed and stupidity took more than a decade).
Well. if he was stealing from a faceless corporation, they probably would. And even in that case, they would be wrong.
It’s good that you have company. I wouldn’t want you to be a coward on your own.
Not badly enough to avoid dishonest behavior that will get him fired.
In all fairness, no. That’s why you give him a chance to knock it off before you report him.
I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t enjoy having to deal with this either. But you are involved. If you feel angry about it, feel free to yell at this guy. It’s entirely his fault, and he shouldn’t have placed you in this situation by being a thief.
You are so very wrong. I don’t think anyone here would condemn you for dropping him in it. Why can’t you see that turning a blind eye to theft is so very wrong? Surely as a decent human being and as a Christian you cannot condone this person’s actions, but you’re telling us “Hey, I can’t do anything so don’t blame me.” There are a LOT of things you could do, starting with threatening to report him to his boss and ending with actually don’t that, but at the very least aren’t you concerned about being friends with a guy who is demonstrating that he has no qualms about ripping people off? The person who brags to you about his cleverness in stealing from others might one day be bragging to others about his cleverness in stealing from you. He is, quite simply, not a good person. You should be familiar with the phrase “Bad associations spoil useful habits.” You might want to give some serious thought as to why you should continue to count this individual amongst your friends.
As for this
he wouldn’t lose his job because of you. He would lose his job because of his own actions. Perhaps it’s better he learn now while he’s still a minor :rolleyes: and at a low level of criminal behaviour that there are serious consequences for his actions rather than later. You do not need to front up at his workplace and talk to the manager face to face. An anonymous letter tipping them off that they should send someone he doesn’t know through the drive through and check the price he charges would suffice. If he doesn’t overcharge them then he won’t get in trouble. If he does - then he deserves to face the consequences of his actions.
I am really disappointed with you. I know as a teen it’s hard to deal with friends who are dishonest, but you’ve had a strong moral upbringing from what you say and you have made it clear before now that you think being a Christian has taught you decent values… and then something like this comes along and you are in here defending indefensible behaviour, trying to justify why standling idly by watching a friend abuse his position of trust and steal from people is not your fault and doesn’t make you a part of it. You are, you need to stand up to this guy and say “Hey, this is really wrong. If you are going to steal, I don’t want to know you and I will not protect you, I will make sure you get caught”. When I was a teenager, I had two friends try to involve me in their shoplifting. One sorted itself out when she realised that she may have been caught on hidden camera and so she put it back (and that’s always a possibility for your friend), but the other I told “If you try to take that out of the store without paying for it, I will tell the security guy to search you”. She wasn’t impressed, but she put it back. I would have done well to take that as a cue to walk away from the friendship but I didn’t, and several weeks later she and her boyfriend took off with a huge pile of my stuff and I never saw either one of them again. Learn from my mistake: thieves aren’t good friends.
May I recommend, START, that if you are sincere in wanting to try to stop this guy that you suggest to him that he read this thread. I know you feel he’s going to go through with his plan no matter what you say, but perhaps knowing how so many people perceive his actions – and the likely outcome of them – will persuade him otherwise.
What is this an afternoon TV special?
I don’t think it is right, but I would confront the guy. Why? Because he’ll get caught. That’s why. If you want to START, tell him how he’s going ot get caught.
Just think about it. How many cars does he serve all day? You said ten an hour? That’s a lot of quarters. Also I hope he is good at math. What’s he going to do when the bill is 5.50 and the guy pays with a fiver and five dimes? Is he going to make change for himself? Also what about the regular customers? I order from one place quite often, and I know exactly how much things are going to cost. I’ll calculate the sales-tax and have exact change ready.
Its not that he’s going to be doing it a lot. Its that he’s going to be doing it every day. Say he works 6 hours. That’s 60 quarters! He’ll be like a fucking walking money bag. That’s a lot of change to be carrying around on a daily basis. There are just so many things that can go wrong when you figure that he is going to be doing it every day. Its a bad plan because of that, he has to steal change, which is really a bad way to steal.
There are a lot better scams out there than that. I never did any but I like to think of some sometimes because that’s how I am.
If you really want to get into scamming people all you have to do is set up a computer repair service. 95 percent of the problems will be spyware related and nobody understands it at all. Just like with auto mechanics.
The thing is that he plans on doing this indefinitely. Its just a matter of time. IMHO
I’ll try to help out. First, START, your OP reads as if you’re soliciting practical critiques of a planned criminal enterprise, giving the SDMB community the unique opportunity of endorsing or abetting a crime. Did you expect anyone here to be enthusiastic? But I’ll pretend you phrased it this way: “My friend has a plan to steal from his employer’s customers, and I need to talk him out of it. I’m not comfortable with putting it on a moral or religious basis, and I don’t think those arguments would impress him anyway. Can someone help me come up with arguments that would dissuade him?”
There. That’s better, at least for me. And you could try this:
If one-tenth of one percent of the customers know what their meal should cost, and use the drive-thru more than once a week, and it takes three occurences for them to decide it isn’t just an honest mistake, he’s odds-on to get caught before he ever gets his next paycheck, much less gets his jingly self down to the bank with it. Stacking the odds against him is the fact that the customer base does not rotate much - the workers in the building next door will be seeing him regularly. Many of them will not see him exclusively. There will be a day when they come inside, or your friend won’t be working, and they will mention it to the owner, whom they may have known for years and consider a friend. Office workers sometimes get their lunch paid for by the office as a treat or to compensate them for a working lunch - and they’ll suddenly ask him for a receipt. Or they’ll ask him for a receipt because they’re picking up a few lunches and are fronting the money. And now he’s got to sweat out being caught by the people who don’t know what their meal should cost – the other 99.9%.
I could go into it more, but why? The fact is that he’s overwhelmingly likely to get caught before the amount he steals makes up for the paycheck he loses, and I hope he does almost as much as I hope he’ll abandon his budding career in petty theft before it sta – ah, begins.
I give it three weeks before the "OMG My Friend Got Busted How Can He Get Out Of This? thread.
Let’s even forget the moral issue and talk risks and rewards.
He’s making TWO AND A HALF DOLLARS an hour - which surely even a schoolkid thinks is bobbins? That’s the reward. Fuck all.
Let’s look at the risks: He IS going to get caught - the reason for this is that anyone who:
- works in a fast food restaurant as the only job he can get is not the latest inacranation of Moriarty
- He’s told you. That means he’s told others. Smart criminals (especially fraudsters) are quiet.
- He’s young. That means he thinks he’s smart but he’s not - he might grow up to become clever but the prognosis ain’t great.
- He thinks breaking the law for less than the price of a cinema ticket is worth the effort.
So what are the possible downsides? The most serious would be a police/criminal record which would stop him getting into various things when he’s older and has sorted himself out. So good careeer or $2.50 an hour? No brainer isn’t it?
In Britain we call people like your mate “gas meter thieves” - ie too stupid for words. Now here’s a thing - who do you think ends up in jail for multiple repeat offenses - you’ve got it - gas meter thieves.
Tell him to quietly resign, get himself a job somewhere else or decide to be a proper criminal and stop stealing quarters.
(joining the chorus): No, it’s not clever. Short changing is not an orginal scheme brainstormed by your friend, and nobody’s ever gotten anything from it but a few bucks and fired.
So let me get this straight - he adds a quarter on to the price of the meal that they selected and ordered off the drive-thru menu?
First time that happened to me I’d notice. How the heck do people not notice the difference between a posted price and what they’re charged maybe five minutes later?
Dumb, dumb, infinitely stupid idea. There are way too many people in the world who aren’t careless over the difference of a quarter for this to last for long.
Setting aside that obviously it’s totally unethical.
To answer your OP, no the idea isn’t somewhat clever. It’s one of the oldest goddamn scams in the book - cashiers have been doing it for as long as money has changed hands. Your friend will probably get away with it for a while, and then he’s going to get cocky, greedier, or lazy - or all three - and he’s gonna get caught.
And, by the way, you’re turning into a real one-trick pony with these “Here’s the latest asshole stunts me and/or my friends are pulling - how cool are we?” threads.
So you’re making up a hypothetical situation, assuming people’s responses, and then whining about them? I think know your actions are indefensible. They’re a cute mix of apathy, cowardice, and condoning stealing.
Like sturmhauke said, your friends suck. Not to get too preachy about it, but your ethics aren’t so great either.