Well, the kid may need this job, but he doesn’t deserve it. There are plenty of people out there who would be very happy to be making $7/hour and not steal from their employer/customers.
I too think you need some new friends. Obviously the ones you currently have are not a good influence on you; you should find friends that hold the values you have/would like to develop so that you can have reinforcement of the behaviours you would like to exhibit instead of being with people who provide bad examples or who reinforce your poor behaviour.
Oh, for God’s sake, START. Grow a goddamned backbone. “Ooooh, ooooh, I don’t want to tattle on my friend even though he’s stealing from his boss because people will be maaaad at me and it’s none of my biiiiiznesss! Ooooh, ooooh!”
Your friend is breaking the law. Tell his boss what he’s doing and get new friends, preferably ones who don’t think overcharging customers is a good thing to do.
I just can’t shake the feeling that START thinks one of these days he’s going to post something along the same line of what he always posts and we’re all going to give him a ‘WOW! You and your friends are COOL.’ It’s like he just doesn’t get that the majority of posters here are never going to commend him for his (or his friend’s) immature, insensitive behavior but he keeps trying. Over and over. Odd.
I don’t know what is more pathetic. The “Asking If a Criminal Endeavor is Clever” part or the “I Don’t Know Why Everyone is Jumping on Me!” whine.
You want to know why this pisses off a lot of people? You insult the collective intelligence and morals of this community by asking this stupid question. What sort of board do you think this is, that you thought there would be an interesting thread exploring both sides of this issue???
If you are as good a “Christian” as you claim you are, your response should have been exactly what you received here. “Why the hell are you asking me? Did you think I would be cool with that? You’re an idiot, and you’re going to get caught!” That should have been your response. But it wasn’t, was it.
I am curious why your ‘friend’ thought YOU would be cool with it? He certainly wouldn’t have brought this plan up with a member of the bible study club. So why tell you? One of these day, you are going to learn that the friends you keep reflects you as a person.
I also call bullshit on the ‘friend’. Your ‘friend’ makes $7 working fast food, and he’s poor compared to you. Wow, $7/hr is close to $15,000 a year working full time. If you make him look poor, you must be making what…$30K a year? While in school no less.
Between the “Look at ME!” and the “Would I be an asshole if…” threads, I am beginning to wonder if this board should have acceptance interviews :rolleyes:
Ignore the naysayers START. Your friend’s plan is a stroke of criminal genius. Sure other Dopers have pointed out a few ways in which he could miraculously be caught but no doubt he has a brilliant getaway plan that will see him in the Bahamas before morning, unless his skateboard breaks down.
If he does happen to be apprehended he will probably be able to write a bestselling book about his thrilling exploits and will be much in demand as a consultant for fast food places that are having moron problems.
How long does this fool think it will be until his coworkers and/or the cameras catch him shoving money in his pockets? Especially when he’s up to 40 quarters. Is he going to try and make change to convert it into bills? That’s an even better way to get noticed.
Well, I think I’ve just about had it. pardon the lack of a separate thread, but it’s just not even worth it.
START, you are a fucking tool. Your friend is doubly a tool -on his own merits, and by his association with you.
I know that you’re sort of our pet adolescent here on the SDMB, but, Christ on a Cracker, you’re annoying. What next? an ‘I rape puppies, is that so wrong?’ thread? And the muddying of the waters with your ‘I’m a Christian he’s a Muslim, we’re both fucking assholes’ shtick? Priceless. You’ll probably justify puppy rape by saying that your best friend, a Shaolin monk, does it too.
What you’re friend is doing is wrong- you know that. And you knew very well what sort of reaction you’d get from this community. It is clear that you like to jerk people’s chains…consider mine jerked. Good for you, you goat-felching eunuch. Maybe once your balls have dropped, you can join civil society. Until then, please kindly shut your cake-hole.
God, i hate it when young people validate every suspicion that older folks have about them being frivolous, head in the ass losers. But I swear, on my worst day, I was not half the dipshit you are. You are not clever. It amazes me that you are functionally literate, not that you’ve anything useful to say with this amazing talent.
There. Now you can go tell your pals what a total shit I think you are, pat yourself on the back for getting a rise out of me, and you can have a circle jerk over your outrageous antics here. Good luck.
I understand everyone’s anger at START, trust me. But I’m gonna take a different approach. I’m a lurker, usually, but I have watched START’s time here, am familiar with his infamous threads, and well I’ll just say it…I likeSTART. He says some things that get under my skin. He does some things I consider immature. But god, he’s still in High School. I know if I met High-School Big-Ole-Steve, I’d slap the shit out of him. To me he seems like who’s someone trying to do what’s right in a world, and with his own impulses, that sometimes go against that.
It’s easy to think stealing is dishonest, wrong and criminal. Hell, at least 99% of people proclaim that. But it took Jesus to overturn the money-changers’ tables. Anyone else who thought they didn’t belong in the temple kept their mouths shut.
I don’t think the Original Post here was REALLY about how well this scheme would work. I think START truly (though, incorrectly) thought no matter which side he took “heh heh check out my friend’s cool idea”, or “Hey, this guy is a jerk, and I will fillet him for it!” that he’d get a beat down here, so he tried to take the morality out of the question, and tried to put it as non-controversial as possible, in hopes of protecting himself from scorn, but also getting some guidance on how HE should behave. I think he’s trying to learn how to behave, and just having some hiccups a lot of teens have. I think by and large he’s a good kid…maybe just sometimes a tad, umm…dense.
It took me a long time to be confident enough to tell friends when I disapproved of their actions, and to let them know I would not let them get away with it by turning my head.
START, you know what’s right here, man. You know you gotta stand up for that, no matter how uncomfortable seeing this guy every day at school will be.
You might have had SOME People say that, but not the ones that have posted here, and 90% of us would have agreed with you getting him fired. You may not believe that, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.
OK so lots of other people know, besides you. So not only is this friend an idiot, he’s an idiot that has given you cover, because now, if you anonymously tip the owner off, he’ll never know which of his “friends” did it.
I’m looking to YOU to be the one guy, out of all those other people he told, the one with the moral strength of character to stand up to what he’s doing. If you cannot stand up to his face, and plainly, but resolutely state that you will not stand for what he’s doing, then at the very least, tip the owner to the scam, and suggest the owner send some stranger through the drivethru and order 15 bucks worth of food, and see how much more he’s charging. Then you’ve done what you can, and if the owner ignores your warning (or is an idiot and confronts the kid without evidence) you still know you did what was right, even if the crowd all stood around with their mouths shut. Doing what is right can be HARD sometimes. But that never makes it less right. Christ never said to do what was right, as long as it wouldn’t affect your social standing with your friends. He got himself killed over doing what was right, and never backing down, no matter how large the crowd. What you’ve been asked to do is but one billionth as hard as what he did.
It wouldn’t be BECAUSE of you. It’d be BECAUSE of him. If you don’t tell, though, and he gets caught and gets fired, it WILL be in-spite of you. IOW, in spite of your laziness and fear to do what you knew was right, he still got what he had coming.
And I’m sorry his family is poor, and could use his money to help with the rent. Yes, that is very sad. And it causes people to do desperate things. But this kid doesn’t deserve that sort of job if he cannot be trusted with the responsibility, regardless of his economic standing. I’m sure the kid could also really use all those quarters he’s gonna rack up. Probably help pay the bills, or buy his mom a nice dinner out one night, something, I’m sure, she richly deserves. But I’m sorry, he simply has no right to that money. The ends does not justify the means here. And he will be a LOT worse off if he gets himself blacklisted from getting another job by having a conviction for stealing on his record.
Again, I told you, it’s hard to do what’s right sometimes. It might even have negative results. But it’s still right.
So discomfort eases your responsibility? Good to know. You know that’s not an excuse.
The decision is your’s to make, man. But I have faith in you. I believe I’ve seen you grow, and realize how your past behavior was wrong. Tell me I’m right about you. After the fact, and after you were slapped here for laughing at that underwear man, did you feel guilt? Did your heart wish you could relive that situation? Did you put yourself in his place, and imagine how your heart would break if kids laughed at you at your most embarrassing moment?
I think you did. Because I think you’re a good kid. Good kids make mistakes. But what makes you good is that you learn from them. And you remember your own guilt the next time a similar situation comes up, and don’t repeat that mistake.
Dude, I’m telling you. Letting this guy get away with it is a mistake. What if he doesn’t get caught? What if he goes all through the scam, gets away scott free, and next time, scams a bit more. And eventually becomes some huckster who bilks the poor and old out of their savings in the latest and greatest “investment DEAL OF THE CENTURY!”
If he does that, you’ll have helped him get there, by not doing all in your power to stop him when it was just quarters.
And a quarter probably won’t break the bank of any of his customers…but that’s not his (Or frankly, your) decision to make.
Do what’s right, so that in 25 years when your son is in a similar situation, and asks you what to do, you can hold your head up high, and tell him you did what was right, and hope he’ll follow the example you set.
There would be no pride in telling him you took the easy way out, and sat on your own hands.
Let’s play a game and pretend he doesn’t get caught. He gets away with it for years, until he quits.
What then? Back to being a fine upstanding citizen? I doubt it. The realistic best-case scenario is that he’s starting down a road of petty criminality that’ll take him nowhere good in life. You’d be doing him a favor to drop the cops on his ass (not that he’d see it that way), or at least put a fair bit of effort into convincing him to stop.
Oh for godsakes, START, your friend is an asshole and so are you. He’s gonna get caught, and not only will everyone know he’s a thief, they’ll assume you are too.
When I was fourteen, my best friend started shoplifting and stealing from our other friends. I never did, but I kept my mouth shut, because I didn’t want her to get into trouble. Well, it wasn’t long before people started thinking that I was also a thief, blaming me for things she stole, and my friends’ parents didn’t want their kids hanging around me.
Get a pair and tell your friend to stop it, or you’re turning him in. And BTW, as far as I know, the Muslim faith condemns theft. You’re both a bunch of fucking dumbasses. You need to find new friends, pronto.
And stop bragging about it, then whining when people pile on you. You should know by now what our reaction would be. Does the word “disingenuous” mean anything to you?
Is it somewhat clever? sure- not original, though. People have been doing this forever. It’s called embezzlement when you get to work in a big boy job, so if your friend manages to pull this off for a while and doesn’t get caught, he could always work at a bank somewhere and do it large scale. HOORAY for him! Oh, but he’ll also do prison time for it, probably. People who pull this particular scam usually get caught eventually.
Here’s some more info for you and your friend to look over:
Will it work? Sure, until he gets caught. I mean, are you asking us if this person can physically put an extra quarter in his pocket? Of course he can. Hell, he could overcharge a dollar per order if he wants. The question is how many times until he gets caught. Could be 1 time, could be 100. That’s the fun of crimminal activity- it keeps you guessing right up until the cops knock on the door.
I don’t know how I feel about the whole “you should turn your friend in” business. Do you know for a** fact** that he’s doing it or was he just blowing smoke and talking crap about doing it? If you don’t know for sure, drop this person as a friend and forget about it. The reason you don’t want people like this as a friend is that he’ll probably steal from you, too. Theives aren’t generally that picky. He sounds desparate for money and desparate people do nasty things. If you know he’s doing it for a fact, drop the owners a quick note in the mail telling them to watch their new employee for a while, as you think he’d overcharging and skimming, then let them do what they will. AND drop him as a friend or aquaintance.
Your friend put you in a shitty position by telling you this information- drop this one and get better friends.
There are an awful lot of criminals in jail because they couldn’t grasp that simple concept. Sitting down at the bar bragging - “Yeah, I’m so bad there’s a reward out on me!” - five guys get trampled in the rush for the phone.
It’s not clever, and you friend will eventually get caught. SOMEONE is going to know how much they should be charged, and is going to complain. At best, your friend will just lose his job.
I have an uncle who started his life of crime with this exact same scam back in the early 70s. He started overcharging people a quarter or two for the gas he pumped because he thought he deserved it. Pretty soon, instead of paying the gas station for that quart of oil he added, he was just pocketing the money. Before long, when someone said “fill 'er up”, he took it to mean his bank account.
He’s now in Marion, Illinois (most maximum security prison in the country AFAIK) on his 18th year of a 45 year sentence for a little crime called RICO.
Tell your friend to cut it the fuck out. He’s a fucking idiot asshole thief and $9.50 an hour isn’t very much money at all. He WILL get greedy and start taking more.
I almost hate to join the pile on, but from the victim’s point of view, I would say that START’s friend is scum plain and simple.
You see I grew up working in my father's drugstore. It was a small family business, but we did employ others's. We did out best to treat these people well, but a few decided that we wern't paying well enough. So they began acting "clever" like START's friend, but on a much grander scale, in two years we estimated that they had cost us several thousand dollars. Money stolen not from a faceless corporation but from my family. This is exactly what START's friend is doing.
So START, is your friend “clever”? No, he is a petty crook like thousands of others. Will he get away with it? Perhaps for a while, but he will get caught, and he will find that the penalty far outweighs the money that he made.
As for you, yep since you are aware of what he is doing and choose to do nothing, you are as much responsable for the damage done to this business, and it's reputation (people will often assume that since one person working there is a crook, that the business itself is crooked), as your friend. :wally
Oh, and if you truly don’t feel comfortable turning him in-because I can understand that, having been in that situation, it doesn’t mean you have to just give up. Instead, drop him as a friend and tell everyone you know who patronizes that restaurant to watch out for him, to pay attention to what their meal SHOULD cost (on the menu boards and with tax), and then warn them not to go to that place.
My aunt owned three bagel shops like this and worked her ass off and asshole teens stole from her in stupid schemes like this. :mad:
Since this is the Pit, you are a fucker & so is your friend. You claim to be a Christian but you don’t seem to have much of a problem with this or you would tell the employers. They are working hard to make ends meet and then going home & desperately trying to balance the books so IRS won’t come after them.
I don’t condone any of your actions, or your friends’. And let me tell you, if I ever caught you critizicing someone at the Goodwill store for their choice of purchase I’m going to rip you a new asshole.