An off brand gas station tried a rather clever variation of this on me. It was a full serve. I pulled in once and asked for $20 in gas. Luckily, I happened to look back and see that he put in $10 before he came back and asked for $20.
“No, you only put in ten dollars’ worth.”
Then followed the worst acting job ever. Amazed, amazed he was that he’d only put in $10! I’ve seen better acting from Steven Seagal. It could not have been a more obvious scam if he’d been wearing a T-shirt saying I’M A SCAMMER.
Recently I had the opposite happen to me. At the supermarket the cashier gave me change of a $50 but I was sure that I had only given her a $20. So I corrected her but she insisted it was a $50. I pulled out the other notes I had and, having just got the cash from an ATM, confirmed that it was a $20. She grabbed the receipt and showed me that on the paper that it said that I had paid with a $50. I pointed out that it only said that because she had entered that amount on the register.
Because I was holding up the queue I just wrote my phone number on the receipt and told her to ring me if the till was up $30 when she balanced it at the end of her shift. Later I though that since it is a large national supermarket I should have just pocketed the money and left. I consoled myself with the knowledge that, once I had mentioned that I knew I was being overpaid, taking the money would have looked bad when the till was $30 light.
I subsequently found it pretty amusing that in my desire to be right I was willing to argue myself out of money I could simply have taken.
And you use the standard excuse of bullies everywhere: “I was just having fun!”
What you’re doing is taking advantage of your position as customer to yank the chain of a retail clerk. It’s not funny. Stop excusing it. Stop doing it.
That’s just taking from the till.
Another obvious sign: The drawer is open before you even approach. If you see this, always ask for a receipt after the transaction is done. Ten doper bucks says they’re like “Heehee, if I could just scan your purchased items again…”
I’m not sure what to say, Broomstick and aNewLeaf.
I do hope you’ll have a featureless, plain weekend, though.
No, you don’t come off as a grinch, you come across as a real jerk. I’m not going to re-read the whole thread, but I don’t think that ANYONE in this thread thinks that this little “prank” is funny except you. You can rationalize it all you want to, but in the end, the various cashiers and managers have told you it isn’t funny. The various cashiers you’ve pulled this one have laughed and smiled at you BECAUSE THEY CAN’T DO ANYTHING ELSE. It’s like creepy sexually inappropriate behavior towards a cashier or waitress. If she makes a fuss about it, then the creeper says “I was just having fun!” Any time you use that phrase, it means that the other person WASN’T having fun, and in fact is really unhappy about the situation.
As Broomstick said, this is bullying behavior. Deep down you know this. If you want to pull pranks, pull them on someone who can pop you in the nose if s/he doesn’t like your behavior. A cashier, even if you’ve been joking and laughing with him/her, isn’t necessarily having fun. I don’t know how many people I joked and laughed with when I was a cashier, because that’s part of the job. Cashiers are supposed to present a certain persona of a bubbly, helpful person, even if they are dead on their feet and just want to GO HOME and not have to say another word to anyone.
This happened to me once while I was a kid at a baseball game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. My uncle gave me a Twenty to go buy a hot dog. The guy gave me change for a Ten. I asked my uncle if he gave me a Twenty. Then I went back to tell the vendor and he had a $10 bill sitting there to the side.
Last week I had an odd experience at a movie theater. I gave the cashier a $10 but I guess he rung it up as a $20, because the change on the register said something like $14.11. He gave me the correct change of $4.11 but I did a double take because of what the register said. At least I knew I gave him a ten.
Different colour for five,ten,twenty etc in AUS (And slightly different size, which helps blind people).
But the first $100 bill issue, which for some reason only came out in 1984, was WHITE, (technically, light blue and grey) and in poor light came close to looking and feeling like a photocopy of a $100 bill.
This scam is attempted on me several times a week, and I meticulously count change so I get a pleasure out of correcting the clerks “innocent mistake”. Amusingly many of them almost fall over themselves to hand me the extra ten I’m owed, many times not even needing to open the register to get it!
A cashier once attempted to charge me 600 TT for a parsnip(100 USD!) instead of the real price of 6 TT. You can imagine my eyes bugging out of my head when told the total. My wife is certain she thought I was a tourist and unfamiliar with exchange rates etc.
Way back when I ran a register, and every now and then somebody, be they drunk, stoned or distracted, (but always purchasing alcohol) would lay down two 50s or 100s instead of two twenties. Like, the total was 37 and they would hand me (with out looking at the bills) two 50s.
The problem then was how to respond. The correct response would be to hand them back change for 40, being that was the expected exchange. If they didn’t bat an eye, and left, then it was all good.
If you returned them the correct change, say 63, or 163 US dollars, they would get all upset and cause a scene. Nobody ever returned later demanding the extra money, which of course was put aside (in my pocket). I still have every last dollar and I await their return to claim it.
Haha just kidding. I always handed them back the extra bill and made correct change. but they did make a stink over it, which was messed up.
Well, back when I used to black out the “In God We Trust” on the bills, that would have been a good argument, too. I don’t carry cash as much as I used to, though.
