Transparent liars, wannabe cheats and lame attempts at fraud in your industry

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was thinking back to various jobs I’ve held and have realized a common thread is that, when the chips are down, many people have absolutely no problem lying, cheating and commiting petty fraud for some tiny advantage. What’s more, they apparently have no idea how transparent their brilliant plans are and how easy they are to catch.

What are some common cheats and ripoffs in your industry? How do you bust them?

Video Rental
This is a big target, because nobody feels like they really deserve to pay late fees.

I know! I’ll just put it back on the shelf and say it go reshelved without getting scanned!"
Yes, this does legitimately happen. This is why a few times a week, staff will go around with a list of every late movie and systematically check if they are on the shelf. If it is, a note goes on your file. Like all things video, the first time yo will be forgiven. If it becomes a pattern, you’ll be asked to find another place to rent.

I know! I’ll say it is late because they did not scan it in time!"
This also sometimes happens, but almost never to a single movie. Anyway, if your two day rental is scanned at the same minute as three five day rentals, nobody is going to believe it sat there undetected for exactly three days and fifty nine minutes.

Hotels
The hourly rental
As a beach hotel, we’d get people who would check in, park their car, spend the day on the beach, come back for a shower and a nap before wanting to drive home. Then they’d come in with a lame excuse wanting a refund for their night. They’d be obvious- coming in happy and sandy, emerging an hour later with wet hair before having a little “family conference” at the door of the office to get their story straight. I’d gladly offer our hourly rate- which happens to be double the room rate.

prostitutes
Local ID? Wedding ring? Woman who obviously isn’t your wife? No luggage? We’ll need a $500 cash deposit on the room please.

Food service
Dine and dash
A bunch of teenagers order the priciest thing on the menu, whisper a lot while glancing repeatedly at the door, and giggle nervously every time a waiter walks by? Don’t worry, we’ve already called the police.

2

I don’t have an example at moment but if there is anything I hate more than being lied to, it is being told a lie I would have to be as dumb as a box of rock to believe.

3

I worked for an architect who, for the occasional Really Big Project he hoped to get, would list all the professionals on his staff. Only thing was, most of them didn’t actually work for him at the time he submitted the proposal. If he got the job, he’d hire them as consultants, not as salaried staff, so he could let them go at the end of the project without having to pay unemployment.

Listing non-employees as employees on one’s proposal is a gross violation of ethics, opens one up to disciplinary action by the state licensing board, and is/was probably illegal. (Been out of that industry for a while, so I can’t remember for sure.)

4

I work in a pharmacy. Getting lied to is just a daily part of the job. “I dropped my pills in the toilet” is the most common. For the record, if you are going to steal a prescription pad and try to forge a script for in insane amount of narcotics, make sure you steal the right pad and learn to spell the medication correctly.

5

Though I know nothing about how this would work, I would have guessed the patient/addict would have to tell this to the MD who wrote his prescription, not the pharmacist who fills it.

Can a pharmacy legally give more drugs to someone who claims to have lost or destroyed their original allotment without OKing it with the Doctor?

6

I used to work in a CD store, and every single day we had someone bring in a CD that they’d bought yesterday, wanting to exchange it. They’d obviously copied it at home, and simply wanted two CDs for the price of one. We had big signs up all over the place saying “NO EXCHANGES” but no-one ever took them seriously.

The most annoying thing about it was that they’d expect me to not know what they were up to. No, you fucking retard, if the CD wouldn’t play, you’d want another copy, you wouldn’t want a different CD. Every. Single. Day.

So after I’d worked there a few days I made up a spiel about how the “copyright protection agency” had laws against exchanging one CD for a different one, and that they sent inspectors around all the time to test shops and that shops that did it got huge fines. The funny thing was, every single person I told that story to completely swallowed it. Rule one: be smarter than the person you’re trying to scam.

7

Atlanta cheating scandal.

Need I say more?

8

Similarly, I’m a physician and I deal with these drug seekers all the time too.
Just recently, I had care of a patient transferred over to me, and this patient called in for an early refill on a stimulant medication, claiming that his old doctor had said that he should “Play around” with the dose. Too bad for him that I know the other doctor personally and I was able to ask her if she actually told him to do that. She didn’t tell him any such thing, of course.

I have some sympathy for drug addicts, but it is very frustrating dealing with people who will waste your time with very transparent lies about ridiculous things trying to get some extra narcotics, benzos, or stimulants. I think it’s even worse for pharmacies since you have to deal with some of these idiots trying to steal the meds and such.

9

I’ve posted in threads before that I teach, but this isn’t about the lame ways students try to get away with things – this is when colleagues and peers try to get away with stuff.

One nasty colleague, who firmly believes that in order for her to get ahead, others must fail, was up for promotion a few years back; did she pad her resume? Yes. Did she get caught? Sort of – she listed herself, among other things, as the vice-president of a particular academic society.

I know who the actual vice-president was at the time. It was I. (In fact, she’s never been on their books as a member, let alone on the executive committee!)

I don’t know if it’s lame on her part, or an illustration of how lax committees are, that she thought she could get away with it. (The chairman of the society apparently had a quiet word with her, suggesting that removing that line from her CV might be a good idea.)

She got promoted, though.

10

I work with a distribution company who uses GPS tracking on our personnel.

Had one job where the guy was supposed to deliver 5,000 door hangers (door to door). Got the hangers, got his GPS device, and off he went, straight to the Walmart dumpster.

With the device pinging the entire time. :rolleyes:

11

In my industry, and the company I work for, it is quite common to lead the client to believe we are larger than we are. I have many times heard our owners tell a client we have between 100 and 125 employees, depending on the projects at the time. The number of actual employees is closer to 40.

And we frequently inflate the number of “projects” we have completed in a given area. It’s as if, if a client pays us $1 for a phone conversation, and a questions is asked about a specific product version, we will then claim a completed installation of the product at that client in our sales materials.

We will also propose employee resources that we have not hired yet to clients, with the intention of hiring them if the contract is signed. Or we will propose resources who are not available at all because they are committed on long term projects. However, if the client let’s some time pass before finally engaging us, we tell them that those resources are now on different projects and are unavailable.

…however, I firmly believe this is all just “business as usual” in a lot of industries.

12

I read a forum for doctors and some of my favorite stories are the ones about all the moron junkies they see in the ER trying to scam prescriptions for narcotics. These seem to be particularly popular scenarios:

-checking in and declaring that you are allergic to everything except Dilaudid
-stating that your pain is “10/10” and then sitting there calmly watching TV in the waiting room
-lying there screaming and writhing in pain and then answering your cell phone when it goes off
-coming in for “chronic pain” that started 5 months ago but you just had to come in on this particular night at 3:30am to get it looked at
-getting an Rx for Vicodin and then going to a pay phone and trying to sell it before you even get out of the emergency department

These addicts just don’t seem to realize that doctors and pharmacists have seen it all before.

13

I have had this happen, along with the pill bottle gets knocked over and the pills go down the drain. The pharmacy just calls the doctor and they refill it. My insurance won’t pick up any part of the refill (and rightly so as it’s not their problem my cat loves to swat pill bottles), so it’s all out of my pocket.

14

In my biz…warranty work. We warranty repairs for 90 days. if the failure is related to the repair we performed, no problem. I had a customer come in 6 weeks after a virus cleanup with a failed hard drive demanding we fix it for free because we “should have seen it” and still went and filed a complaint with the BBB when we offered to do it for the price of the drive alone.

EVERY SINGLE TIME I ever get a call about something that might be a warranty call it starts like this…

“Yes, you guys fixed my computer a month or so ago (look up invoice, 7 months) and I have only used it a few times and now its doing the same thing”

Invariably its another virus, limewire, frostware, bearshare, (which we removed before) and a history full of porn present upon examination in the shop and we get all kinds of indignant whining about “not standing behind our work” :rolleyes:

I swear some of these people would probably get their car out of a body shop, run it into a pole down the street, and go back trying to claim that it all just fell apart.

Always my favorite example:

AC: When is your technician going to come back and put my printer back together!
Me: Um, I was your technician, and I didn’t take your printer apart…
AC: Well its all in pieces on the desk, I didn’t do it, so you need to deal with this!
Me: Sir didn’t I print you a receipt for my services?
AC: Yes
Me: I printed it on your printer, right before I left.
AC: Yes I remember that
Me: So if I disassembled your printer, how did I print an invoice?
AC: I dunno, you’re the computer expert, when are you coming to fix this.
Me: <hangs up>

A Recent one:

Customer presented a badly virused machine that ended up needing to be reloaded. Unfortunately, customers machine was “built by a friend” who pirated a win7 ultimate, office 2012 Pro, CS4, etc. We offered to either sell him a 7 licence or reload him with XP home (which he had had a key for on case), open offfice, GIMP, etc. He of course opted the XP route.

DC: I am really unsatisfied with the quality of the work you performed on my computer.
Me: How so?
DC: I had all this good software and now you took it all away from me, I demand you put it all back the way it was.
Me: Does the computer start up?
DC: Yes
Me: does it browse web pages
DC: Yes
Me: are your personal files present and accounted for?
DC: Yes
Me: Did it slow down from when I demonstrated it working in the store?
DC: No, but I don’t have my programs any more.
Me: As I explained to you sir, your friend pirated all that software, I cannot just “give it back” those programs cost alot of money, and technically, your friend committed a crime by giving them to you. IF you would like I will happily get legal licences for you and install whatever you like.
DC: How much?
Me: for windows and office you are looking at $250 for the basic versions, about $600 for legal copies of the ones you had installed.
DC: Thats insane, I would never pay that much for those programs.
Me: Thats what they cost, feel free to search for them online yourself.
DC: I don’t care, I just need to you to make it like it was when it came in!
Me: It didn’t boot all the way into windows when you came in, will that be satisfactory?
DC: Well obviously you don’t care about satisfying your customers!
Me: Yes, I do, until they demand I commit a crime on their behalf to satisfy them.
DC: Everybody does it, why won’t you.
Me: for all I know you are an investigator from BEAR or a PI representing Microsoft trying to see if I will commit piracy when asked.
DC: Thats just silly
Me: Two shops in the last 2 years, in this city, have been sued and lost, for doing what you are asking me to do.
DC: Not my problem
Me: I’m sorry you are unhappy with your perfectly functional computer, have a nice day <click>

15

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away where they had tapes instead of CDs, I did indeed purchase the wrong tape, and desperately wanted to trade my Rembrandts for the REM I mistakenly picked up. The sales person went to the rack, saw they were right next to each other, laughed and gave me my trade-out with the comment “Yeah, I can’t see anybody wanting the Rembrandts”. :stuck_out_tongue:

I work at a prison. I can only imagine what kind of excuses the guards hear every day, but my most common one is some lady calling in asking about her “husband’s” visitation or postal info or release date, etc. I seriously cannot even count how many times different women call for the same guy. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Oh, and I went to my doc for a back problem a couple weeks ago. I just wanted muscle relaxants, like I’d had before, so I could work. I suspect the doctor thought I was completely scamming him because he sent a scrip for Valium over to the pharmacy. O.o WTF. I don’t want Valium, you idiot.
I listed my pain as only being about 3.5 because that’s how much it hurts all the time; I haven’t tested to see how far past 10 it gets when I try to pick up something from the floor because I am not a moron; it hurts, I don’t do it.

Also don’t think he believed that I felt my back go out while standing in line. He asked me WHERE I was standing in line; I don’t think he believed ‘Walmart’ either.
Pretentious douche. Don’t give me freaking Valium if you think I am lying! Just give me the damn muscle relaxants so I can WORK. The one good thing he did was write me a letter for two days off work, which turned out to be the best thing for my back. The problem with THAT was that he was ushering me out the door when I asked about whether I could get the same muscle relaxers that I’d used before, and I had barely opened my mouth when he said 'Of course, two days off work, see the receptionist". I would never have expected that, so thanks, but…again, fucking listen to your patient, jerk.

17

When I worked at Best Buy, people would always try to return stuff with missing components. They’d bring it back the day after they bought it, opened but unused. They’d say nothing was wrong with it and they just decided that they didn’t want it, but then they’d get all nervous when we said we needed to check it to make sure everything was there. Invariably, there’d be some small thing missing. A video cable, an SD card, an ink cartridge, etc. They’d insist that they hadn’t even taken it out of the box and it must have been missing, and get angry when we said we couldn’t take it back without everything. Sometimes they’d even try to blame us. “You must have opened it, taken it out, and then re-sealed it!” About 1/3 of the time they’d just leave and come back a few hours later with whatever it was that was supposedly not included.

18

The drug-seeking thing makes me so angry because it makes doctors so reluctant to prescribe pain killers. I NEVER get decent pain relief. One time I went to an urgent care clinic with a sudden onset ear infection and sat there with blood and pus liberally running out of my ear, and the doctor wouldn’t give me anything even when I screwed up my courage and asked. My dentist wouldn’t write a script for 5 vicoden when I had a root canal. What good would 5 vicoden even do for an addict? I honestly don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I think I’ve been prescribed pain killers five times in thirty-odd years. Drives me insane.

19

No, they go to the pharmacy first to try and get an early refill on the med, and try and make the pharmacy explain to the doctor why the meds are being refilled early if there are no refills remaining.

Yes, unless there are no refills remaining on the prescription. Then the refills must be OKd by the MD. The patient can pay cash for the medication, but pharmacists are given leeway to use professional judgment to refuse to fill the medication if they suspect it is being abused.

20

I’m sure it does happen on occasion, but never in my time in the pharmacy industry have I ever heard of someone dropping their blood pressure / heart medication / prostate medication in the toilet. It’s always the vicodin, oxys, valium, and morphine that go tumbling into the toilet, month after month.