Same here. I have no way of knowing and I seriously don’t give a fuck what you have at all unless the program is messing with the thing you want me to fix.
A friend of mine owns a company that involves a lot of transportation. He had a suspicion that one of his drivers was stopping off at home when he shouldn’t have been. To confirm this theory, around the time he figured the guy would be there, he drove past his house and found the company truck there. I assume, his plan was to either confront him right then and there or when he got back to work and take it from there. Instead, he noticed the keys were in the vehicle, so what did he do? He locked the doors, went back to work and waited for the call.
Another one I just thought of. We get bread delivered every day. One of the companies we get bread from, delivers it all over the midwest. One of their drivers, one day, pulled over on the side of the freeway and dumped all the bread right there under and overpass. No attempt to hide it, just kicked it all right out the back of his truck. No one ever did figure out what he was trying to accomplish. IIRC he still rolled back into work at about the same time. I can only assume he needed the truck to move something he shouldn’t have been moving in it or it was some sort of big ‘fuck you’ to the company. The figured it out about an hour after he left work when the cops called about the bread and the accounts called wondering why their deliveries were so late. I’ll have to ask about that in the morning. I wonder if they ever figured it out.
Before my current job, I did a stint as an armed guard in an inner city T-Mobile store. Oh yeah, overages were never their fault and they were NOT!!! going to pay for them!
I remember the Somali couple that came in and were like 2,000 minutes over their 600 minute a month plan. They were absolutely OUTRAGED and were not going to pay it. The store checked and all the minutes were on the wife’s phone. She of course denied using it so much. The salesman tried to get them to move to an unlimited plan so this wouldn’t happen again, but they absolutely refused, stating they were only paying for the 600 minute plan and that’s it, period. The best part of it was that at some point in the arguing, the salesman lost it and just yelled at the wife “The why don’t you just shut up once in a while?” (pause, manager starts walking over, I’m hovering nearby). Then he goes on to explain that she had been on the phone like 2 hours every day and maybe she needed to stop using it so much and then complaining about the bill, because if they didn’t change plans, they HAD TO PAY the overages. Period. Or they’re getting shut off.
In the Armored business, I think I had one case in my 14 months where a customer attempted to claim that we stole money from their sealed bag, but it went nowhere because the signed slips and bank deposits matched what they told us was in the bag when we picked it up. It also wouldn’t have been accepted by the bank if it had been tampered with. Beyond that, we occasionally got people who tried to constantly change the pickup time that was set in a written contract, then weasel out of paying for pickups (free pickups!) if we didn’t get there at the random time they assigned that day. As a matter of course, we stuck to the contracted times and they found their demands for instant changes went nowhere.
At the truck gate, there was a guy who came in delivering video games. Carefully sealed trailer, counted units. He had to be present every second that truck was open, count the units removed and remaining, and sign off on everything. He gets back out to the truck gate after a delivery and claims that a dozen or more units are missing and we stole them. I call the Asset Protection Manager, he comes out to the gate. The driver refuses to open the truck again to let us count them or produce any proof or documentation of numbers. Ok fine, we’ll just call the Police and file a report on this alleged theft.
Suddenly it was no longer necessary and the driver left rather quickly.
We filed a complaint with his company. He didn’t come back.
Back in my IT days, I learned, even though I was on their side of things, that IT/Consulting sales people cannot be trusted. They are sociopathic liars to a one. They will promise you that their computers or software can do everything you ask, predict the future, slice bread, print money and provide oral sex, as long as you sign that contract. And oh, and this is especially true of IBM consulting services, that two person team of consultants will rapidly grow to dozens, all of whom will insist on being given offices in an area your regular employees cannot access (so they can’t be seen working on other people’s contracts or internal bullshit while billing YOU).
Oh, I thought of one from my McDonald’s days! This was pretty low-level in the grand scheme of things, but it was just so egregious. There was a girl I worked with whose husband would come through the drive-through every morning. She worked the drive-through window, and she would hand over three or four full bags of free breakfast food without ringing any of it up in the register or whatever.
The thing is, if she’d just been a little less obvious - like, maybe only one bag of food? Or have him pay for a coffee and then hand him all the free food along with it so it’s not so obvious that someone at the window is getting food without paying? - she probably could have got away with it indefinitely. But as it was, the managers noticed and then she got fired. Which is pretty sad, getting fired from a McDonald’s job.
No, I’m an Australian, our economy’s doing pretty well, thanks.
Which isn’t what I said, is it? But, yes, in the long run I do expect open-source software to replace most of the commercial software that exists now. But this is off topic, and if you want to invent things I didn’t say and pretend that I did, take it to the Pit where I won’t see it.
This is EXTREMELY low level…when I worked in a movie theater, one of the workers was in the habit of going through the lost and found each time she worked, once at the start of her shift, and once at the end. If she liked the looks of something, she took it. And she’d brag about taking stuff from the LnF, too.
Yes, as a matter of fact, she WAS hired for her looks.
Food service is writhe with this kind of thing.
The only time I EVER got in trouble at any job that I’ve had was when I worked at Six Flags at a concession stand. It was an unspoken rule that employees hooked each other up, even if you didn’t know them and they worked in a different department (like rides versus games). It happened all the time, and even managers (who were like freshman in college) were in on it too.
One day a girl from the gift shop across the way came to my stand and asked for a bag of cotton candy. Wanting to contribute to the spirit of comradeship, I gave her a bag and told her not to worry about it. Like a cool kid, right? But just as she left, a guy appeared from behind a column and said, all scary-like, “I saw what you just did, ma’am. I’m an undercover cop and you’re in trouble!” OMG! I was sixteen and I was terrified. Thirty minutes lasped before my supervisor came to escort me to her office, and that half hour lasted an eternity. She and my manager sat me down as I sobbed apology after apology. I was so pathetic.
They put me on 30-day probation, but then told me I was in line for management. It was obvious my crime was no big deal; they were just going through the motions. Still, I never gave anyone else freebies ever again. Though, I would still gobble down soft preztels and Sprite whenever I felt like it. Everyone else was doing it, dammit!
Years ago when I worked in a cinema a woman with two other adults and asked for three tickets, I told her the price and all of a sudden she started arguing.
I came in here last week and I only paid so much for a ticket .
Keeping my cool I explained that the ticket prices were on display actually in front of her on the cashdesk window, and that ticket prices hadn’t changed for a good many months.
She then started shouting that she’d only paid such and such last week and that was that, and was I calling her a liar ?
I replied calmly that not only did I not think that she was lying but that people like her restored my faith in Human nature, and that I wished that there were more people like her around.
This puzzled her and she asked me what I meant.
Keeping a straight face I said that customers everywhere were always ready to kick up a fuss if they were overcharged or short changed, and rightly so, but few were honest enough to tell us that they’d underpaid and it was heartwarming to know that she was obviously telling us so that she could pay back the money.
I then told her the overall cost of the tickets including the "owed "money, but surprisingly she only paid the proper rate, but without argument.
I think that she thought that if she made enough of a fuss and kept on and on that we’d undercharge her just to shut her up.
Personally I’d have been quite happy for her and her friends to have walked out, as customers like her are often more trouble then they’re worth.
Another one that I saw recently in my local library.(Similar to the O.P.s)
While browsing through the books, my, and everyone elses attention was drawn by a woman taking her books through the check out desk shouting indignantly that she didn’ owe any money for an overdue book because none of her books were late, and anyway the book concerned had been returned weeks ago.
And in fact she could see the actual book on the shelf.
To which the quiet looking librarian said “Yes because you’ve just put it there.”
I fully expected her to try and bluster it out, but she looked totally deflated and paid the fine very quietly.
Loved it, as did everyone else in the library.
I don’t post here a lot anymore, but I just wanted to drop in to offer supporting evidence for this. At a previous employer, we were looking at a “Data Loss Prevention” system – a gizmo that sits at the edge of your network and looks at data as it goes past to make sure no sensitive or proprietary data is going where it shouldn’t be going. So, according to the sales person, this system will catch every transmission, of course. Only, we used a hosted email system, and all our corporate email traffic was SSL encrypted between the desktop and the cloud provider. (For the techies out there, the DLP appliance was not offering MITM inspection of the SSL traffic, only passive monitoring off a spanned port on the switch). The inability to inspect corporate email would seem to be a bit of a limitation for a DLP solution.
The salesperson claimed the tool could inspect email traffic. In at least two meetings, I had to pressure the guy to finally admit that the tool couldn’t do it. In a third meeting, in front of me and a bunch of HR people, an HR person asked him point blank if the tool would inspect outgoing email, and he again said … yes. I resorted to writing up an elaborate test protocol, and asking the business people to participate in the testing, to demonstrate and document that, in fact, his system would not be able to inspect SSL-encrypted traffic.
Didn’t matter, though. My boss’s boss was an investor in the company, so the thing got implemented anyway.
So, a cheating fraud two-fer!
CPA checking in:
After 15 years of doing taxes, by far the most egregious lying was done by people for their individual tax returns (more than Corporate tax returns by far). The most common lying came to “Office in Home” and other unreimbursed employee business expenses. They must think we are really stupid when they claim the size of their home office is 1200 sq. ft. in a 2200 sq. ft. home or that they had total unreimbursed expenses of over $20,000 when their total AGI was only $55,000. They would bring in every personal receipt for the past year and claim they were all business related, or my favorite -just bring in year end personal credit card statements and claim the total yearly charges were all business related.
It is pretty easy for dishonest people to fudge a little in some areas of their taxes without raising any red flags or getting caught, but some people are just asking for an audit. The sad thing is people that make less than $100,000 a year have very little chance to get picked for an audit unless something really fishy turns up, but in my experience the less someone makes the far greater chance they will try to cheat on their taxes.
From experience with similar crap, before you even open the box they’re saying: “You don’t trust me? (raising voice) Now you’re insulting me. I’ve been shopping here for 9,322 years and I’ve spent trillions of dollars in your store and this is the way you treat your customers? I’ll never shop here again!!”
THEN they stomp off.
My wife owns a daycare. The three big ones:
“oh, my kids are little angels! You’ll just love having them”. Bullshit. That’s code for “do not accept my kids under any circumstances, because they are violent, destructive hellions”
“I’m waiting for DHS to finalize my paperwork, my caseworker says I’m approved for the childcare subsidy, so when that’s all taken care of, then I can pay you in full”. Here’s a hint: any daycare provider that accepts DHS subsidy can call your caseworker and verify your information, including your status. Any daycare worth their salt will do this anyway, even you have an approval letter and first months voucher in hand. Do NOT lie to your daycare provider about any DHS info. They can and will check.
“my schedule has changed, so I need you take my three kids tomorrow”. This call usually comes at 7pm. State law (at least in Oregon) sets a limit on how many kids can be under your care at any given time. Daycare providers will attempt to fill in their open spots as needed, so last minute schedule changes are a pain in the ass. Some parents obviously have on-call schedules, some daycares are cool with that. But when you work customer service at Macys, your schedule is not on-call.
And don’t lie about your schedule when one of your co-workers, who obviously knows your schedule, is friends with your daycare provider.
If its not stopping me from fixing the problem, I don’t mess with it. If they have a pirated OS and I manage to fix it without a reload, I do usually advise them of it and let them know that in the event of a reload the only way I can legally fix their PC is by selling them a legal licence.
I worked at an accounting firm one summer and we had a client like this - gave us numbers instead of documents, then came crying that it was our fault when she got audited. She gave the firm 7 boxes of crap that she said were all of her proof - and I got paid to sift thru it for two weeks. Mostly menu revisions (for a restaurant that her brother solely owned) and daily retail cookie purchase receipts (one cookie? for her real estate business?). There was also some interesting paperwork about her brother’s trial for domestic battery, but no business deduction viability there
Property rental management:
You don’t have to run my credit. It’s good.
You don’t have to verify ownership. I own the property.
You don’t have to call the bank. My check is good.
I work at a software company, so we deal with pirates a lot. I mean, I get that people pirate software – and honestly, we don’t sweat it all that much. The really irritating thing is when people not only pirate our software, but also then expect us to offer support for it, or otherwise call us for help, and who play the victim card about it.
For example, our software has a few activation methods. One of the most common piracy workarounds is to use our offline activation and spawn fake serial numbers. The serial number generator is known to us, and comes with detailed instructions as to how to use. However, a significant number of brain trusts disregard the instructions, and instead try to activate over the phone with a representative.
Inevitably, we ask for the serial number and find it’s a fake. The top 50% of this group hangs up as soon as we say “That doesn’t seem to be a valid serial. Where did you purchase <product>?” The bottom half decides to pretend. Poorly.
Pirate: “Uh, I don’t remember”
Me: “Was it from us directly, or from a reseller”
Pirate: “You directly”.
Me: “Okay, what’s your email address?”
Pirate: “Oh… I have so many…”
Me: “Okay, what’s your full name?”
Pirate: “Uh… Steve…? Jones?”
Me: “Okay, in what city and state?”
Pirate: “Uh… New York City…”
Me: “We don’t have anything under that info, but I should be able to find it with your telephone number and street address. Could you give that to me?”
Pirate: <click>
I think I might just start saying “Okay, I see caller ID shows <name> and <number>, is this what’s on your customer account?” just to speed up this whole process. But honestly I don’t mind toying with them a little bit.
We also get a fair number of people who refuse to give us any information, and who start with “the customer is always right” and “you need to stand behind our product”. At this point I go: “This serial number appears to have been created with a program intended to bypass our activation. If you purchased this software, I’d strongly recommend contacting the original vendor as they are selling illegitimate serial numbers, which is illegal, or disputing your credit card charge as fraudulent.” And, surprisingly, this seems to shut 'em up mostly, though occasionally we’ll get the “Well this is what’s on the box!” and I say “Okay, no problem, can you just send us a scan or picture of the CD and box you’ve got and we’ll just generate a whole new license for you?” Never seem to get one…
My other favorite is people who buy from these people. One fellow I talked to bought our software from a guy on Craigslist who burned a CD for him, and he couldn’t get it to activate. It was a keygen serial, and I told him so. He got really angry about it. The worst part is he paid like $5 less than Amazon.com price. WTH??? Why on earth would you do that for what is obviously pirated? He again started with the “stand behind your product” spiel, and after quite a few times trying to be diplomatic and him escalating to personal insults, I said: “Sir, look. You basically bought stolen goods. Your beef is with the person who stole the goods, not the victim. My best suggestion to you would be to contact your local police department. Asking us to replace a stolen product with a legitimate copy is not reasonable. If you buy a pair of speakers out of the trunk of a car and they don’t work, you don’t get new ones from Sony.” Surprisingly, this actually seemed to register with him.
If they’re selling you on a feature and cannot show you a demo at all, the software doesn’t exist yet or isn’t far enough along to even show to anyone. Sales people love to sell software that doesn’t exist yet. Developer talks about a feature they’d like to include and might be able to clear time to start it in a month…suddenly the sales person has sold the feature and needs it to be done in 6 weeks.
Rife, it’s rife.
It could be designed to inspect SSL traffic without being MITM (at least topologically). As long as the SSL cert holder could export his private key, then the device could import it and voila! Now he can see those SSL sessions (unless traffic is so heavy on the span port that the session key is missed for a given session).