Sunday, June 03, 2007

The I'm Smarter Than You Switcheroo

Remember this guy? I knew he was a crook. He tried to run some junior league game on me tonight and I busted his ass.

You CAN NOT and WILL NOT get one over on me. Fool.

He runs up with some electrical wiring and wants to pay. OK. Fine. Whatever. There's lines.

It is $7 something plus tax for a total of $8.32. He pulls out a five and fishes around in his wallet for some singles. Then he digs around in his pocket for change.

He makes a big deal out of moving the money around, straightening out the bills and hunting for an extra penny so I will have the exact change.

Then he makes his move.

His wallet is still open. He slips the five back into the wallet, puts the change on top of the three singles and hands it over to me.

I take it and look him straight in the eye. "I need the five."

He laughs weakly, "I must have got confused."

No. You're a grifter and you just tried to screw me out of a five.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Songbird said...

Wow, that's the weakest change-raising scam I've heard yet.

The "short count", on the other hand, kinda gets me. I recognize when it's being run, but it's so hard to follow the money.

As always, big fan, love to see new posts, keep up the good work! ^_^

Larry Kollar said...

He'd go broke at three-card monte.

Anonymous said...

That is pretty weak, but I bet he scams a lot of fresh cashiers that way. I make it a habit to never open my till drawer until I've counted the payment at least once over.

Anonymous said...

Can't play games like that with Canadian coloured money..

I remember a while back a cashier called a manager because someone wanted to pay with a two dollar bill and she'd never seen such a thing. The manager had to assure her it was legal tender. We've had loonie ($1) and toonie ($2) for years up here.

Anonymous said...

whoops - loonie and toonie coins. I don't see a way to delete and edit that last post of mine. Sorry!

soloban said...

I used to work AP at Target.

I would always train the new cashiers on scams that people would try to pull on them like the "short change" where they pay for a pack of gum with a $50 then ask for different change.

So one day I train a newbie cashier. 30 min later he blinks his light and motions to me and the head cashier and says he thinks he got scammed.

I review the video and he had his drawer open for five minutes dipping back and forth between the twenty drawer and the five drawer.

He was scammed outa $250 we counted down his till.

Hate to say it but this scam was always pulled by guys from W. Africa or the Carribean.

Anonymous said...

How do you get scammed out of $250???

Anonymous said...

How does one get scammed out of 250 bucks? Easy for a pro. Old scam is buying something for less than a dollar and when they hand the cashier the dollar they wait for said cashier to put dollar in drawer then say they paid with a hundred. I worked for a retail chain in the north, when this happened the front end manager was called and the manager immediately checked the transactions and counted the drawer.

Anonymous said...

Then (by your description) it's not easy to get scammed for $99, much less $250 unless the cashier is a total moron. Having 100%, or close to it, accuracy on a drawer is not difficult. $250? Sorry, you could never convince me that's 'easy' to come up that short.

Jason said...
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Jason said...

Did he not think you'd notice the five was missing when you went to put it in your drawer?

Gah. Short change artists are easy to spot and easy to stop. You just tell them "No, you can't have your change like that; I'm not a bank." If they cry "I paid with X bill!" when you know they paid with Y, their are several possible answers (especially if you know there are no X bills in your drawer), the best is "Sure, let me count down my drawer and see if there's an overage. And hold up all these people in line behind you. It won't be me they're upset with, because I'm not the one holding up the line."

Had a few come through my register when I was working retail, but I always managed to maintain control of the transaction and keep them from getting away with anything.

Anonymous said...

TY, Jason, you made a great point of how to avoid this situation altogether. Although, I'm sure some would challenge you to count down the drawer & then claim you or some invisible fairy stole the bill or the register 'ate' it. LOL

Anonymous said...

If he really gave you a 100 and you thought it was a one wouldnt you type in 1 dollar on the register and set it on the one stack .... That happened to me once someone gave me a 50 and i thought it was a 20 when i reopened i noticed a 50 ontop of my 20s so I just say outta whatever it is now

Anonymous said...

An easy way to avoid this all together, is to not put their money in your drawer until after you give them their change. Then if they say they gave you x, you can show them exactly what they gave you. I get this all the time.