Dating a coworker can get messy on its own, but it gets even worse if that person is hiding something serious.

Imagine you had just come back from a relaxing weekend trip, only to find out your “girlfriend” had just been arrested for theft at your job, and your name was suddenly being dragged into it.

How would you respond? Would you panic?

Or would you calmly explain the whole thing, regardless of how embarrassing things could get?

In the following story, one retail employee finds himself in this exact predicament and will never forget what happened.

Here’s the story.

The “Girlfriend” That Almost Got Me Fired

So I have worked in retail since I was old enough to work, which is 16 here in Texas. I have stories upon stories that I could tell you, but there is one that stands out just about every time I start to think of my past.

I worked for a very well-known electronics retailer for four years while I was in college.

I initially wanted to work in the computer department since I was a computer science major.

My future GM had other plans for me and decided to throw me into selling cameras without knowing a thing about them.

This is where I met my “girlfriend.” We’ll call her Dingus from now on.

It all went down on his first day back from vacation.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and I managed to talk my way into working in our Musical Instruments department.

It was so awesome that I could literally play guitar for 8 hours and then go home. At the same time, I started to hang out with Dingus more and more, as some of her friends were mine and vice versa.

Things eventually led to us going back to her place a few times right around the same time as my birthday.

Well, this particular year, for my birthday, we decided to go to Vegas for the weekend, so I got a nice little vacation from work.

The Monday that I came back to work, I knew Dingus was supposed to be there, but I didn’t see her, and this is where my troubles began.

Then, he was called into his boss’s office.

About two hours after getting to work, Dingus’s manager comes over and asks if I have seen her.

I tell her I haven’t, and at that exact moment, two cops walk past us towards our conference room. I figured they had caught a shoplifter.

Well, 30 minutes later, the two cops walk out with Dingus in the middle of them, handcuffed.

I watch her get led out of the building, only to have my manager page me to come back to the conference room.

My heart starts racing as to what I have been accused of by her. So as I walk into our conference room, I am greeted by our GM and a person from our corporate fraud prevention (FP).

The whole conversation was a little awkward.

Also on a laptop screen, I see a picture of myself leaving Dingus’s apartment. The following conversation is obviously paraphrased

FP: “Now, mister towel, we are going to give you one chance to come clean about your involvement.”

Me: “I literally have no idea what you are talking about…”

FP: “We have pictures of you leaving the residence of Dingus, we know you are a part of the theft.”

Me: “Look, I was honestly just having fun with her, I have no idea what’s going on or why she was led out in handcuffs.”

They had good reason to investigate Dingus.

Turns out Dingus, being in customer support, had access to every transaction done in the US. Why is that important, you ask?

Well, because the retailer we worked for had a sort of program that rewarded people for buying from us.

Come to find out that Dingus had been going into old transactions and finding old points that weren’t used, she would then transfer them to an account that her friend in Texas would then use to purchase things off our website for free.

After that, the friend would send them back to her in Texas, where she would sell the items on eBay. The total amount of money that she had stolen? $125,000….

My jaw almost hit the floor. I couldn’t believe it.

I thought her parents were rich.

Wow! That takes a lot of nerve!

Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit think about what this woman did.

Here’s someone who knew five people who were fired for stealing points.

It’s interesting to hear from the other side of it here.

According to this person, they heard this story.

Yet another person who knew someone who got fired over stealing points.

He got really lucky!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.