Some employees at a store don’t wear the normal uniform, either because they are management, or because they don’t normally deal with customers.

That was the case for the employee in this story, but someone walked up to him anyway, so he assumed the guy knew he was a worker.

But then the guy tried to sell him fake gift cards to the store, so he told him he was an employee, causing the scammer to run out of the store.

Actually, I DO work here

I’ve worked retail for the past ~5 years and I have ‘resting helpful face’, so a lot of people pick up on my vibes and ask for help no matter where I am, working or not.

It is always nice to be helpful.

It’s usually not a problem, and more often than not they just need a tall person to get something off a high shelf, so I don’t mind it that much.

Even when I’m doing tasks out of uniform at work, it’s very common for people to clock me and ask for help. It’s rare for someone to assume I’m just another customer.

We all know what store this is.

Before the pandemic, I was working at a certain hardware store with an orange uniform.

I did order fulfillment, so I specifically did not wear the uniform to avoid customers stopping me and asking questions as we had a limited amount of time to fill orders, though I was still carrying the official store work gloves, tape measure, and scanner, I had a small printer hanging from my belt, and in this story I was pushing a particular type of cart that most customers don’t use.

Makes sense, I think I’ve seen people like this at this store.

Anybody who looked close enough could tell I worked there, and plenty of people would ask for my help.

One day, this guy notices me from down the aisle, and I make that sort of polite eye contact that usually says, ‘I’m not going to approach you, but if you approach me I’m obligated to help.’

Wait…what!?

He walks over, and I’m expecting him to ask for directions or help unlocking a product, but instead he says something like “Hey man, want some [hardware store] gift cards?”

Folks, he was either trying to sell a fake gift card, offload a gift card he already spent, or he was doing some weird fraud thing.

He didn’t even try to get him in trouble.

I took a beat to process this, and said “I work here, sir.”

He gave me a bit of a deer-in-headlights look and walked away quickly. He kept looking over his shoulder and almost tripped over some product, and I’m pretty sure he left the building asap. I let our AP guy know about it and carried on.

That is pretty funny. They prolly should have called the police.

I still find it funny that, of all the people he could have asked, he tried me. That’s one of the few times I was ever actually mistaken for a customer at that store.

People are always looking for a scam, but this guy should have been more careful with who he approached.

Read on to see what the people in the comments thought of this story.

So that is how the scam works.

It is a clever phrase.

This was too funny.

Yup, sometimes letting them run is best.

He could have saved someone else from getting scammed.

He tried to scam the wrong person.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.