People will do anything to save a buck, even at the expense of their own dignity.

What would you do if you caught a customer in the act of trying to fraud your store? One guy recently shared a wild example of this on Reddit.

Here are the details.

You can’t return stolen merchandise

I worked in a games store (board games, D&D, etc.) in the 90s.

Most fun job I’ve ever had!

Too bad retail pays squat.

Very few jobs that make people happy pay well.

Anyway, one day a woman comes in wanting to do a return/refund with no receipt.

We were pretty liberal about such things so no big deal.

And she hands me a US $50 item.

Pretty expensive in those days.

It’s still expensive now, even with inflation!

It was something we carried and it had our price tag on it, so I looked it up in our computer (Wyse dumb terminal, with a server in the office).

I instantly noticed the inventory history for that SKU looked weird.

We had only ever gotten one item into stock.

You’d think that would have stood out.

A few months prior it had been removed from inventory, then a couple months prior it had been added back in, then the previous month it had been removed again.

It didn’t show that it had sold, which would have looked different, but that it had been removed from inventory.

The only way this made sense is if it had been stolen, and removed from the system when we found it missing, then returned then stolen again.

Yikes, and she probably thought she was being sneaky.

Fortunately, the store manager was in the back, so I could pass the buck.

I told her I needed to get my manager to approve the return, then I went back and told him what I had found.

When he told her the return wasn’t allowed and she was banned from the store, let’s just say she was less than happy.

They say “if it’s a chain, it’s free reign”, but that certainly doesn’t apply here. Let’s see what Reddit had to say about this one.

Some shared equally as egregious stories.

Others reveled in how wild the behavior from customers can get.

But some pointed out examples of careless management.

And how that tends to have a trickle-down effect.

Another pointed out how far these schemes can go.

Someone has clearly stolen the dignity from these people.

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.