When you work at a hotel (or any customer facing job) you need to watch out for scammers.

The hotel worker in this story was asked to give change for a $2 bill, and after a lot of debate between the employees about its authenticity, she took it to the bank to check it out and she was surprised about what she found.

I accepted counterfeit money.

This last weekend, the great search hotel was slammed. I had 0 rooms every day.

Sounds like a busy night.

It was some big soccer tourney and we were the host hotel for it. Meaning I had 500 children running amuck at my property.

While that sucked, it honestly wasn’t that bad. No noise complaints and parents that actually wrangled the children. Fairly decent group.

Busy, but all normal stuff.

On one of the nights, I was alone at the desk (CoWorker was on lunch) and I was busy. I had a lobby full of people checking in, needing towels, needing change ect…

When this little boy, around 8 years old, came up to the desk. He handed me a $2 bill and asked me for ones.

Even a worn bill spends just fine.

Now this bill was totally a mess. Looked like it had been washed thousands of times. But I did not put much thought into it at the time as I was to busy.

Later that night I actually looked at the bill and it seemed… Off.

She is suspicious.

Like it was well made, the counterfeit pen worked on it so again I pushed it out of my mind closed out and went home for the night.

Next afternoon I arrived at work and saw that while I was at 100% occupancy I was slow. (10 check-ins WOOHOO) And I counted in.

Something must be really weird about this bill.

Now when I opened the till, my weekend shuttle driver saw the bill and asked to see it and he said it was fake. So, we did the tests on it…

Now, idk if you guys know this but a $2 bill has none of the holograms or security stuff on them. It passed the tests and again I pushed it out of my mind.

Everyone is talking about this $2 bill.

Today when I get there, I needed a change order. So, I took the bill with me to the bank to ask a banker their opinion because all front office staff were split down the middle.

I guess it was a hot topic in the AM.

Oh, wow. It really was fake.

The lady at the bank pulled out one of the UV light things scanned it and determined it was a fake.

The GM thought it was funny that it caused such controversy (He thought it was real too).

Good thing the GM was cool about it.

He told me not to stress it as it was only $2 and that he would get the front desk a UV light to check bills if we are ever concerned again.

It seems kind of crazy to counterfeit a $2 bill, but I guess if you do enough of them, it could be worth the risk.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this story.

I bet it would be hard to tell.

Good to know.

I bet counterfeiting was a lot more popular back when cash was used for everything.

This is interesting, I had no idea.

Oh no, I bet they felt silly.

I guess they think that it will be easier to get away with $2 than $100.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a cashier who called a woman a “druggie” after she used her inhaler in line.