Imagine working retail as a cashier. What would you do if you realized a customer was trying to steal? Would you confront them about it, ignore the situation or call over a manager?

In this story, one cashier is in this situation and is honest with the thief about what she saw, but then she calls over a manager. She feels a little nervous during the rest of the transaction, but she also feels pretty proud of the way she handled the situation.

It’s not every day a thief tries to steal but ends up spending money!

Let’s read all about it.

Wanted to steal money, ended up spending on something they didn’t need.

I work at a big chain store. This incident happened a few weeks ago, on a Friday night. I was about 7 hours into my shift, and would be off pretty soon.

As we’re getting closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re pretty much always busy, but on weekends especially.

The line of customers just wouldn’t stop, and I was getting so tired of ringing up people.

At about 9pm, I finally helped a guest who was the last one in my lane.

This seems odd.

And just when I wanted to get water, two men came up to me, but not from the store, how usually other customers do, but like they just entered the store and came up to the register right away. I only noticed them when they approached me.

One of the men asked me if he needed to show an ID to sign up for our store’s credit card, and I said that he did. Then he looked at the other guy who had moved to side where I couldn’t see him and told him that he couldn’t sign up tonight.

Now this other guy came closer, and put plastic plates on my belt; and this time the first man moved away. During that time we had a lot of plastic plates and cups near the check out, so I realized he just grabbed the first thing he saw and came up to me.

This guy is sneaky!

I ringed him up and told him his total, which was about $7.

The guy handed me a $100 bill, it’s all ok now. Many people use large bills to buy something small.

As I input the money on computer and the register opened for me to give him change, which was a little over $93, this guy reached out and snatched $100 I was holding, and put it in his pocket with such a great speed that if I was a little distracted I wouldn’t have noticed what happened.

Guy: “Oh no, I don’t want a lot of small bills. Do you have any $50 to give me?”

OP answered the question but had a question of her own.

I checked and let him know that I only have 20s and 10s.

Guy: “Ok, give me $20s then.”

I kept staring at him.

Me: “Sure, can you give me the bill back, please?”

The guy was seriously thinking he got away with it.

I think he wasn’t expecting me to catch off, because he just froze and stared at me.

I got a little scared that he would attack me or something, but I wanted to look calm.

Guy: “What do you mean? I paid already.”

Me: “You took the $100, sir. I don’t have it on my register” I tried laughing as if it was a joke.

This is still fishy.

He turned around and made eye contact with his friend.

Guy: “Ok, let me keep $100, and I’ll pay you different way.” He then took out a few $1 bills from his pocket, counted to 7 and gave them to me.

Now I was a little confused about what to do, because I already put the money on register and didn’t wanna mess up anything.

All this time I was trying to signal my manager or at least make an eye contact or anything, and finally I called out to him. As soon as the men saw me calling the manager, the main guy took out his phone and pretended to be on the phone.

The manager’s presence helped OP feel braver.

My manager came over, I didn’t want to just bluntly say that they were trying to trick me, so I told him that they changed their minds about payment method and if we can cancel this transaction. He began voiding the transaction.

With my manager next to me, I felt a little braver. And I knew these men didn’t need any plastic plates, so I turned to them, took $7, and said brightly.

Me: “I’ll ring you up again, sorry for the inconvenience.”

Let’s try that again.

They didn’t say anything and kept looking at each other, the first guy was still “on the phone.”

My manager didn’t leave me even while I was ringing them up again.

I took their money and gave a few cents back, and wished them a good night looking as clueless and friendly as ever.

OP felt pretty satisfied.

When they left, me and my manager made a meaningful eye contact, but couldn’t talk because people were lining up again.

I don’t know if they came to me because I looked naive and easy to trick, I don’t know.

I felt a big satisfaction thinking about how they were disappointed that they couldn’t trick me, and ended up even spending money on something they didn’t need.

Yikes! I’m glad the manager was there to help. They were certainly sneaky, but OP was too smart for them.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a waitress who refused to return a tip after a party returned to the restaurant with a complaint.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person is glad they got caught

Another person shares how the store they worked at modified the rules because of situations like this.

One person explains who the thieves target.

This is good advice.

She handled that really well. The thief clearly didn’t expect to get caught. I wonder if the money he paid with was from doing the same scam at another store earlier that day.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a thrift store employee who refused to play “guess the price” without seeing the item in question.