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Some customers think they can get away with silently scamming the store they stole from.

In this story, an employee entertained a customer who tried returning an expensive game without a receipt.

He noticed something suspicious, so he checked the store’s inventory system.

He discovered a strange history involving the exact item she brought in, so he called a manager to solve the confusion once and for all.

Read the full story below to find out more.

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.

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.

This employee looked up the item in their system.

She hands me a US$50 item. It was pretty expensive in those days.

It was something we carried and had our price tag on it.

So I looked it up in our computer, a 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.

He noticed that the item was never marked as sold.

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 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, it had been returned and stolen again.

The manager stepped in, and they banned the customer from the store.

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.

Me, I just enjoyed the show.

Sounds like a scammer trying to pull off a scheme she thought would work.

Good thing the inventory records told the entire story before the manager even confronted her.

OP was smart to let the manager handle the situation instead of getting dragged into an argument.

Let’s read the responses of other people to the story.

Yikes! Seriously though?

Here’s a similar experience.

It’s common for people to steal, says this one.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who decides to mute her boss’s number after he insists on calling her at home after hours.

Here’s another story.

Whoa! People have interesting stories.

Looks like the receipt wasn’t necessary because the inventory history remembered everything.