Scams you have seen or done

[fastfredracing]

Originally Posted by porsche tech

I still feel bad about doing this to this day: the guy next to me had just finished overhauling his first 911 motor all the way to splitting the case. After checking everything over, he got in the car to start it. At the exact right moment when he cranked it, I slung the metal lid off a can of hand cleaner into the metal parts sink between our bays. A loud clanging noise at the exact right time sent him scrambling to the back of the car looking underneath it. I still confess it as sin daily. We both laughed (and are still friends) but I'm a jerk.

They got me with this in the shop also . I was young, and a new hire at a vw dealer. They had me put a crank kit in a Blazer that was on the used car lot . Every time I would fire the motor, dude was sitting behind me , and would rap on the tailpipe with a wrench .
I was clearly panicked and upset, being a new hire, and wanting to make a name for myself there.
His laughter from behind the bumper finally gave him away .

[masraum]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

They got me with this in the shop also . I was young, and a new hire at a vw dealer. They had me put a crank kit in a Blazer that was on the used car lot . Every time I would fire the motor, dude was sitting behind me , and would rap on the tailpipe with a wrench .
I was clearly panicked and upset, being a new hire, and wanting to make a name for myself there.
His laughter from behind the bumper finally gave him away .

A buddy sent me this the other day. Hilarious (assuming it's not done to you)

[Robert Coats]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

Maybe not. The movie Pete and Tilly (1972) had Walter Matthau and a youngster doing that to their neighbors Beetle. It's a great prank and probably old as the earth especially if there were gas mileage blow-hards in the way back.

It was a story line in an episode of 'Gomer Pyle, USMC' too:

Season 5 (1968–69)
No. Title Directed by Written by Original air date
121 "Car for Sale" John Rich Rick Mittleman September 27, 1968
Sergeant Hacker (Allan Melvin) plays a practical joke on Carter to make him think his car gets first incredible, then terrible, gas mileage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxvlRe_I4p8

[Robert Coats]

The microwave one reminded me of this gem....

I worked as a tech writer in a building full of engineers. Our breakroom had a commercial microwave, with preset cooktimes assigned to a 1-10 keypad. You could not key in a time, but only press a button and figure out how long that one cooked.

One day, I noticed a very professional-looking hand-lettered sticker with the line "Use 7 for popcorn." Huh. That's pretty clever and helpful. A few days later and somebody had added a sticky note with red Sharpie letters, "Use 8 for burnt popcorn."

[Sooner or later]

Where do I start?

Worked with a goat roper at a grocery store. His name was Maurice, honest. He was a constant Skoal dipper and occasionally I would bum a dip. One day he offered me the can for a dip and he was immediately called up to check. I took the can, dumped out all the Skoal, filled it with potting soil , and added a small layer of Skoal to make it look proper.

At the end of shift I gave him the can back and he opened it up and took out his normal huge dip and stuffed it in. He sucked on it for a minute or so before he realized something was up. He spit that chit out and wanted to kill me. He said it was the "crunch" that gave it away.

I got Maurice on another prank. We had a package of douche that had broken open. Couldn't sell it. The individual "doses " were in small plastic tubes that looked like small freezer pops. Blue in color. I stuck em in the freezer. When Maurice came in to work I pulled one out of the freezer and told him the popsicle vendor had left these samples of blue coconut. He took one, punched the time clock and went up to check. The dumb sob started checking out a lady while chewing on the thick plastic to get to the goods. I was in the backroom watching him through the holes in the aluminum backroom door. It was dying laughing. Once he broke through he charged out of the check stand and came looking for my sorry azz.

One last one.

Camping in Yellowstone. Me, Terry, and Bobby. Our campsite was at the very back of the camping area and had a dark, ominous canyon that led into the wilderness. Bobby, not much of an outdoor type, was concerned about the ability of a Griz to make it into camp. The other two of us told him he was a puss and should man up.

When Bobby was paying a visit to the outhouse, quite a distance from our site, the two up us set up some cans at the back of tent, attached a string that ended right next to our campfire, and then buried string under a little dirt.

That night we were around the campfire smoking a fat one. I pulled on the string and the cans rattled. Bobby startled while Terry and I acted like nothing had happened.

Bobby: "Did you hear that?"
Us:"What?
Bobby: "That noise!"
Us: "Dude, you're hearing things"

I let him settle down for a couple of minutes and really pulled on the string and the cans raised some hell.
Bobby: "There it is again!!!!"
Me: "I heard it that time! I'll check it out!"

I eased over to the back of the tent, stopped in my tracks, and slowly started backing up.
Me, softly " It's a f'n GRIZZLY!!!!!!"

Bobby took off like he was shot out of a cannon. Terry and I laughed till our stomachs hurt

[MRM]

I put myself through school selling 49% shares in horse racing syndicates. I made enough to buy my first Porsche as a college sophomore. Then the stupid nag won a race. It was years before it was safe enough for me to go back and finish school. Not sure what ever happened to the jockey.

[Rick Lee]

Wasn't a prank, but a former boss, when I was a landscaper right after college, always had guns all over the place. He had three work trucks, two houses, storage spaces and a few personal cars. I was always running errands for him between his properties and using all his vehicles, and the grab guns were just everywhere. I had a CCW then, so I was covered. One day he had a work truck parked in a steep driveway at his GF's house and I had to use that truck that day. He had a deer carcass hung in front of the front door when I knocked to get the keys to the truck. When I opened the tailgate (it had a Gem top on it), the deer's head came tumbling downhill at me. When I got in the cab, he had a lever action rifle behind the seats. Later on that day I had to meet him at his place. He had an Uzi pistol sitting on the kitchen table. Knowing I was a gun guy and would immediately inspect the gun. He put one of those spring-loaded cap gun cap booby traps under the Uzi. When I went to pick it up, it went BANG! Scared the hell of me and I fumbled to keep from dropping the gun before I could clear it. He laughed his ass off. He taught meat cutting at the local vo-tech school at night. On the way to work one day, he came across an injured deer in the middle of the road with a cop directing traffic. He got out and asked the cop why he didn't put it out its misery, cop said he wasn't allowed to use his gun for that. So my boss told him where he was going and asked if he could do it. Cop said no problem. Boss shot the deer in the head, loaded it into the truck and went to class. That was a crazy job.

[1990C4S]

When I just started work you could still smoke in the office. One guy had a pipe and kept a drum of tobacco.

A co-worker cut up elastic bands and mixed them in with the pipe tobacco.

[legion]

Had an art-major roommate in college that was extremely self-centered. He slept until noon each day and had classes in the afternoon and evenings. He'd be up until a few hours before I got up for work at 6 am. He'd eat dinner between midnight and 1 am--when the other three roommates were fast asleep.

When he'd cook his dinner, he'd slam cabinet doors and loudly bang pots and pans. He had no sense (or care) that he was waking up his roommates every night. We asked repeatedly for him to be a little quieter. He simply didn't think of others enough to pay it any attention.

So one night we taped a bunch of snap caps inside each cabinet door. The first cabinet he slammed resulted in a surprising explosion.

He put some effort into being quieter for a few days, but soon slipped back into his old habits. After that, we developed a system: the person he woke up in the middle of the night got the honor of opening his door and sounding an air horn the next morning. It only took two times and we never had a problem again.

[JackDidley]

Back in the 70s I worked with a guy that was always behind on his bills. He worked all the overtime he could and was still broke. One April 1st morning the plant manager paged me to his office to ask me about production. After the meeting the broke guy asked me why I was in the office. I said I just got a nice raise. Then I got everyone in on it. Everyone was whispering about the raise they got. He was excited waiting to get his. Finally near the end of the day I said April fools !! Thought he was going to cry.

[Bill Douglas]

Back when I was a teen I'd heard a New Zealand 1 cent coin was the same size as a dime, so I brought a large bag of coins with me to the US. Coke for 5 cents seemed like a good deal to me. Plus it made pay phone calls a lot cheaper too.

I used to use a launderette and the wash was a token that cost five dollars. I was bored at work one day so I phoned a vending machine supply store and they sold me a large bag of tokens for no much more than $5 LOL

As a kid at the fair grounds my friend Micheal and I pretended to work on one of the rides and collected about 30 tickets from the other kids in the queue. So we got about 30 rides on the other fairground rides for free.

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by JackDidley

Finally near the end of the day I said April fools !! Thought he was going to cry.

Haha, good stunt.

A holiday job I had in London was working as a waiter in a back packers hotel. Pay was low but accommodation and food was part of the package. there was a very serious Canadian girl I was always playing tricks on but my best one was to do with pay. We just got our pay and I said "Duh, 5 pounds an hour for the work we have to do - barely worth getting out of bed for that sort of money." She said "WHAT! I only get 3 pounds an hour." I said "Yes, but I've been to university so I'm worth more than you are." Woooo, she stormed into the boss's office and gave him a real earful.

[Bill Douglas]

When I was a young school boy there was a leather jacket I liked for about $500. I saw the same jacket for $300 in another store. I said to the lady in the first store "If I buy it and my mother doesn't like it can I return it for a full refund?" She of course said "Yes Dear, no problem."

So a few days later I bought the $300 jacket and returned it to the other store for a $200 profit.

This was back in the day before printed recites etc.

[mattdavis11]

Texas vs. Oklahoma, Cotton Bowl, Dallas Texas 2007? Year doesn't matter, we had gone to plenty of the games in the past. This particular year, we didn't have very good free seats.

We didn't much care to watch the game, although it was a good one, we just wanted to catch up as we hadn't seen each other many times since he got married.

We headed to the pavilion at the end of the 1st quarter. At the time, there was no beer sold at the concession stands inside the stadium, NCAA rules. However, you could leave, walk 40 yards, and there were huge pavilions with all the provisions. Food, beer, cotton candy, etc...

To purchase anything, you had to buy coupons first, State Fair operated, no cash transactions, except to purchase coupons.

After the first round, we got smart. We both bought a bunch of coupons. When half time of the football game came, the coupon lines naturally became packed, and we were sitting at a table, where we could watch the game on TV, and were also close to the coupon lines.

We got hammered and made a profit that day.

In high school, same buddy, we would camp out (at different locations, 1st in line to buy) for a couple of hours to buy our allotment of concert tickets. We never sold them on premises or at the show, we bought them, went home, called the ticket agencies, and sold to the highest offer. Took about 4 hours, at most. We always had money to burn, and would laugh at our buddies that sacked groceries for $5.75 an hr all day. Some joined in later, but they didn't have the capital to buy $700-800 worth of tickets, so we would pay them $50-75 to buy for us.

One morning the two of us walked away with $250 a piece. Metallica, 4th row, brings good money for a high school kid.

[legion]

Originally Posted by Bill Douglas

When I was a young school boy there was a leather jacket I liked for about $500. I saw the same jacket for $300 in another store. I said to the lady in the first store "If I buy it and my mother doesn't like it can I return it for a full refund?" She of course said "Yes Dear, no problem."

So a few days later I bought the $300 jacket and returned it to the other store for a $200 profit.

This was back in the day before printed recites etc.

I have a friend we call ScamAndy. He trades in rare and valuable video games. In the course of his trade, he ends up with large volumes of low-value games.

A few years ago, Best Buy had a special where they would buy back old games for $10 a piece for store credit. The purpose of the promotion was to get kids to trade in towards a new game system. He read the fine print, there was no limit to what he could trade in!

First he set aside every game in his inventory that was worth less than $10. Then he found that WalMart was liquidating old video games for $5. He bought out the entire inventory of $5 games at several WalMarts. Then he took it all to Best Buy.

In the end, he had enough store credit to buy a new refrigerator, range, washer, dryer, and a nice Dyson vacuum.

Three months later, he got a letter from Best Buy banning him from their stores for life for abusing their buyback program. He felt that was a little unfair as he hadn't broken any rules. He felt that they could have simply put some upper limit on the number of games they'd take in trade like 10 or 20.

[GH85Carrera]

I finally remembered one!

At my old long time job at the photolab the employees were treated much like family. Usually 8 to 10 employees, and the owner was much of a father figure for most of us. We celebrated holidays and birthdays. On a birthday one received the card signed by everyone, and a cake we at at lunch.

One year on my birthday I saw the card getting signed and it was on the bosses desk. I slipped in, and put in a $50 bill. I made sure everyone was in the kitchen area and opened the envelope and let the $50 float to the floor. I just picked it up and put in my pocket real fast. The boss had to go to a meeting and was not there for the cake, but he got a piece saved for him.

Of course no one ever really got cash. It caused a lot of funny looks until I busted out laughing as I could not stand the tension. He was a great boss, but the paychecks were the only payments we ever got. Well, and all the cake, and donuts on every Friday morning, and lots of holiday food.

[rockfan4]

Mid 80's, and I'm at Road America. I was watching the Audi team work on their car, I don't remember if this was Trans-Am or IMSA GTO.

One of the crew guys tossed his coffee cup at the exhaust, so all the coffee went up the exhaust pipe. They fired up the car and of course it comes splashing back out, and he or another crew guy got all excited and started shouting and pointing at the exhaust. They shut the car off and then a bunch of them came over to look and there was a very heated conversation, all in German, I didn't understand a word of it.
But I did start laughing, and a couple of the crew started glaring at me, they weren't very happy, but the guy who tossed the coffee started laughing too. The joke was out, and I was safe.

[David]

I'm not much of a prankster but some of my co-workers are:

One co-worker would carefully cut open Christmas cards from vendors, slide in a $100 bill, then open it during a morning meeting so the bill would fall out in front of everyone.

We use a lot of epoxies at work and one product flows into a puddle if poured on a flat surface before it dries and then it's glossy black like used oil. My old prankster boss would carry this around and prank various girls, vendors, car salesman, and pretty much anyone else. He'd secretly throw it under the edge of the car by the engine and then point out the serious engine problem they must have.

We use liquid nitrogen at work to shrink fit metal parts together. One machinist told another relatively new machinist to be careful when shrinking parts because if you leave it in liquid nitrogen too long it'll shrink too much. While the new machinist was making his part, the other machinist was secretly making a 1/2 scale part. When the new machinist left the area with his part soaking in liquid nitrogen, the other machinist switched parts on him...

A co-worker found a baby opossum. He took one of his wife's old purses, put the opossum in the purse and left it in a shopping cart in a walmart parking lot. Then he sat in his car and waited. A minivan pulled up, someone jumped out, grabbed the purse, and the van took off. A few feet later the van came to a screeching halt and everyone bailed out!

Another co-worker, who was known for having a very short fuse, bought a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store and then realized he didn't have lighter. He went back in the store and grabbed a lighter by the register. The clerk told him he could have it for free so he was very thankful. He got in his truck, started driving down the road, went to light up a cigarette and got the heck shocked out of him. That free lighter was a shocking joke lighter! He said his first instinct was to go kick the clerk's as but then realized it was a pretty good joke so he let it go.

[302340]

There was a common joke used on new employees at a company I use to work at.

In the center of headquarters, was an empty hallway with a single door that no one ever used during the day. New employees were told that that door led to the large pool in the basement. Open swimming Tuesday and Thursday nights! Awesome! So, one new employee showed up in his swim trunks and gear, all set to go!

The door was for a small room where they kept accounting records. No basement. No pool.


Lee

[JackDidley]

This is a true scam. A guy I worked with came in one day fuming mad at his wife. He found out she had been shoplifting stuff from one Kmart and returning it to another and getting her money back. Not sure how long that went on but the marriage end soon after.