Ever been accused of something you did not do ?
 

I ran into a guy this morning. The last time we interacted, was not pleasant.
This was in the late 90's when my business was larger, with employees.
Guy came in for a transmission fluid change on his 90's 626. We were busy, and all of our lifts were full. I did the job myself, on the floor, which ended up being a pain because, you used to have to drop the frame bracing a little bit to get the pan out, and a few of his bolts snapped off, so I had to drill, tap,an d replace them.
Long story short , the job ate my lunch for $59.99 or whatever we charged at that time .
He picks up his car, pays, and returns the next morning accusing me of not doing the job. He is convinced that I wiped his pan clean, wrote him a bill, and sent him down the road.
I offer to lift his car, and show him my work, in which I did, I explained, that I did this one myself, so I know , 100 %, that it was done. I showed him the new bolts that I rad replaced, and showed him the clean gasket under the pan.
He demanded to see the old parts, but I had emptied the garbage in the morning, and did not have the filter handy. He said " oh , isn't that convienent " So , I walked down the street, dumpster dived, and returned with his old filter, and gasket.
He then wanted to know how he could be so sure that I did not pull, just any random oil filter out of the trash, and tell him it was his .
Im pretty sure I lost my cool, at this point, gave him the parts in a box, and showed him the door
I've had a few others in my life. Late teens, My boss was sure I was breaking in to the Mitsubishi dealer lot at night and stealing car stereos,and wheels and tires . A few months after I quit that ****ty job, I saw in the paper, that , the lot boy, ( boss's nephew ) got caught red handed with quite a bit of stuff he had pirated from the place after hours .
I remember it being infuriating sitting there defending myself.

Got any stories ?

Got my driver's license....finally. 16 years old? Took my Mom's '69 Cutlass S out for a spin....there's a place on US 1 where the RR tracks crossed and you had to get it up to speed a little to help the car go over the tracks a little more smoothly. Not super fast - maybe 5-10 over limit. Cop pulled me over and when asked why I was speeding I told him. He didn't believe me. Never forgot what a doosh that cop was and how much it sucked when someone basically called you a liar.

I have a funny one.
When I was a kid, around 12 or so, we'd all modify our BMX bikes. I had just painted some parts on mine, with red spray paint.
We were building jumps etc on some dirt lot when cops pulled up.
They pointed to some graffiti on the wall, and asked if we did it.
We did not, of course, and told them so.
Since we had nothing to do with it, I wasn't worried about it.
Until the cop asked why the red spray paint on my hands matched the color of the graffiti!
He did have a point there! Caught "red handed!"
They didn't question us too hard though. I think they were pretty sure some 10-12 year old kids didn't even know what the hard core Mexican gang graffiti even meant.
Plus, the paint on my hands did match the fresh paint on my bike.

It's the things I got away with that make life worth living.

Yeah.

I've used most of them as life lessons on how to avoid those situations in the future.

One of them was actually a discrimination accusation.

Female staffer had been talked into claiming the reason she had not been promoted further was because she was a woman. The guy who talked her into it was one of the Sr guys on my staff who wanted my job. I did not hire the guy, inherited him after an acquisition and his group got folded into one of the business units I ran.

HR calls me on the last Friday of my paternity leave telling me "don't go to your office Monday, come straight to HR, there's a problem but don't worry, we have the lawyers handling it already" :confused::confused::confused::eek::eek::eek:

Told them they needed to tell me what was going on, they can't call me on a Friday and leave me hanging all weekend.

So they told me and when I heard it I laughed at the ridiculousness of it as I'd fought tooth and nail with HR for years over this persons advancement. They said a similar thing, they knew it was bull**** because we'd argued so often over doing the right thing by her.

By Monday morning she'd apparently realized she'd been played and went to HR to recant and spilled the beans on who put her up to it.

Needless to say we were having a company wide "thinning of the herd' coming up and normally it was up to me who got cut in my groups.

HR called up and said "you get to sit this one out, we've got your list for you already"

They did that so no one could accuse me of getting revenge.

Vividly remember a couple of times when I was very young.

Once a neighbor girl had a cousin visiting my same age. That cousin accused me of choking her. She had even somehow made her neck red. I got punished and I never even touched her.

Another time a coworker of my Dad's came to visit but make their kids my age stay in their Van. I went out to visit. The youngest of them, a 3 year old came across the van and kicked me in the stomach. Their Dad ran out and spanked me with his belt for mistreating his child.

Taught me at a very young age to never trust authority.

Recently was accused of sexual harassment. Was discussing a medical procedure with the HR person than handles our health insurance claims. Part of the procedure was getting a skin graft. Told her I thought it was interesting I had to sign a form because skin grafts were made from foreskin. She claimed I said they filled the hole with dead baby penises. As far as I am concerned both her and the HR Director that wrote me up to be fired for sexual harassment should both be out on their arses.

Here's one that at least ended well...

My wife went out of town for a short week. Several days after she returned she went to do the laundry and she found some ladies underwear in the hamper. And they were most definitely not hers.

Now I've been married 30 years this coming February. I am by no mean perfect - I've got just as many (if not more) flaws than the next guy. HOWEVER, I have never cheated on my wife in any way. It might be the only thing I've ever been perfect about, but in the area of fidelity I have never slipped! And I know my wife both knows this, and doesn't particularly worry about it.

But...
But...

She called and asked me about them, and as she said "I do trust you, but how can I not make this call? What would any other woman do? What would you tell our daughters to do?" The problem was I had absolutely NO explanation as to where they had come from. None. Zero. Zip.

And then... I got pissed. Cuz I knew I had nothing to do with them. And I let her know I was pissed - which, as it turned out, was not the right thing to do.

I wondered if someone was playing a practical joke, but my brother and my jokester buddy had not been in my home in a month.

And let me repeat - I had been home alone as my wife had been gone nearly a week before she found them.

Then I wondered if someone was trying to get me in trouble. Mind you, I have no trouble finding trouble on my own, but still I went to that place in my head. I decided that was delusional.

Neither of our daughters had been home in months, so that couldn't be it.

It wasn't a joke and it wasn't someone trying to get me in trouble.

And then I thought of it!

My wife and I met our 25yo daughter in New Orleans for a family reunion a week before my wife left town. We rented an awesome 150 year old house in the Garden District. It was cool in every way but one - only one bath room. I love my daughter, but she can sometimes be a little messy and leave her clothes about. I figured I must have scooped up my clothes and some of hers after a shower one morning. And upon my return home I just my laundry bag in the hamper, none the wiser.

Wife called daughter; daughter confirmed ownership. Tragedy narrowly averted!

Phew.

If she'd have not admitted they were hers, I don't know where that would have gone....

yup.

by my mom. she accused me of pawning something.

i found it years later and showed it to her..she said she did not accuse me.

great parenting 101.. maybe why i dont have kids of my own.

I'm sure I've been accused unfairly, and I bet it evens out with things I probably got away with.

Life is funny that way.

The current gf accused me of fooling around with my ex. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, but didn't.

I was a small child. Maybe 6? I went with to the grocery store that had been owned by my Grandfather before he sold it and changed careers.

I had a quarter in my pocket and shopped and reviewed the various candy selections offered. In the end, I walked out without buying (I was a tight wad even back then!).

The new owner accused me of stealing and demanded that I empty my pockets. I was terrified and did so. She let me go but didn't apologize or make any attempt to repair things.

I cried all the way back to my Grandparents home and explained to my Grandmother what happened. She picked up the phone and reamed the store owner a good one.

Thanks Grandma! It is good to have someone on your side.

Yup. In my teens some girls banded together at our place of employment and accused me of sexual harassment. Management knew it wasn't true, and when they investigated further they found the girls didn't like the way I looked so they wanted me fired. Same thing happened again a number of years later (at a different employer) when I was in my early 20's. This time they admitted to not wanting to look at a "freaky looking" guy and figured it would be best if I didn't work there anymore.

At least I had the last laugh as they were the ones fired.

My wife accused me of farting in a movie theater once. This was after the shower incident. I said "b.s., nothing rolled down my pant leg and under the seat". Case closed.

Early this year. 1998 Chrysler Concord. Car had a fistful of wires fused under the passenger seat. Holes in floor pan.

I could not diagnose. Farmed it out to a local indy shop better at this sort of thing. Needed an ECU and another separate module on top of plus or minus thirty wires that needed mending.

Well they got a used ECU that held the odo mileage...... from the donor. 220k vs 90k original.

As I was assisting her shuttle from indy shop to rental car place that she rented a car from in the 10 days plus without the Chrysler, she called me from her cell phone, I can see her in my rear view mirror - I was driving the rental.

Screams, "I gave this car to you with 90k miles now it has 220k miles. Where the eff have you been driving my car?"

70 year old woman. Pretty feisty.

That was the termination of our commercial relationship.

Was working at a summer job at a summer camp in the mountains during college. The owner (a woman) and her henchwomen came up to me one morning and said I had turned the Olympic sized pool water blood red. I was totally surprised and told her to look elsewhere. Finally later in the day I found out one of the younger kids had poured a bunch of red food coloring into the pool. I took some bleach out and added it to the water & cleared out the red color from the food coloring and told her the water was clear. Never got an apology from her over that.

In school: Was in study hall, at the desk of the supervisor
The fire alarm went off
we all had to get out

on my way down the stairs, I, being a delinquent at the time pushed in every fire alarm that crossed my path. The alarm kept going for another hour or 2 since nobody knew where the key of the control box was.

The next day i was called in front of the super and the principal.. And they accused me of turning on the fire alarm.
WHICH WAS A TOTAL LIE.
The super was an idiot.. Litterally stood right in front of him the exact second it had started.

He then went on to say he saw me push in the alarm thingies.
"So i know it was you".



Obviously I stuck to my story the entire time. Cause technically, I did not start the fire alarm.
I just pushed in the little thingies.

Major difference.

Oh yeah, I got 2 weeks of detension for that one..
So what did they do? they locked me up in the room next to the principals office.
Which happened to be the room where the computer was stored where they kept a little DBASE IV Clipper DB with grades and other crap.

Now I wouldn't call myself a hacker of any sort at this moment, but back then any fool and his grannie could get in a Dbase IV DB via the indexes. They never figured it out.

Then another time I got to do punishment for getting out after class and running to the candy store.
But, this was 2nd trimester.. And I had been in boarding school first trimester. And I knew the boarding rules said you can't do that.

But in 2nd I was no longer on boarding (There had been some threats of starting a fire if they kept me there , was 13 and big divorce at home, they had put me there for convenience,bad times)

The key was they never had given me the rule book for the externs that come to school and go home each day.
So technically I had broken a rule they never told me about. In which case it was a crime I could not wilfully commit.

The entire 2nd trimester went down the drain over them doubling the punishment and me refusing to do it on grounds of their forgetfulnes to proactively inform me of the rules for externs.

It was all downhill from there on :D

I get accused of being egotistical.

I was accused of beating up a kid on the school bus. The kid, his parents, the principle, were all surprised when my parents walked into the meeting with me in tow. The kid said, "No, not him. I've never seen him on my bus "

Getting skull dragged by a brigade CSM that didn't believe the video of his nco beating the **** out of me...
Co commander turning his back, saying he aint ****ing with that...

I was at a VW dealer auction (bankruptcy, old, dirty, roof leaked, run down building) and there was this Super beetle with low miles, 12K IIRC. They had tried to start it, first time in 20+ years and it blew out the cooler seals. I had bid on it, but quit when it went for crazy money. First mistake was I gave the winner my business card.

So he sent it to me to get running, turns out it wasn't a great deal, it was inside but must have been sitting in water. The oil had turned to mud, oil control valves stuck, so I had to take the engine right apart, carb kit, all hoses, clean the tank, seat covers were perfect but the pads were dry rotted, the list was huge.
In all about $4K in work. I felt sorry for the guy and took it easy on the bill, should have charged at least $500 more.

The guy had already been hosed on the sale price, now he's accusing me of hosing him. Then he accused me of stealing the OG tires, like WTF do I want with dry rotted tires???
Threatened to take me small claims, I had documented everything, pic's, bills, etc., so I said go ahead. He got a lawyer to write me a letter, gave the lawyer the same reply.
That was the end of it, but it left a bad taste.

When I was ~10-12 I was hit by a car riding my bike. Shirtless guy jumps out of the car yelling about how I smashed his door or whatever. Luckily I wasnt hurt and the bike had minimal damage. Guy come to my house to talk to my folks and his story changed. Now the woman was driving and I ran a stop sign.

I was accused of sexually harassing a woman at work. At the time I had a boss who listened to me and he backed me up.
Had he not done that I believe I would have been sacked before the truth came out.

HR got involved and so it became really messy. Then out of the blue another woman came forward and said she witnessed the incident and said I had done nothing wrong. She also said that the woman who accused me had made fun of my hearing loss to the other women in the office. She said "He's the perfect lover because he's as deaf as a post so he keeps his mouth shut". She said this even though I'd never laid a hand on her. :confused:

This all happened more than 16 years ago!

My first job, well, besides paper routes, real job, was a roller skate shop. Rental skates, and stuff for sale. A few months in, I get a call from one of the owners, asking if there are any rentals on credit cards that day. I tell him I don't think so, but would be happy to check. No big deal he says.

A few days later, he shows up when I am starting my shift, opening the shop. He tells me about money being missing, and when he called I told him there were no credit card rentals, and there was one that day, not what actually was said. He hems and haws a little before I tumble to the fact he has me sized up as a crook. I am pretty pissed, only time anyone called me a thief. I quit, and tell him he still has a problem, because I have not been stealing. I am walking out as my friend and co worker is walking in, we spoke briefly, and I left.

I told my friend what had happened the next time we spoke, he told me what was going on. People would rent the skates, and have to put a deposit on a credit card for the price of the skates, shop wanted them to come back. The rental per hour was pretty cheap, people would often pay with cash. You give them back the impression you had of their credit card, because in the olden days, you would run it through a gadget that did an impression of your card with a carbon copy. You destroy the shop's carbon copy of the credit card receipt, which was never a transaction, because they returned the skates. You ring up no sale on the register when you are making change for the rental fee, and put the money in your pocket. He also showed me that they kept the inventory on a chalkboard, so if you had a piece of chalk, you could have a piece of skates for free.

I was the only guy not stealing, the shop did not stay open too long

20 odd years ago I had a part time job in a car audio shop. (I mainly did the OEM Swap outs for new cars)

Almost everybody from the accountant doing the books to the cleaners were stealing!
They used to stock Soundstream products! Back then they were US made and very expensive. That was the first stuff to go missing.

Dumass me was one of the few that wasn't stealing.

It was so bad the guy that owned the shop locked the doors and just walked away in despair. He ended up losing the lot! Shortly after that his wife walked out on him.

About a year ago, I got a very angry letter from a patient. No name signed at the bottom, so I had no idea who was the author. But the guy dropped plenty of f-bombs, and included a drawing of erect male genitalia.

Wow, that's weird. But I didn't have the foggiest who it might be.

So I asked the office staff if we had any recently disgruntled patients. They had to think about it for awhile, but then they realized that we did have one, but that it belonged to my boss. While I was away on vacation two weeks earlier, they had scheduled a new patient for my boss. But my boss was in an emergency surgery one day (so patient got rescheduled after waiting for an hour), and then on the make-up date, the patient somehow got stood up again.

Not sure how, but the patient must have mixed up my boss' name and mine (admittedly both our last names start with the same letter), and directly his ire (and cartooning prowess) towards me!

So I got in trouble for not seeing a patient while I wasn't even in town.

We moved alot when I was a kid. Things settled down when I started high school but then, sure enough, halfway through my Junior year - another move. Another town, another school.

Our family was always pretty poor. Nobody went to school barefoot (at least not by that time) but if you wanted NICE clothes - you needed a job. Otherwise, you wore the same 2 outfits on alternating days. Point I'm making is that it was pretty obvious to the kids at the new school that they were WAY better off financially than our family and with the typical group-think of adolescents, we were target central. Now we had moved alot of times so this was something I knew that I could just ride out.

Until a family member broke into a teacher's house and lifted a bunch of petty items. The victim was my science teacher who decided to announce in class that even though my relative was a thief, he knew that I was not and he expected everyone else to understand that... OK, I know why he did it but damn, did it make my life a living hell...

From that moment on, I was branded as dirt. Anyone could accuse me of stealing and I would get drug out of class for a locker search. The searches always came just before lunch time so that everyone could see two adults searching my locker. The students that made accusations without going to the principal found themselves in a fist fight. Probably got into 5 or 6 scraps before that quit. It quit because by that time, I was willing to pound any and all skulls into the dirt. Turns out it's not real fun to gang up on one person when that one person leaves your little posse of hate bleeding.

I got invited to a party one weekend. I thought maybe everyone was letting me have a chance. I should have known better. The party was pretty quiet, a few beers and some movies, I left around 9pm. Next morning, the kids who put on the party were at our front door with the Sheriff. They accused me of stealing $20,000 in cash from their house. My parents weren't home, I handled this myself. Pretty bluntly asked "where on earth did YOU get $20,000?" ... etc. The sheriff started questioning them and the story fell apart. He had them get back in their car and apologized to me - he also warned me that anyone can make an accusation and that I should always be careful that my behavior was beyond approach. That it would be my character that would win out in the end.

Then a student volunteer was allowed into my personal records at the school which detailed out things like my mother was single, family divorces, etc., and told everyone at school.

That was the last straw. I gathered all my information (times, dates, # of locker searches, etc) and made an appointment with the superintendent. He reviewed it, pulled the adults including the principal in the office into HIS office and all that stopped.

Lot of hard life lessons for a 17 year old kid. I think most people would have dropped out of school. I doubled down and graduated about 6 months early just to get away and start my own life.

angela

Angela, you are a pretty tough chick, in every way possible. That adversity has made you the woman you are now. I have never met you face to face, but am quite certain you are a person I like and respect.

Nah..... most of the time I did do it..........

No where near as hard as your past, but mine was somewhat similar. Divorced parents, bad grades in school, black sheep sort of thing - parents tried to ship me off to a "reform" type school - all because I didn't fit their blue- blood image of college material...all because I didn't conform... blah blah blah...
I got blamed for all sorts of stuff as a kid. Easy mark. My brother and sisters were all model students while I was the "screw up". Little did they know or realize I was building solid skills learning how to work on cars, engines, houses, welding, metal work and so on - all skills I use everyday now.
Fast forward to now and 2 of my sisters have broken marriages & underperforming nephews...while my wife and I have a valuable house nearly paid for, cars paid for, retirement accounts and overall a good life - all of which I've done without a college degree...

don't ever be on the accused in of a complaint with the police involved. no such thing as innocent until proven guilt.

we keep our dogs in at night mainly because they will wake me up barking. one night we could not get one back in so we left her out until she barked, woke my wife up, and she let the dog in.

our Ahole neighbor called the cops and said we leave our dog out EVERY NIGHT and it barks ALL night long.
cop showed up and I admitted the dog was out until about 1am because we could not get her back in. basically the cop did not believe ME and threatened a ticket if it happened again.
tried to tell him the B%&%tch lied to HIM.
later when I talked to him again he admitted he could not write me a ticket because HE did not hear the dog barking.

was accused of leaving work early one time.

was also accused of leaving early and not telling the boss I was coming in early to do work before air traffic operations started. I did leave early but came in early. still did my 8 for 8.
always get it in writing...

I got called on the carpet when I was an apprentice for calling a temp coworker a bastard. I in fact called him a Rat Bastard, which isn't the same thing, so I denied it. None of the half dozen peers present heard anything when interviewed & the Rat Bastard got laid off a month later.

Back in my yoot I was working on a crew that was overhauling a wind tunnel.
About three months after that job was completed, I heard co-workers talking and found out that there was an oil leak and it cost lots of additional $$$$ to take apart and fix and clan up all the oil in the tunnel, and the bosses were pissed.
I also found out that I was being blamed for leaving a drain plug out causing the leak.

I went to the main office and reminded them that I was on the crew that disassembled the wind tunnel, but when the clutch was sent to the shop for overhaul (6 weeks) I was re-assigned to another job 20 miles away and had no further involvement in the wind tunnel job.

Years later the guy responsible for the "mistake" started his own company and tried to get me to let him bid on some work.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1512490631.jpg

I think you misunderstood the subject of the thread.

Is that what Clinton went by when he said I did not have sex with that woman

that's the norm, blame it on the guy not here, in our case its the last one to leave, as in goto another job.

Sophomores in high school we did a 3 night backpack trip into the local mountains. Many of the boys brought alcohol (southern comfort). At some point a bunch went missing and they all thought I drank it. I had none - but welcomed the thoughts that I was "cool" enough to drink it. At least one in the group knew the truth, perhaps all of them, and I looked like a joke. :)

He was right.