I work as a waitress in a bar/resturant, and earlier this week, a few folks attempted to scam me three times in a remarkably inept way... Two young men and a woman were seated in my section, and when i went to greet them, they asked for a pitcher of beer. So, naturally i asked for ID's. Only the woman was able to produce one, and the men started hassling me about carding them, "Come on! You know how it is! Your boss won't know!" and so forth. When I refused to let it slide, the one woman said she would like a pitcher all to herself. Seeing their obvious ploy, i invented a house rule that we couldn't serve pitchers to just one person. She said that was fine and to bring her a pint. One of the fellows asks about our juke box, and i tell him i'm not sure if it is working, but if he puts in a quarter, and the song doesn't play, i'll refund his quarter. "fine" he says. ok. this is when it gets wierd...when i bring the pint, she asks me for some hot tea. I leave the beer, and when i remind them that only she may drink it i get a round of "we swear to god's". one of the fellows says "i put a dollar in the juke box, and it didn't work." so i give him a dollar, and go to get the tea. Yet when i bring the tea just a minute later, the beer is gone, and she imediately asks for another pint, and another hot tea. at this point i notice that she is about 8 months pregnant! (i hadn't noticed before because she was sitting very close to the table.) So i indignantly refuse saying to her "Either these guys are drinking the beer, and shouldn't be, or you're drinking it and shouldn't be!" Then the guys say the juke box took another dollar from them! To which I of course reply that they already knew it was broken, and refeused to refund the alleged dollar. At this point i start to worry about them jumping out on the check, so i bring it to them way early, while they are still eating, claiming that i was going on a break and needed to settle them out. I run the woman's card, and bring them the reciept to sign, which they ignore. when they get up to leave, having still not signed, i went and gently reminded them and stood by them until they did. So they head downstairs to leave. As a capper to this fun evening, when i went to settle the check i noticed they had "accidentally" made a math error on the credit card reciept. Though they had written in a 5$ tip, they added it up to what worked out to a 2$ tip. i noticed the woman had not yet made it out the door so i ran up to her and asked her what she meant to put on the receipt. of course she changed it to the 2$...
maybe work isn't too strange, but it sure is irritating!