Sometimes the limiting atmosphere of the workplace can weigh down on a person. Having to follow certain guidelines and policies can result in frustrating inconvenience and debilitation of the human spirit. If only there was a way to work around these rules... Apparently, such cheats exist. The following stories come from employees who took advantage of loopholes they discovered at their jobs and shared the experience on Reddit. How about taking five and seeing what you can learn from? Content has been edited for clarity.
Every Cashier’s Worst Nightmare
“I used to work at a CVS. We had a promotion for a type of $2 shampoo. When you bought it, you would get $2 in ‘extra bucks.’ Basically, the shampoo was a wash, but I think we had a whole lot of it and needed to get rid of it. It wasn’t anything too special anyway.
I watched in horror from the photo area as two strange women, who appeared to be gypsies or some equivalent to that, stocked an entire shopping cart with every bottle of shampoo we had. They, then, demanded the shampoo be rung-up in individual transactions so that each bottle they bought earned them the $2 to pay for the next bottle. It was mayhem. They must have bought 50 bottles of shampoo for nothing, save for the $2 initial investment and having walked away with $2 in ‘extra bucks.’
My local managers learned their lesson for sure.”
Sounds Like A Good Reason To Sign Up For Yoga
“A company I worked for that I will call ‘Prestige Worldwide’ would offer $800 in ‘physical fitness’ reimbursement.
Each year I would sign up for around $800 worth of yoga classes that could be refunded if cancelled by a certain date. I would then submit the receipts to Prestige Worldwide, receive $800, and then cancel the yoga classes and get my money back.”
An Inventive Method Of Contract Negotiation
“When I started work at my new job, they e-mailed me a contract to sign. The employee would sign it and return it to your new boss, he would sign it, and then it got filed.
The contract was a PDF, but I converted it to Word so that I could modify one of the lines to ‘at the termination of employment, the employee must return all company property and be handed a lemon meringue pie for each month of employment.’ The new boss signed it without looking at it too closely and it has now been filed.
I have been working here for approximately 80 lemon meringue pies now, but it has been a while and I am starting to wonder if I really pulled it off or if I just thought about it without actually doing it. I can’t ask to see my employment contract without arousing suspicion.”
Invalidated Parking
“Several years ago in a relatively large city, parking at my old work’s lot was a little over $1,000 a year. However, night passes cost $40 for the year. A night pass would allow you to scan in or out after 4:30 pm and before 7 am. There were also visitor spots for which you would take a ticket at the gate on the way in and pay it on the way out.
For about a year, I took a visitor’s ticket on my way in and scanned out with my night pass after 4:30 pm. Eventually, parking enforcement caught on. I imagine it was because many people were doing this and they were not making any money off of visitor parking despite the lot being full every day.
They ended up installing scanners that could differentiate from in and out. If you used your pass to scan out without having scanned in, your pass would get confiscated. It was good while it lasted though!”
Going “Buck” Wild At Best Buy
“I was working maintenance at McDonald’s when they had a Best Buy bucks promotion. Large sodas and large fries had scratch off pieces that were worth at least $1 at Best Buy. I would go through the trash daily, pulling out all the discarded scratch offs.
I got a free computer that year for Christmas. I also had the poor cashier at Best Buy in tears. She had to manually scan each scratch off and verify the dollar amount.”
He Put Typical Employee Discounts To Shame
“I’m not sure if they do this anymore but, many years ago, while I was an employee at HomeGoods, the store had this promotion in which employees could get these scratch-off cards that reduced the cost of an item by $1, $5, or $20 each time they found a price sticker on the floor. Each card had three scratch-off areas. The catch was that you could only scratch off one.
However, if you used a lamp, you could see the value of each scratch-off area, meaning that you could very easily rack up a $20 gift card for every sticker you found on the floor. The idea was that if employees collected these fallen stickers, regular, nefarious shoppers could not stick them on something of far greater value and check out at that price.
There were no rules on how many an employee could have or combine, so I did what any college kid would do with this sticker policy.