There are things that you've been doing the same way for as long as you can remember. Then suddenly, one day you realize there's a WAY better way to accomplish the same thing.
Here, people reveal the best ways they've seen someone "cheat the system".
Worth it.
My boss will often check the “Date Modified” on certain files on our server to see if I have updated or even opened a certain file recently. So, I have installed a changer utility that allows me to modify the “Date Modified” on any file. This comes most handy when my boss wants to give me weekend assignments. I just come in on Monday Morning and change the “Date Modified” to Saturday night and he thinks I was actually doing something for work on Saturday night! I’ve actually received a lot of kudos for this. I don’t feel bad though because my boss is a huge jerk.
In your face, Thomas!
My wife and I were at a super fancy restaurant in NYC. Reservations not allowed, expect to wait. We get there and are told we would be waiting about 2 hours. No problem we planned on this. Some guy right after us shook the reservation guys hand handing him $200. Next thing I know I hear “Table for 2 for Thomas.” Thomas being my name and I asked for a table of 2 I say that is me. They sit us and we order drinks and apps. 5 minutes later they say we are the wrong Thomas but we could stay since we had already ordered.
Guess who was the right Thomas? The guy who paid $200 to skip the line.
Slightly Impressive.
I work in a typical office building, but today I saw something interesting. My coworker #11 has been leaving around lunchtime to go to the gym. Except I had to get something out of my car and I saw her (in her workout clothes) eating out of a tub of fried chicken. I didn’t say anything but she walked back in 15 minutes later saying how sore she would be tomorrow. She “works out” every day. My boss has a policy that if you’re going to work out you don’t have to clock out, which means my coworker essentially gets paid to eat fried chicken in a jogging suit in her minivan.
As annoyed as I am, I’m also slightly impressed that she thought of this.
Time to find a new arcade.
Back in high school, I would buy massive quantities of arcade tokens from the manufacturers off of ebay. I was getting about $10 worth of tokens for each $1 spent.
I was there one afternoon when some kid went up to the counter and pointed out that the token machine was giving out tokens from some other arcade. The owner was more than upset and I knew it was time to find a new arcade.
Zikben
“Screw the man.”
When I was in college, I had this meal plan where the school essentially took my “actual money” and turned it into “campus dollars” that could only be spent at school dining halls and cafes. I didn’t mind so much until the end of the semester when I was informed that any unspent “campus dollars” would “go away.” I had more than a hundred bucks left, and only a day to spend them. Here’s what I did:
I went to the nicest campus restaurant — the one where you’re supposed to take your parents when they come to visit. Basically, a real restaurant with waitstaff, that also happened to take “campus dollars”. I got the most expensive thing on the menu, and then called the waiter over. I asked him if I could tip him in “campus dollars,” and he said yes. I asked him if he would have immediate access to those “campus dollars,” in the form of “actual money,” and he said yes.
So I made him a deal. I gave him a monster tip, and he gave me half of it back in “actual money.” Many years later, I am still proud of this. I made a server’s day, screwed the Man, and got my money back.
That is admirable.
I was flying last month, and the plane I was on had Wi-Fi. There was a free 15-minute trial, and then you could purchase a chunk of time. I just kept deleting the cookies on my phone, refreshing, and logging back in. I stayed online for over an hour for free.
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Pretty sure that’s not legal.
I knew someone who would hold 1 religious ceremony in his house every year so that it could be considered a place of worship and he didn’t have to pay taxes.
Saving the customers all the money.
Whenever people come to the pool where I lifeguard and have guests with them, I always ask them if they live more than 50 miles away (our policy is guests from more than 50 miles away don’t pay guest fees). If they say no I give them the look and ask them again. They usually say yes after that.
Saving customers two dollars like a boss.
Me too.
I get paid for my work even though I am on Reddit for 5-6 hours per day.
Already paying way too much money for school anyway.
The college I commuted to didn’t have enough parking for the commuters but roughly 10 times what is needed for the residents. One day I was forced to park in the resident parking and got a ticket.
Every day I had to park there, I’d slip the ticket under my windshield wiper and walk on into class. The cars around me would get tickets but they’d just leave the old one on my windshield figuring they already got me.
Never even paid it. Worcester State did a horrible job of enforcing parking fines 10 years ago.
Real life hack right there!
I bring all my rechargeable items (shaver, cell phone, laptop, etc.) to work and plug them in there. I figure I must have saved at least $1-$2 last year in electricity.
alexemalexem
Take away our equality and we’ll cheat the system.
I can afford college thanks to bigotry. I have two moms, and thanks to the law, my non-birth mom is technically not my legal parent, so when I applied for the FAFSA, I could legally say that I was raised by a single mother who works part-time.
Financial aid’s even sweeter when it feels like you’re getting revenge for living with people’s crap.
Must have been a hit at all the kids birthday parties.
At the arcade, if you pull the ticket out real slow and careful you can get an extra one. Boom!
Grandma!
Old lady (80’s) at my college bookstore, walked in the back with a bag, placed 2 books in her bag, and then I watched walk to the front as she sold them back to the bookstore. I wanted to say something… but was too impressed.
You’re a good person.
I used to work at a camera store that sold warranties. No matter how the camera broke, they would fix it or replace it under the warranty.
The only problem was that the store would ship off the camera to be repaired, sometimes for months, up to five times before replacing it.
So, let’s say your battery cover breaks off. You ship it off and six weeks later it’s back. But, it’s really a brand defect, so, the cover pops off again. They won’t replace the whole piece or give you another camera. You’re out the camera for months while it’s being fixed. They keep selling the defective camera and the warranties.
I got tired of screwing over customers. I thought it was dishonest.
I read the contract myself and found an interesting clause. If the camera was so physically damaged that it was obvious it couldn’t be fixed, we could take a picture of it and send that instead. The person immediately got a new camera.
When people would come in with a camera with a defect I’d seen 100 times, I’d ask if they just wanted a new one (the next model up, without the defect). They’d say yes and I’d tell them to take it out into the parking lot and run over it with their car. I’d pile the pieces on the counter, take a picture and give them their new, non-defective camera.
I slept fine.
That is inspired.
At my university, I would always order delivery from a late night eatery and get a ride home with the delivery guy. Less expensive than a taxi, with a meal included.
Free pizza for all!
Papa Johns offers an unadvertised (maybe unofficial) deal where pizzas that were ordered but never picked up are sold for $5 just before closing. Size and toppings doesn’t affect the $5 price, so, my friends and I used to order family sized meat lovers pizzas and opt to ‘pay-at-pickup’ but never show up. We would wait till closing, pop our heads in and ask if there were any leftover pizzas on the rack for sale, thus, getting our huge pizzas for $5.
How much mail do you send, though?
I’m from Northern Ireland, and when ordering stuff online I’d always write ‘Belfast, Ireland’ on it instead of NI – the post’ll still get there, as yes, technically Belfast’s in Ireland. The post would be directed via the Dublin sorting office instead of coming into the UK routes. Nine times out of ten, the Dublin sorting office would just send it on up to Belfast, instead of forwarding it to Royal Mail in London who would then slap a huge import bill on it (whereas the southern Irish postal service can’t charge me import, as I’m a UK citizen). The Republic of Ireland couldn’t give a crap if the Queen’s out of pocket over a few quid.
My granddad was a royal mail postman for years, he taught me that one.
Always poop at work.
For me, it doesn’t go much further than crapping on company time. Still, I like those craps so much more than the ones at home.
Tricky.
In the good old days of Black Friday, before stores like Best Buy started getting very crafty and clandestine with their deals (8+ years ago), there used to be a slight buffer where someone would leak the sales and the items wouldn’t be removed from the shelves.
I don’t remember specifically but they had a system to prevent you from purchasing then price matching retroactively. As soon as this happened I strolled on down to Best Buy, took a bunch of stuff that I wanted, and put it in their dryers and washing machines. Basically, whatever hiding place that didn’t look like it got a lot of browsing or consideration. Then when Black Friday comes: sleep in, head to the store around noon and pull the doorbusters out of a washing machine.
Coupons for days!
Back in high school I discovered that if you call any “Questions/Comments” number on a food product, you could make up literally anything and get a coupon for a free whatever it was. So for instance we’d call Bisquick pancake mix and say we bought a jar of mix but inside we found three already-made pancakes… Crap like that, just nonsensical stuff. We did it so much that we’d pile up the coupons, go to the grocery store and check out a full cart of groceries and just hand the cashier a stack of these coupons and not pay a cent for hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. We did that multiple times, and eventually the big companies (Kraft, General Mills, etc) catch on and you have to use different names and addresses. I’ll never forget the exasperation of the poor person on the other end of the line when I told them the chicken patties I bought just get more frozen every time I put them in the microwave. “The kids are outside playing hockey with that thing right now, this is ridiculous!”
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A master of life.
A teacher I had in high school always said to his students “if you can get away with cheating go for it”. Turns out he had gotten a raise for getting his masters degree, but never actually got the degree. This went on for over 10 years before the school system figured it out. Somehow he got hired at a new school too.
Yeah, you could call that “creative”.
Here is a Canadian one (being Canadian it’s even ethical).
Wait outside a Superstore gas station and watch for users that leave the receipt. On the end of each left receipt is a “Superbuck”. 20 minutes and you can collect enough for lunch.
Saw someone doing this… Thought it was pretty creative…
I would work out too if it were free… Probably.
I used to be a member of NY sports club. It is a semi-expensive gym here. At the time if you forgot your ID card you could just tell the person behind the desk your number. I always forgot. After a while, I noticed I was transposing two numbers in my ID and they were still letting me in. I canceled my membership and had free all-access gym membership for three years. Ha!
Sorry, I have no cell service!
If you want to cancel your cellphone contract without paying a fee, pull up the provider’s service map. Find a huge hole in the map, like a desert out west. Look for a town in that map. Tell them you’re moving to Putzachateeawaka, Arizona and you want to cancel because they don’t provide service there. Boom.
3 times now. 3 times.
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Praise the internet.
Torrenting college textbooks. I love the internet.
That’s huge savings!
Every time my old Lexmark printer ran out of ink, I’d tell their tech support that the printer no longer detected my ink cartridges. They’d then send me new ink.
I still haven’t stopped doing this…
Wish I had known about that website.
When I was a (precociously computer savvy) 10-11-year-old, I found a website that parents could set up as a reward system for children doing chores. The parent would set up an account listing several chores and assign them point values. The child, after completing these chores, could then use the points to buy various items offered on the website. There was (somehow) no charge for any of the stuff.
So, I created two e-mail accounts, two passwords on the site, and set up a really generous reward system where I got tons of points for doing imaginary chores. I used this to “buy” a load of Pokemon cards. That I then played with my Grandpa because I didn’t actually have any friends.
I think everyone has done this.
I do this thing where you buy the ticket for one movie and then nonchalantly walk into the theatres for other movies within the theatre after the first movie finishes.
I believe the technical term for this is: movie hopping.
Bona fide.
The factory that I work at has a metal detector. I always walk through it without emptying my pockets first, because I figured out that the metal detector can’t detect my keys and cell phone for some reason.
Yeah, I’m a real bad man.
Nicely done.
I have a complicated “cheating the system”
On my iPhone, there is a particular app that awards “M Points” whenever you do certain things in the app; the first time you open it each day when you watch one of the news stories, that kind of thing.
Well those M points you could trade in later for tons of things, including Amazon gift cards. 5k M points was a $5 Amazon gift card. Watching a 10-minute video was worth (in the beginning) about 300 M points. The trick was that you could drag the bar to the end of the video and it would still trigger the M points. Basically, you could make about $5 a minute the first day they opened it. My buddy and I stayed up super late that night and made several hundred dollars in Amazon gift cards that night, which were just a coupon code you attached to your Amazon account.
The next morning they reduced the value from 300 to something like 100 points. Still worth it in that you could make 1/3 of the money which was essentially free.
The final blow was when they reduced the amount to something like 10 points, then it became too much.
In the end, after about a week, we bought 2 high-end gaming computers (parts then assembled) from nearly scratch. We already had a tower and power supply for one, but the other was completely built for free, courtesy this app.
Was incredible.
Perfecto!
My sister and I were once given questionnaires at an aquarium where you had to scratch off the correct answers to questions that were hidden around the complex. If you got them all right, you won a prize. I figured that I could just scratch off all the answers on one sheet and then just do the correct answers on the other and hand that in. Perfect score.
mostlymad
Fine, I’ll pick up a bad habit.
Old job gave us smoke breaks, but no 15 minute breaks for non-smokers. I explained this was ridiculous to my boss, he didn’t get it. So I took up “smoking” again. I’d take 15 minutes every shift to stand behind the building with a lit cigarette, puff it once, and then call my girlfriend on the phone.
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