u/wheresmychin

I walked into a grocery store and was approached by a woman. She asked if I could buy her some food because her and her kids were hungry and were low on funds. I have a rule that I’ll always buy someone food, but never give money, so I said sure. Go buy a few things for under $40 and I’ll pay for them.

She got very excited and went through the store. To my delightful surprise, she got just under $40 worth of stuff. I went to the check out with her, the cashier scanned them, and I paid for them with a debit card.

Immediately after I paid, the woman tried to grab the receipt from the cashier. I told her firmly, sorry, I paid for these so I’m keeping the receipt. She got very upset and argued, but I still said no. Then she swore at me and left the grocery store without the food.

I know this scam. Get someone to pay for food, keep the receipt, then double back and return the items for cash when they leave. That’s 100% what she was going to do.

I returned the items. The lady behind the counter said things like that happen all the time. Bummer.

I house manage a theatre that happens to be located on the campus of an affluent school. The school owns the theatre, but the staff of the theatre are not employees of the school. A separate company manages the theatre and its workers. This is understandably confusing for some, but for most people it’s obvious we are not teachers, not admin, and very clearly the theatre is not a classroom.

I had just arrived at the theatre one Friday afternoon to get it set up for a private event happening that evening. I was unlocking the doors when a woman approached me. Let’s call her Cheryl.

CHERYL: Hi, I’m here to pick up my child Jason Lastname.

ME: Oh, sorry, I don’t work for the school. You’ll have to go -

CHERYL: Of course you work for the school. You’ve got keys. I already called ahead. Can you go get Jason Lastname?

ME: I understand the confusion. I work for the theatre. Not the school. I can’t get your child. The admin building is about 200 feet that way. They can help you.

CHERYL: I don’t understand why you just won’t help me. It’s not that hard. Just go to his classroom and get him.

ME: Miss, if I was to remove a student from his classroom, I think the police would probably get involved at that point.

She paused at hearing that, now somehow alarmed.

CHERYL: Who are you? Why would the police get involved?!

ME: Because I don’t work for the school.

CHERYL: Then what are you doing here?!

ME: I work for the theatre.

CHERYL: How did you get keys?

I was done with this conversation. She was really worked up. I didn’t want this to become a thing, so I very calmly pointed to the admin building.

ME: The admin building handles all student pick ups. They’re probably the people you talked to. They can help you. After you pick up your child, there’s a lovely performance happening tonight at 8pm in the theatre. It’s discounted for faculty and families of students. I can get you a flyer if you want.

She stared at me for a long moment then walked off. I went inside and wrote an incident report just in case she complained or something. She didn’t end up coming to the show.

I’ve noticed that a lot of sellers these days post listings with a $1 or similar price for an obviously more costly item, then in the description only write “make me an offer”. It’s really frustrating, because not only is it lazy, it’s basically a seller terrified they’re going to sell for too little so they put the onus on the buyer.

Similarly, buyers who say “what’s your best price?” basically asking you to negotiate against yourself, because they’re afraid of offering too much when they could have paid less. Then even worse if you say your best price and they often try to negotiate you down from there.

It’s just scummy and lazy practices.