I've been scammed like that before. 2 women kept changing back and forth between bills and one kept telling the other one different things and then telling me I counted wrong and blah blah blah. Felt really flustered and stupid like I made a mistake, when really that's what they wanted me to think. I called my supervisor right after and told her what happened. After that I've never given out change for people unless it's a 20 or less.
But I've caught lots of fake checks, quite a few bad/stolen credit cards, fake coupons etc. Even had one lady who was a "regular" who I one day found out stuck her own barcodes on products so when I rung them up they'd all be really cheap (like she got $150 of stuff for $40).. At the time we were being drilled not to look at the little box with the item & price or the monitor (because dammit that ring time!!) and she was very nice and talkative. I actually found a label on her organic eggs and thought maybe it was the store's fault for some reason. But I caught on and called management but she left before the cops got there. To be honest this sort of thing never crossed my mind, and she was really ballsy (but smart) for going through a cashier rather than uscan.
That all being said.. Lol.. I personally haven't dealt with a scammer in quite a while, like I can't remember when exactly the last one was. Maybe January? You'll pick up on who's a scammer simply because after dealing with hundreds of transactions per week, you learn how typical people act. Typical people don't sweat and look around when writing a check really sloppy. Typical people don't buy 3 cartons of cigarettes and top shelf liquor with a check. Typical people don't make multiple transactions with gift cards. And typical people don't argue back and forth with the cashier about 100 dollar bills for $1 items.
-- Edited by SCO on Monday 30th of September 2013 12:54:28 AM
I've been cashiering for just a few months so far, and just had my first encounter today with a serious scammer, and he was trying to scam me out of almost $100. He came through the line with 1 item, then handed me a $100 to pay for it. I checked it and it was legit, so I entered in $100, and he watched me as a did and as soon as he saw my till open, he said "Oh, it's only a few dollars? I'll just pay for it with (I don't even remember what dollar amount he said)" and he grabbed the $100 from my hand and put it back in his pocket. I told him that I already had it entered in and he just said "Well you can just take this, this is all it costs."
I stopped right then and paged my supervisor because I saw what was about to happen. I've heard enough stories of customers accusing cashiers of not giving them their change, and with the $100 entered into the system, I didn't want to risk him saying afterwards "Where are my $90? The machine says you owe me that much." The fact that he also pretended he didn't realize that one item was only a few dollars despite the fact that I always clearly state the total and make sure the customer hears me before I ever enter anything was also a big red flag as well. And of course, the fact that he took the $100 away from me the way he did was another huge indicator.
But yeah, my supervisor came over and took care of it and told me that it did sound like a scam, and that we've had several scammers recently. I feel like I responded in the best way possible in that situation as well, since it left absolutely no room for conflict to occur as well.
Good for you. I'm glad I'm finally hearing a story here of somewhat NOT getting taken advantage of by a scammer. Unfortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of em. Whether its money transaction like you just described, coupons, checks, or even hiding stuff under/in the cart, you'll always have people trying to take advantage or just plain steal from the store. This is why I feel sorry for cashiers. You guys have A LOT to watch out for. All I can say is do your best, and just try to play it by the book. You did a great job.
Come work on my front end pretty please? We've lost hundreds to scammers doing exactly what you describe. You realized it right away, you called a supervisor. This is model behavior. I've had cashiers tell a supervisor after the scammer's long gone or after already losing $100 and on the way to losing $100 (or more) additional. I tell all my new cashiers to give back the change the register tells you and not to 'make change' while tendering payment (or not at all). I tell them if you make a mistake like entering 50.00 instead of 5.00, get help if you need it.
At my store they are fairly common. We are hit more with fake bills than quick-changers though (as some of the other posters mention). We've recently lost hundreds of dollars on fake bills because the new ones can pass the marker test. That's why it is, in my opinion, always more important to hold the bill up to the light and examine it than to dash it with a marker.
the marker is useless because a lot of fakes are bleached real bills that are printed over. the marker will only detect the real bill 'paper' and since it was a real bill the marker will say it's good.
