By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have had that moment when our preconceptions about human beings generally being good, trustworthy people are completely shattered. Once we see the corruption behind the curtain, there’s no going back. These Redditors share the most corrupt things they've ever seen, ranging from the amusing or shocking to the profoundly disturbing.
1. The Right Pen is Crucial
In the days before the Internet, I got fired by a (private) ambulance company for using the wrong pen to fill out Medicaid forms after a run. I used a ballpoint instead of the soft tip Flair pens and was immediately fired by the owner. A few years later, I found out he was imprisoned for Medicaid fraud. Turns out the soft tip pens he provided didn't go through all the carbon copies on the forms, and he was changing the bottom sheet to show more miles and services for each ambulance run (before sending them to the state).
The day I used the ballpoint was for a very long ride, and cost him a lot of (fraudulent) money. That's why he was so furious.
2. Fired for Being Too Effective
One time, the entire region was given a target to deep clean all property, including frontline emergency vehicles, in 30 days. 30 days passed, and I just made it and got all vehicles in my care done. It later transpired that for the entire UK, I was the only one that achieved the target and for that...I lost my job.
3. Hypocritical Educators
My university makes us buy a public speaking textbook (published by the university) and tear rubrics out of it. Your grades are penalized if you don't turn in the rubric torn out of the book for the teacher to mark your grade on. This ensures that you can't resell your book, so the next class has to buy brand new books.
All the while, the university is putting up signs about why you should recycle.
4. Fat Bribers
I heard from a few aid workers in Mozambique (one of the poorest countries in the world, let alone in Africa), that one of the best ways to determine the good cops from the bad ones is how much they weigh. The fat cops there are the ones that are taking bribes and extorting people because they've got the extra money to spend on food.
5. Corruption Pays
I was in Durban last year (Umhlanga, specifically) driving around with a friend who grew up there. We went past a HUGE mansion, 4 or 5 buildings, 3 pools, armed guards…it was like something you'd see in the Hollywood Hills. My friend said, "You know who owns that? A traffic cop—a constable."
6. What Decimal Point?
When I was in Thailand, I had a big brick of rubber adhesive bumpers in my bag that I'd picked up in China while visiting the electronics shows. They tried to assess duties on it based on 100x what I'd paid, I think by deliberately ignoring the decimal point. Since it was a temporary import, there should have been an exemption process, but I didn't realize what was going on until the customs inspector made it clear that there was a cash price if I paid right then and there (she even helpfully pointed out the nearby ATM). But, she said it would be more if I wanted to go to the customs desk and do the official paperwork.
Pretty sure not one baht made it to the Thai customs agency.
7. Hippocratic Hypocrite
My mother was dying of brain cancer. The doctor who was in charge of an experimental treatment program said he would let my mom join if I went out with him. I was 16 years old. Luckily, I told my aunt and she threw a fit, so they let my mom join anyway. The treatment turned out to be worthless, but one of my nightmares is the memory of the day when I had to decide between my mom's life and my virginity.
8. To Serve and Rob?
I saw a bunch of city cops robbing an apparel store when I was 18. The store had allegedly been broken into by person/persons unknown. The police had arrived and called the store’s owner, but in the meantime, they filled the trunks of the patrol cars. I was with a cousin, sitting in a bar across the street from where this happened, when I saw this.
I wanted to tell the owner what I had witnessed, but my cousin reminded me that the cops have guns.
9. Human Scum
I used to work at a non-profit that provided financial education to middle school and high school students. The VP (my direct supervisor) was using money from our sponsors, the city schools, and “No Child Left Behind” to pay for his girlfriend’s apartment, which was around the corner from our office. Somehow, he was altering our records so that no one would notice.
What made him an even worse person is that he had a wife—and his wife had cancer.
10. Unsafe Space
I worked as a counsellor at a youth shelter. Local churches donated almost all of the food and clothes, and the shelter didn’t buy anything for the kids, so theoretically the shelter was just paying to keep the lights on and to keep on minimum wage staff. Despite this, they had a ridiculous amount of grant money, enough to cover the food and clothes plus activities for the kids, if they had decided to pay for those things.
Instead, they skimped out on essential things like training. They gave me a CP certification without ever giving me any training. The shelter also had rats, roaches and, at times, bed bugs. The heat was out for a month, during a blizzard, on Christmas, with girls residing at the shelter. I reported them and nothing happened except the owners interrogating the entire staff to find out who snitched.
So clearly, a lot of people were getting paid the money that was supposed to be going to homeless youth. Worst place I ever worked.
11. Inside Job
I used to work in the IT department at a large company, and over time I noticed that things were going missing. For example, one time they replaced a bunch of monitors in a lab, and then a few weeks later, I noticed all the old ones were back. What happened to the new ones was a mystery. They also didn't have nearly as many of something in stock as it said on their shipping receipts, and we were somehow always out of service kits for the copy machines.
I found out later that all of that stuff that we were supposed to have was ending up on eBay or Craigslist or somewhere else to be resold. I didn't realize it for years, and maybe I'm just really oblivious, but the whole department was in on this. Realizing that I was the only one who wasn’t stealing from the company was enlightening.
12. The Cost of Gaming
Most countries in Africa have the most blatant public corruption out there. Here is my example: I was working in the country of Chad (which I don't recommend in case anybody asks), and brought my Xbox 360 in checked baggage. Going through X-Ray screening on way out of the airport after I arrived resulted in me almost getting conned out of money by the screener, but he didn't speak any English, so he gave up when I argued.
One month later, I was getting ready to fly out of the country, and I had to open all my bags before the ticket counter so they could inspect for random things. Of course, I had my Xbox 360. The conversation went like this:
Corrupt Inspector: "Xbox?" Me: "Yes, brought it from the States for personal use and I’m now bringing it back." Corrupt Inspector: "Invoice?" Me: "No invoice, personal use, bought in the States and bringing it back." Corrupt Inspector: "No, invoice." This went on through a couple more iterations until a local behind me piped up: "Just pay him."
Me: "How much?" Local Traveler: "Just something." I ended up forking over 10,000 Xfa to him in front of everybody (roughly $15 USD). Corrupt Inspector: "OK, no problem."
13. Credit Factory
I worked for a small private high school that basically assigned marks based on how much money each student paid to the "director," who had no education or teaching experience at all. The students who paid the most money would be given full credit courses with high enough marks to get them into university, despite rarely showing up to class and putting zero effort into any assignments, if they handed in assignments at all.
On the flip side, students who worked their butts off but didn't pay the premium fee would have their marks lowered arbitrarily by the director, despite me trying to fight for them. She claimed that it was because the Ministry would get suspicious if we gave marks that were too high, and she didn't want them looking into her records, obviously.
I also had countless students come to me and tell me that the director was asking them for more money, but not providing them with the services they were supposed to be paying for (such as class scheduling and guidance counseling). She also charged them a $500 "Activity Fee" that was supposed to cover field trips, but we only took two field trips the entire year, once to go pumpkin picking, and once to visit a local tourist attraction. And she still made them pay extra for the bus.
At times, the school didn't even have toilet paper or a working furnace, but the director came in every week with new Gucci purses, drove a BMW, and took frequent vacations. Many of the students were international, so their parents had no idea what was going on.
14. Dishonest Mistake
My workplace “lost track” of a million dollars of equipment. No one has ever cared in 20 years. Then they got a new president, who cared a lot.
15. Too Honest
I worked at a Wendy's as a high school student and for some reason, I was put on till duty every single shift. I asked at one point why exactly I was put there every single shift (because I hated it) and the reason was...my till was the only one that was accurate with no voided orders. Apparently, a common method of theft is to void an order and pocket the value.
Guess I should have stolen more stuff if I didn’t want to work the till.
16. That Late 90s Gong Show
I worked with a guy who would steal whole vaccum-packed tenderloins and traded them for a portion of his rent. The owner of the company was too drunk to listen, the manager was too busy doing drugs, and the chef couldn’t do anything because he and the waitress were having an affair and the thief threatened to expose them.
Eventually, the owner “cleaned up” because his rich wife threatened divorce. He realized he had a theft problem. So 17-year-old me got fired for theft. The late 90s were weird.
17. Child Labor
My friend and I were bussers at a chain restaurant that’s now mostly gone completely under. We should’ve run within the first couple weeks when we were suddenly placed on dishwasher duty, which was illegal work for minors in my state. On top of that, they slowly had us staying later than 10 pm on school nights, which again is illegal. Plus, it didn’t take long for us to notice that literally EVERYONE was stealing in some shape or form from that place. Tips, food, booze, customer’s jackets, you name it.....
Everything about the job was terrible—but somehow, it got even worse. A female assistant manager in her mid-30s developed a crush on my buddy. That sounds like every teenage boy’s freaking dream, but it was actually kind of creepy. She literally BEGGED him to take her to Junior Prom. One day while he was mopping the women’s restroom, she flat out walked in, greeted him, then sat in a stall and took a dump.
A couple of years later, I ended up working with one of the cooks from there at another, much more professional establishment. From him, I learned that more drugs were being sold out of that place than ribs and fries. Also, the lead manager went to federal prison for embezzlement, but not before he cheated on his wife with the female manager mentioned before. Knocked her up with twins.
18. Your Instincts are Probably Right
I used to work with this dude who always just kinda rubbed me the wrong way. He was always nice and courteous, and he made funny jokes on our company’s inter-office IM system. He seemed like an all-around good guy. But he just had this weird vibe that I would catch every once in a while. Months later, his dark secret came to light. He'd been in jail a few years back for fraud. I thought ok, dude has a few kids with a few women, so maybe he'd been desperate for cash and done something shady in a moment of panic.
NOPE.
The FBI had to bring him down after he pocketed hundred of thoooooousands of dollars by selling Japanese import specialty car parts on eBay. The buyer would purchase, send him the money, and then the buyer would get a printed picture of the car part that they thought they had just purchased, instead of the part itself. He went to jail for two years.
He was previously the overlord of a huge Honda fanatic’s forum and when it all came to light, the users all turned on him and blacklisted his posts. Funny thing is, he later went into the thread and made a new account, posted his own home address and called for his own murder with this new account and username.
It was hilarious when another user pointed out that his new account’s IP address matched his original account's IP address and revealed his desperate vies for attention. He pointed the finger at his once-loyal followers, trying to garner sympathy over the fact that they were so cruel as to "try to kill him." It was all pretty pathetic.
19. Tricking Technology
I went to university with a guy who sold me a laptop that he had stolen. He and three of his buddies worked at Best Buy. He was up front at cash, and his buddies worked out back in the warehouse. He would get two of his other friends to come in every now and then to “purchase” high-end computers or TVs. When they did, his buddies would bring it out from the back warehouse, because those pieces weren't anti-theft tagged yet.
They would walk it up to the front to the cashier guy and to put a show on for the cameras, he would get the "customer" to swipe their card. He’d hit some random buttons and then he would print out a "receipt," which was really just a void transaction record. He would then hand that paper to the person along with the item, and they would usually be walked out by one of the stock boys who were in on it. They did this for months and probably stole more than $25 000 worth of stuff before he and his buddies quit.
I never knew, when buying the laptop off him, that it was stolen. Two years into my program, I was actually asked by police about my dealings with them. Soon after that, he stopped coming to classes. It's now been 15 years, and I've never seen or heard from him again. According to the Best Buy where I live, they "lose" ten to fifteen thousand dollars worth of stuff every month, so it seems this sort of thing is still ongoing in some way. The corruption never stops.
20. Municipal Misdemeanor
I won't go into details, but I work for a municipality as a fairly low-level employee. I've been offered bribes on a number of occasions to let things slide here and there. They were all very tempting, but I like my job too much to risk it for $20 or so. The biggest bribe I have ever been offered is $1,000. I reported it to my supervisor and his response was, "Dude, why didn't you take it? I sure as heck would have!"
Still, we filed an official report, but it didn't go anywhere, as I didn't know the name of the people offering the bribe. Makes me wonder what else is going on that I don't know about.
21. Funky Chicken
There was a story posted on Reddit a while back by someone claiming to be a health inspector. They inspected a restaurant and at first, nothing was too bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. And then they got to the fridge area. All the chicken was on one platter/shelf area. The fresh chicken...and the rotting chicken that had been dripping juices into the pool.
He went ballistic over this and made them bag up all the chicken in trash bags and toss it into the dumpster. They argued, offered bribes, etc, but he stood firm and made them do it. After concluding the rest of things, he got into his car and started driving away. As he was passing the alley behind the restaurant he slammed on his brakes...he couldn't believe what he saw. The workers were pulling the bags of chicken out of the dumpster!
At this point he went back in and made them pour cleaning chemicals into the bag with the chicken so that it couldn’t possibly be used.
22. Cash Grab
I once had a restaurant I own get broken into. The cops told me that because I didn't have a security alarm permit, they wouldn't be even coming. I went on the city website to find out that to get the security alarm permit, you simply enter your store address and phone number—and you pay 150$ a year.
23. Radiator Recycling
I live in a corrupt third world country. I literally see corrupt officials every day, and especially corrupt cops. I once was at an auto shop were a police officer was trying to sell the radiator of a police car and get it replaced for a cheap one he scavenged somewhere. The shop owner bought it.
24. The Price of Memory
One time, I forgot my driver’s license at home. A police officer came up behind me as I was returning home to get it, and he pulled me over. I told him I had my license at home. He told me he could “forget we met” for the equivalent of 20 dollars in local money. I told him no, and said, “Take me to the police station, make me a ticket, do what you need to do.”
He kept going on, saying, “Come on, the fine will be like 200, and I’m asking for 20.” I stood my ground and said no. He let me go when he realized he wasn’t going to squeeze money out of me.
25. Erasable Tickets
My mom got pulled over for having her car’s technical revision expired the day before. The technical revision is an obligatory certificate you must have to prove your car is in condition to be in the traffic. Usually, this is a minor offense, you get a small fine and 30 days to get the certificate. The cops tried to squeeze money out of her, but she didn’t want to pay a bribe, so in order to get money, they took her to the police station.
Everything should’ve been quick. Just pay up the small fine and get your papers right in 30 days, right? Well, the cops took the pencil-written ticket and used an eraser to change it. They added a bunch of stuff, busted lights, speed excess, etc. It all summed up to more than $1,000, and the car was taken to the deposit. But these cops had no idea who they were messing with.
My father came to see what was going on, and since we needed the car and my parents are very wealthy, there was no issue and we paid up the same day. Unluckily for these cops, my father is a lawyer and a pretty dang good one. He did some digging. These cops were out of their jurisdiction, pulling people over to get bribes, using their uniform and police car when not in service, and going deliberately to the specific neighborhood my parents live in just because it’s a very wealthy zone.
He found out about the fabricated claims and the modified ticket, and he got access to a private security camera nearby to prove my mom didn’t break any traffic laws. We sued. Got the money back, but those cops had some friends high up and managed to keep their badges. The level of corruption in this country’s police force is just unbelievable.
26. Rigged Jet-Ski
I was at a raffle for a jet ski at a local carnival sponsoring the volunteer fire deptartment. When they called the winner of the jet ski, I was standing right behind the guy who drew the ticket. When the ticket was drawn, he called a completely different name than the one that was on the ticket. The “winner” was a close friend of the fire chief.
27. When Everyone Looks The Other Way
I used to work for a global pharmaceuticals company. My boss was a mid-level manager, making pretty good money (low six-figures, and this was 25 years ago). It wasn't enough though, apparently. We had a company contracted to build some software for us. Somehow, they were paid about $4 million, but never delivered working software. Every time we questioned this, our investigations were blocked by the boss.
It turns out that he was a silent partner in the software company. When he jumped ship (they promoted him to a manager position in another country!), his successor immediately terminated the contract with the software company. Within 24 hours, the company was dissolved and all records disappeared. My (ex) boss worked there for a few more years, until it was clear that he was still lining his pockets with company money. He was then "given the opportunity to pursue his career outside of the organization."
Sometimes (white-collar) crime does pay pretty well.
28. Supervisor Subterfuge
Once, while working as the night shift cashier at a store, my supervisor randomly told me to take a break and that he’d take over the register for me. I was just happy to sit down, and went to the break room while he made small talk with a customer he seemed to know. I thought nothing of it and finished my shift as usual.
The next day, the store manager called me into his office and fired me. I was flabbergasted. He said that I gave a 99% discount on over $150 worth of merchandise last night. I told him that I didn’t, and couldn’t without supervisor approval anyway (they had to enter their unique code to give discounts). I was fired because it was my register and my supervisor kept his job.
29. Bad Bartering
One time, my uncle did some plumbing service for a customer’s house and she asked if she could pay for it with goods. My uncle was a bit confused—until she showed him her garage, which featured shelves filled with a shocking amount of cans and food packages. She worked as a volunteer for a food bank and kept the food, and I bet she wasn't the only one doing it. He refused it as a payment, needless to say.
30. Putting a Price on Education
Parents sometimes asked our college counselling department how to donate to Harvard, Yale, etc. to ensure that their child got a spot at one of those top universities. They were asking for tips to bribe colleges. The college counselling department (one of my favorite groups of people at the school) spent all kinds of effort trying to tell the parent how their child would actually be better off at some other school instead, but the real answer was almost always, "Sorry, you're not that rich, buddy."
31. Faithless Minister
I work for a non-profit faith-based drug/alcohol rehabilitation centre. It turns out that in 2018, our founder and president/CEO was skimming money from the company to, among other things, buy clothes and jewelry for his girlfriend. His wife must’ve been angry when she found out. He had also ostensibly been clean for the better part of 30 years, but that was also a lie, as he was getting high too.
The worst part? He’s an ordained minister with his own church.
32. Christian Values
I attended a very small, very religious middle school for about nine years, and was ruthlessly bullied for the final three. I was singled out by one girl who would constantly insult my hair, skin color, family, and anything I made the mistake of admitting I enjoyed. She even went as far as saying that the only way my mother was able to afford to send me to school was by selling her body.
I told my teachers and the principal, who said they would "assess the situation and help out." Their “help” entailed having a staff member stand next to our table at lunch, and when the bully (obviously) didn't say anything to me in front of the staff, I would be told, "She seemed polite to you today, I didn't hear anything wrong." I was even encouraged to invite her to my birthday party.
Years later, at graduation, this whole nightmare finally made sense. My bully was awarded a special diploma and a scholarship to an (equally religious) private high school, for "exemplifying what it means to be a good Christian." I later learned that her family donated a large chunk of money to the school to help keep it running, which is definitely why everyone turned a blind eye to how horrible she was.
33. Knowledge is Power
My wife and I bought a house. The landlord wanted access to the apartment we were living in in the meantime so he could renovate it and sell it at an exorbitant price. We told him multiple times that we were going to keep and maintain the apartment until the end of our lease (only had 23 days left), and that we were going to clean it, etc, like normal.
He didn't like that. So he performed an illegal lockout, then charged us a $750 cleaning fee saying we left it a mess, the entire $1,900 rent for the last month, and attempted to keep our $1,900 security deposit. What he didn't know, however, is that I'm the last person in the world he should have messed with. To put it simply, I know the law very well.
I went to the apartment and recorded him in the act of locking me out. I'm big black dude, so I was showing restraint by not manhandling him since I'd immediately be found at fault. Then, I gathered every ounce of proof I could, built a case, and sued him. We also hit him with 311 hazard reports and he got charged a ton for repairs, and to remove lead in the apartment (it was one spot in the closet, but he was still charged).
After about two months of back and forth, he acquiesced and settled out of court, giving us back the full last month and full security without charging us the cleaning fee. Know the law people. Don't let anyone try to pull one over on you.
34. Two-Faced Tow
I was pulled over for a burned-out tail light when I was around 19 years old. I was sober, but was immediately asked to take a field sobriety test, which I somehow failed. The cop had my car towed, and I heard him tell the tow driver, “I should be able to have a few more for you tomorrow to get to 10 by the end of the week.” The driver said, “Come by Friday and we’ll settle up.”
I took a breathalyzer at the station and blew 0.0. Despite this, I still had to be picked up, and eventually pay $450 to get my car out of the lot. That was virtually all the money I had at the time.
35. Even The Laundry Quarters?!
I was in a bad auto accident several years back. My car was totaled and I went to the yard to release it to the insurance for pick up. When I looked in the car, I immediately noticed that something was wrong. The inside was ransacked; they had taken my CD collection, which at the time had over 100 CDs easily; my three rolls of quarters I kept in the car for laundry; and my subwoofer from the trunk.
When I brought it up with the guy at the front, he said, “That’s how we picked it up.” It was my word against theirs. To this day I want to go back and throw a rock through every one of their tow truck windshields.
36. Seniority Perks
I once dated a co-worker and at some point, I found out she had a boyfriend. Apparently she had had a rough time with him, and I just so happened to be kind of attractive to her and gave her the attention she’d been missing out on. After I found out and backed off, the two suddenly got closer again and she told me she couldn’t believe that she was dumb enough to almost leave that “wonderful man” for me.
I replied with something along the lines of, “And I can’t believe I was dumb enough to ignore the red flags.” We never exchanged a single word after that. On my next shift, I got called into my boss’s office. He told me that she claimed I was stalking and threatening her, and that she was trembling in fear because we had the same shift that day.
She even cried in front of him. I was completely baffled and started to tell him what had really happened. I even showed him the chat and call logs. He actually believed me, but still “had to” fire me since she had been working full time for about a year and a half, while I had only worked there for three months, part-time.
Economically, keeping her was the right thing to do, but morally...yuck. I considered suing her for those claims, but in the end I didn’t. The whole crew ignored her as best they could after that. Karma, I guess.
37. Predatory Vehicle Towing
I once went out of town for a week and left my wife's car in the reserved spot, and my car in a guest spot in my apartment complex. When I returned, my car was gone. Apparently, they thought that my clean vehicle with brand new registration was “abandoned.” I had to pay $600 to get it back or they would sell it at their stolen-car tow lot downtown.
I did a little digging on the tow company (which just so happens to be contracted with my apartment complex, yay!) and found out that they dance around every law on California AB 2392. Tons of people complain that they illegally overcharge, force people to pay "drop fees," and try to pull lots of "poverty trap" stuff on people who are already in low-income housing.
38. What Happens at the Golf Course Stays At the Golf Course
I was working for the government and lots of people would take half days off and still get paid for the whole day. My boss would often come to work dressed in his golf outfit only to disappear after lunch. One day, we had a small emergency and the Big Boss realized that I was the only one there and that I couldn't do anything because I didn't have access to the computers.
Smaller Boss had to come back (still wearing his golf attire) to help. Of course, nothing happened to him. Still in the government, the Boss retired early and then got hired as a "consultant" for a private firm that he had "coincidently" given contracts to through the years. So he came back "working" for the same place, but getting paid double.
39. Fake Robbery
I worked at a small photography business when I was 18. The owner and her sister were shady with everything. We didn't have real tickets, just random pre-printed papers that we filled in manually. Neither me or the other girl working there had a contract—it was the first years of the economical crisis in Spain, so most people stuck with whatever job you could get.
Anyway, I was going through old company emails on a really slow day to entertain myself. I started to see weird emails from an attorney about a lost trial. I went through the mail until I found the first one, and then read them chronologically. It would seem that the owner had been using that email for personal stuff in the past, and the emails revealed her disturbing secret. She had tried to fake a robbery in her house.
They set it up as if someone had broken into the house via the garage. And they were found guilty of faking it, as the door was forced open from the inside.
40. Turning a Blind Eye
I worked in a care home. The manager of that place was beyond incompetent. She had zero nursing experience and got hired because of her "advanced schooling" and being friends with the director of the hospital. Under her management, a resident with zero dementia got away with assaulting the other residents with dementia for months.
The manager silenced any workers who reported it or tried to complain because, in her words, he apologized and shouldn't be punished. For months, every worker knew that he was waiting until the staff was busy so that he could assault the same poor woman. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered in my life so far.
The manager protected this excuse for a human by telling us that we were unfairly persecuting him. She believed every word he said, even telling staff who complained that they should find jobs elsewhere. Finally, something was done when he was caught trying to mistreat his male end-stage dementia roommate. I quit not long after.
To this day I'm still haunted by this. I honestly believe there should be a lawsuit. But the most discouraging thing was the attitude of the other workers. They all said that’s just how it is and there was nothing that could be done about it. Multiple staff turned a blind eye because the terrible manager would punish them for speaking up, so they let this man do whatever he wanted.
This happened two years ago in a rural community. That manager still works there. I now work in a hospital in a major city and thankfully, stuff like that would get reported and dealt with right away.
41. When Doctors are In Two Places at Once
I worked for a hospital chain, calculating and issuing payroll bonuses to doctors. Quick background, most doctors get a small salary plus a sort of performance bonus that is based on how many procedures/operations/visits they do. It's very regulated, since doctors are supposed to be serving people and not money-motivated.
I was frustrated with the way a certain hospital was reporting the doctors' hours, and I pulled all the reports going back two years because of inconsistencies. I found a LOT. I found, in fact, that we had overpaid the doctors. I was worried that this was a mistake, but it got worse. It was deliberate. The supervisor in charge of the doctors was upping their hours in the hospital so they could get paid more.
If a doctor thought he/she saw more patients than usual, they'd tell her and she'd report them as if they worked 8-12 hours extra. If they saw fewer patients, of course, then there was no system to reduce their hours accordingly. They weren't even coming in for 12 hours shifts, though. They came in late, worked 6-8 hours, left early, and shoved the rest of the work on newer doctors or nurses. I rejected as many bonus claims as I could, especially when they started insisting that they were working 24-hour shifts back to back.
I had access to their logins into the hospital system and was able to confirm that they weren't even working 8 hours, much less 24. In the end, I reported $2.2M overpaid to the doctors in the course of 1.5 years. Not chump change. The CFO raised the issue with them, and there was a huge mess, and all of the doctors threatened to quit en-masse if we tried to reclaim the money.
The hospital couldn't afford to lose all of its doctors, so they backed down. I documented everything, gave the evidence to the appropriate parties, and left the company. Also, I modified our system before I left so that it's physically impossible for a doctor in that hospital to log anything longer than an 18 hour shift. I didn't even set up a way for someone to circumvent the safety.
42. Parents Behaving Badly
When I was a senior in high school, we had a senior party after graduation, and our parent group had raised tens of thousands of dollars for a raffle at the end of the party. The person in charge of the raffle had a son in my grade. Their foreign exchange student won a brand new MacBook Pro and her son won the grand prize of $1,500 dollars cash.
I walked out with a $5 dollar gift card to an ice cream shop that had gone under a few weeks prior.
43. No Fury Like A Man Scorned
I was pulled over, arrested, and charged with a DWI by a cop I had declined to date about a month earlier. Plot twist: I was sober. I represented myself in court and—surprise—the charges were dropped.
44. Dishonor System
I worked for a company that built machine parts. Certain parts were plastic, but they could be "upgraded" to their urethane equivalents for a pretty substantial up-charge. We always made these parts with plastic regardless of what the customers had paid for.
45. Sorry Sight
My husband's boss stole thousands of dollars in commission from him, bought his wife a new SUV with the stolen money, slept with his secretary in his office, and then fired the unfortunate guy who walked in on them before the next workday. Then, when my husband confronted his boss for not paying him his commission, the boss threatened to fire him for "underperformance," even though he was the highest-earning salesman in the whole company.
So, my husband quit before he could get fired for a non-existent reason. Eventually, the owner of the company found out about my husband’s old boss, and now the guy is in prison for corporate theft. My husband has still never seen a single dollar of his commission from either the owner or the former boss.
46. Recount Required
I was at a polling place in a school where, as a project in college, we were doing a student voting project (letting elementary kids cast a vote for president). At this school, the kids were voting at booths near where the actual voters were voting. It was pretty dead at the time, until this one woman came in with a stack of voter registration cards.
She hugged the poll workers and they laughed it up. She then voted for at least six people who were not present to cast their own vote. She signed their name on the registrar and everything. She went back and forth from the registrar to the booth each time to cast a new ballot under someone else's name.
As this was playing out, I walked over to the election judge and in a nice way asked what was going on. He told me, "Oh, it's okay, we know her and most of those are her family members." I went outside, dialed 411 on my cell phone (smartphones were not a thing then), and got hold of the county elections department. They said, "they'd look into it."
About ten minutes later, the election judge got a call on his flip phone and said exactly what he said to me and then hung up. Nothing ever came of it. And the more people I told, the more people kept replying, "Well, if she knew the people then it's okay."
47. Classism at Its Worst
I was put on 12 months probation for a class D misdemeanor that I committed while sober. The justice system contracts out justice, so my case was given to a private company. They made me come in once a week to meet my parole officer. Every visit lasted about 10 minutes and basically consisted of, "Cool you passed your urine screening and haven't committed a new crime, that'll be $60."
I was made to take TWO urine tests a week because they apparently needed two samples, one to test for illicit drugs and the other to test for alcohol. Those cost $25 each. That made my monthly cost $440 a month. If I refused to take them or couldn't afford to I went straight to jail.
Guess who owned the testing company? Yup, my probation office. I paid them over $5,000 in one year to pee in a cup and come say hi. That total doesn't even include how much I spent on bus fares. I appealed to the court because I couldn't afford that and was told, "You should have thought of that before you committed a crime."
I ended up having to take out loans, so I've actually spent about $8,000 to pay off the $5,000 in loans I had to take to stay out of jail. I just finished paying that off last year, four years after the crime of punching a hole in a wall. Our justice system is corrupt at its core.
48. Finders Keepers
My friend lost everything in one of the California wildfires. The fire burned down a few buildings and melted three cars. The ONLY THING left was a handmade smoker (a Barbeque/grill made from an old metal barrel, welded to make what is called an "Ugly Drum Smoker" or "UDS"). It survived because, being a smoker, it was in a small clearing away from flammable stuff, plus it was made to withstand heat.
The Environmental Protection Agency inspectors showed up to check the damage and figure out what needed to be cleaned up, what was hazardous, etc, so that they could write up a report for insurance, and to make sure the place was habitable. Then, before the EPA guys left, they loaded the smoker into a trailer and stole it. Another friend saw it being loaded and taken, but didn't realize what was going on until later, when he mentioned it to my friend.
Thanks, EPA guys. You went to inspect someone's place where everything they owned except ONE thing was destroyed...and you stole it. My friend called the EPA office and complained, but they just shrugged and said, "Hey, we hire contractors to do the inspections, we have no idea who it was. Plus, we don't care."
49. Rob the...Poor?
An old friend of mine got a job working for a church-based charity. They would accept household donations and sell them in a thrift store they had set up to raise funds for the needy. His job was to drive around in a cube van, pick up the donated items, and deliver them to the charity. He openly bragged about picking the best items for himself and would drop them off at his house before delivering the rest of the items to the charity.
I called him out on it and told him it was a bad idea, seeing as his cousin and two aunts worked there and had put in a good word for him to get hired. That’s when I realized just how deep this went. He told me that they’ve been doing the same thing for years! He told me his aunts wouldn’t even keep most of what they stole; rather, they would sell the items at garage sales.
He said it was ok because “that’s how they make their money.” To make matters worse, they were paid in cash, so they could keep collecting welfare. Pure trash, and needless to say, I have nothing to do with them anymore.
50. Lucrative Problems
We had a paramedic fired from a very large private ambulance company for not reporting damage to equipment. Apparently her supervisor was scamming money from the company by getting "repairs" done where there was nothing to repair, and he would pocket the money. He fired her because they started looking into it and to cover his fraud, he claimed she wasn't reporting it properly.
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