Dude comes into my store, purchases an item with a hundred dollar bill. I give him his change. He says "that's not enough change" and reaches across the counter, into the register drawer, to try to grab back the hundred he gave me. So I slam the drawer on his fingers. The end!

Working as a cashier for a grocery store, a customer came and placed a random assortment of things up at my register. Candy, soda, a couple kids toys and a pre cooked chicken from the deli. She mentioned to me that she was from Oregon and would like the tax removed (we can do that in WA for customers from specific states). To do this, she had to give mer her ID so I could record the info on it before removing the tax from the transaction. After giving her her total she said she would like to pay with a check. She as filling it out as I noticed it was pre signed. I asked her who's they were and if they were available to come sign the check in front of me. She said they belonged to her mom who was in the car. When she left I saw her get in the passenger seat of a van and leave, so I took down the license plate as they drove off. After this all happened I called my floor manager over and told him what happened. We both shrug and basically say "Weird" leaving it at that. Later that day the loss prevention guy calls me up stairs, which is never normally a good thing. He tells me that I had made a good catch, because two women had been going around town with a stolen book of checks and I was the reason the cops had an ID and a license plate to go after.

TL;DR A lady gave me her ID to prove she deserved a $0.78 discount on goods she intended to pay for with stolen checks. I was summoned to court to tell this story to a judge ಠ_ಠ.

I worked at a bowling alley in high school. We had a guy climb up into the ceiling in the restroom and wait until we closed, so he could climb down and rob it. Not only did he not get any money (everything was locked up in a gigantic safe from the 1930's that probably weighed over a thousand pounds), but he couldn't even get out of the building - all the steel fire doors were padlocked on the outside, and I guess he didn't want to risk being seen smashing the glass on the front doors, since it was right by a busy road. He did the only logical thing, which was go back to the bar and drink all night - the manager found him passed out on the floor when he opened up in the morning.

A couple of people broke into my storage facility once.
They cut through the fence and was going through units when they realized there was a camera mounted near them pointed right where they were standing.

They panic, cover their faces up, and then decide to get rid of the camera. They climb up on something and start trying to tear the camera down. While doing this, there is nothing covering their faces anymore and they are literally staring into the lens of the camera no more then 3 feet away.

Back when I worked at Walmart, one of the best laughs I ever got while working there was watching two middle aged women run into the store, grab about fifty of those visa gift cards from the rack, then run out of the store, laughing while they did it.


You have to activate them. They are completely worthless without being activated. I bet they were pretty upset when they realized they had just stolen a load of nothing.

I work in a car audio store. Guy shows up wanting us to install his amplifier right now. All my installers are busy and tell him ain't going to happen today. But tomorrow we can. He gets all upset and tells me his "boy" will install it himself all he needs is the wires. I show him our amp kits and he picks one out and pays with a credit card and shows me his ID which is good.

So the next thing i see is this fool grabbing a box with some entry level 12" woofers and running out the door and throwing the box into his ride and peeling out of our parking lot. The store was pretty crowded and more than a few customers saw what just went down and asked should they chase this guy down?

I couldn't believe that this idiot just paid with a credit card and I checked his name and ID and it matched so I had all the information I needed to have him arrested. But I said "OH hell no" I just wrote up a ticket and manually punched in the credit card for 3x the amount something like $585.99 instead of $169.96. The charge got approved and was never contested either. I hope he enjoys his speakers.

Over the last 2 years i worked at a jimmy johns, and one day we got robbed. He waited for all the customers stop pouring in, and goes go to the bathroom for about 15 minutes. Was he about to pee himself from excitement? I don't know but a coworker walked by during this time and heard him loudly talking to himself, which i guess was to get pumped up.

The he finally walks out to a completely empty jj's, and orders a sandwich... he was clearly nervous and something was up. As soon as the register was open he goes, "I have a knife, give me all your money".

The girl on the register was a super nice girl so she totally blanked. However, our gm at the time, a fat Mexican guy in his mid 20's who grew up in a bad neighborhood, just nonchalantly goes "I don't believe you, show me you're knife." The robber starts bickering with our GM, but the GM stays calm and tells him to show it, so he finally takes his knife out and waves it at us.

Now here's the best part, we all work with knifes and their really sharp but our Mexican, (its an affectionate term) takes this as a challenge and grabs our knife and starts chasing him out the store and down the street. The best part is he's so short and fat, he's waddling in an apron as his running yelling "Fight me like a man joto!".

When the police came the guy was gone but to this day our GM tells that story to every new person we hire.

Ohh and to those of you who don't believe me, here's the proof.
Store was in Carol stream, gm's name was Sebastian.

Not my own story, but an acquaintance from years ago...

He was working nights at a gas station/convenience store, and had a group of usual customers who he got to know the comings and goings of. One man in particular was known to pretty much always wear the same clothes and stood out because he only had one eye and, being poor, wore a patch over the non-functioning eye. He came there every night to buy cigarettes, and also rented movies a couple of times per week. So: the store had his name and address.

One night, old acquaintance was working at the station when eye patch man came in, but was wearing a large paper bag on his head.

Employee: Hey man. Here for your usual smokes?
Patch: No, this is a robbery!
Employee: Haha! Good one. (and proceeds to put this guy's cigarettes on the counter)
Patch: I'm serious! Give me all the money in the drawer!

Eventually, the guy figured out the robbery attempt was real, handed over the money, and then called the police when eye patch man left.

Now, it's pretty stupid to rob a place where you regularly shop and where they have your name on computer as a video renter, but even more dumb than that:

He only cut one eye hole in the paper bag.

Not really a "stupid criminal" more of a "gentleman robber" actually...
I went out at like 2 in the morning to buy cigarettes, tried a few shops but they were all closed. While walking home in sorrow I was accosted by a young man with a knife, who asked quite politely for for all my money... I was a very poor backpacker at the time and the $50 in my pocket was pretty much the last of my money for the month. I showed the guy my empty wallet hoping he would leave it at that but he noticed my bus-pass and decided to take that instead. He then handed me 2 cigarettes and apologised for the "inconvenience" and walked away.

In a state of semi-shock i realised that without my bus-pass i had no way of getting the 5am bus to work and expressed my frustration out loud. The guy came back and asked me what was wrong, after I explained he handed me back my bus-pass and said "we've all got to make a living somehow".

An Aussie guy I know was out drinking in Canada with another Aussie mate, his mate left early to go back to the flat they were sharing in Vancouver and was accosted in a dark alley by two men with knives.

Being absolutely drunk he failed to pick up on the men's intent, or their knives and simply pushed them aside saying "Nah sorry mate, I'm Australian" and continued to go home.

The poor fellow later realized that he'd just brushed off two armed muggers by tell them he was Australian and ignoring them..

There were two guys from my high school that robbed a little convenience store. They had ski masks and the robbery went pretty smoothly for them. But they also decided to wear their letterman coats with their names on the back. They were later arrested.

In college I worked as a Loss Prevention guy for one of the Big Boxes, you know, sit in a little room and watch cameras to catch shoplifters.

We were having a problem with customer's wallets being stolen out of the Men's fitting rooms. The victim would go in, try on a new pair of pants, come out to show his wife and when he went back into the fitting room his wallet would be gone.

So one afternoon I get a call from the sales staff about a fight in the Men's fitting room. I run down there to find a 6'2" black guy with a 5'2" white guy in a headlock. The black guy caught the white guy coming out of his room with his wallet. Turns out the black guy's "wallet" was his Secret Service badge and credentials.

Ooops.

Blows to the head.

You know how in movies, you always see guys being knocked out with a blow to the back of the head? Maybe it's the hero, taking down guards in a non-lethal way. Maybe it's the bad guy, knocking the hero out with the b**t of a rifle or something.

...Yeah... for the record, if you've been knocked unconscious from blunt force trauma to the head, you've likely suffered a bad concussion, or a minor case of serious brain damage. When James Bond knocks a guy out, drags him to a closet, and leaves him there for hours? That guy isn't going to wake up, be embarrassed about falling asleep in a random place while on the clock, and never tell anyone about it. Left untreated, he's probably going to die.