People Are Sharing What Random Scams They Pulled Off At Work Without Being Caught (30 Posts)
Interview With AuthorNo matter how disciplined you are and how much you like to keep to the straight and narrow path, everyone has their limits. At some point, you’ll be exhausted and faced with such a huge workload, you won’t be able to pull through if you don’t get a bit… creative.
Twitter user Rohit from Mumbai asked his followers to share the random scams that they’ve pulled at work to lessen the load and help them relax. And, wow, did they deliver. Have a read through them below and let us know what you think of them. Have you ever had to hustle your way through a work or school day? Share your thoughts with all the other Pandas in the comments.
These small tricks are a bit in the moral grey area, but they’re bound to help you pull through at work or in school if you’re ever backed into a corner. Don’t overuse them, though, Pandas—shortcuts are only temporary solutions to emergencies. I firmly believe that being able to work hard no matter the circumstances is what truly helps you grow, at the end of the day. (But having some sort of a safety net isn’t too bad, either.)
I reached out to standup comedian and writer Rohit who was kind enough to learn more about the inspiration behind his Twitter post. "I generally do ask people questions from time to time on my Twitter profile. This was one of the first projects I ever worked on in my professional career, way back in 2012, so it's always memorable," he told Bored Panda.
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At my company we just tell them we can’t, or in rare cases we charge them double and get overtime pay.
On the other hand, the boss might just think you're unable to grasp what he was asking and might've given up trying.
Rohit told me that he didn't think that his post would get this much attention on Twitter. However, he was glad that it did. "It was interesting to see so many people sharing similar stories," he said.
I was curious to find out Rohit's stance on hustling and relying on scams vs. working hard and fair all the time. In his opinion, there's a time and a place for both of these philosophies. You have to have both of them in your arsenal and apply them as needed based on the situation you're in.
"I think one should try to do their best, however, there are times where you deal with unreasonable expectations and constant 'changes' which can bring morale down so this was one way to overcome that for me," he explained.
I had a friend who worked in a company where if you booked a meeting room they would make sure there was tea, coffee and biscuits laid out before you arrived. So almost every week, he would book a meeting with himself for late Friday afternoon. Then he would spend the last few hours before the weekend relaxing and snacking in the meeting room.
Rohit’s thread quickly got the attention of people on Reddit and amassed over 7k likes and over 700 retweets. People were very open about the random scams that they pulled at work and at school which just goes to show that these shortcuts might be more common than we might think.
The problem with these tricks, shortcuts, and scams is that you might get used to them being a part of your daily life. Eventually, given enough time, they might become a habit or even a crutch that you keep relying on even though there’s no need. And any semblance of hard work and its benefits goes out the window. Though, as Rohit pointed out to us, sometimes it's necessary to take shortcuts.
Hope she didn’t leave anything in it. A couple times over the years, at a couple different companies, I’ve had stuff stolen out of my purse while I was still in the office (but had gone to the bathroom, or was stuck in a meeting).
Sure, using shortcuts means that you’ll have more free time for yourself, but on the flip side, that means that you’re no longer putting in the effort to excel at your job. Of course, that could mean that it might be time for a career change or to start being more proactive and showing initiative.
‘Hired’ explains that we might feel like we’re unchallenged at work because of both the company we work at and due to individual reasons. Figuring out where the problem lies is the first step to reenergizing your work life.
A prof told my class we could use notes printed both sides on any 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper for our final exam. I used a 6 point font and tiny margins - got most of my notes on that sheet. :) I was the only one who aced the test.
If you start taking initiative to learn new things, grow within the company, and show some ambition, your actions are bound to get noticed by your coworkers. This might lead to overall greater job satisfaction as you take on more and new responsibilities.
Have an honest and open chat with your team and your manager about your role at the company. Without dialogue, you can’t expect things to change much. Set out your expectations and ask your coworkers for some advice on how to get a bit of energy back into your workday. After all, if you’re truly passionate about your work, you won’t be looking for shortcuts.
Instead, you’ll be enjoying the ride and using the opportunity to better yourself. (Though also having a hustle mentality can be helpful in a pinch when the going gets extremely tough!)
He was obviously not paying too much close attention. That’s on him. Though it’s too bad too many bosses are like this. How TF do they get the jobs on the first place?
This is a good way to embarrass yourself at my company. If we find out you’re sending stuff at 2am, we’ll have a lot of questions about how you ended up in that situation and what’s in your schedule over the next few days. We also have paid overtime, so if you make it look like you worked nonstop from 6pm to 2am, either the truth will be revealed in your overtime file and you’ll look ridiculous for lying, or you’ll be defrauding the company. This whole thing is completely cringe to me.
Unfortunately, most companies don't work like that. :(
Load More Replies...Exaclty. Automate it and go to sleep. Requires a laptop that is on though.
Load More Replies...In addition to others' comments, the file itself will automatically have the "created" and "modified" dates in it. So if you just send it at 2am but it says "last updated 6pm" that's pretty dumb. Yes, you could do some last modification at 2am and then send it, but that's not what the OP said.
Agreed. Now they will expect that they can give you an assignment at 6pm .
Load More Replies...I'm a graphic artist and always sit on my work for at least a day before sending it. If my clients knew how quickly I work they'd all be asking for reduced rates.
So... he's waking up in the middle of the night to do something that could've been done during the day. Yeah, he sure has shown them! I never understand people who think having no life outside of work is something to actually strive for.
If you don't do this kind of thing they will pile more and more work on you - most companies don't pay enough for that bs
lol, this means you have no idea how to manage your time and work tasks, so basically speaks very bad of your work behaviour (in the companies in my country)
Sometimes a better intro and conclusion make all the difference. To the boss.
This runs right up next to "You aren't senior enough for me to listen too". I see this in companies all the time. Costs them lots of money too, as ideas/recommendations are ignored until, weeks/months later a senior member "thinks" of it on their own.
Yup - if there's one word that describes why the human race never has - and never will - reach its full potential, that word is: 'Meetings'
This happens all the time. Some audio level needs to be between -22 and -26dB, but it's quite consistently between -21 and -25. Time to change the spec!
I add phrases like "in accordance with the prophecy" and "Great Scott" and other musings to see if the higher-ups are reading my draft,s as they are supposed to. I also do it on the way downstream to make sure THEY also read it.
That's not exactly a scam though... I mean professional writers have been using software to dictate copy for years.
If you cited and referenced stuff properly then you wouldn't need to cheat.
What stands out the most to me is how much pointless work is being produced for managers who don't actually know about or understand the content. What's the point?
A friend of mine audited an accounting department for a pharmaceutical firm, and found that they were spending nearly 100 hours per month preparing special reports which had been demanded by managers who were no longer with the company. They prepared the reports and sent them to the relevant departments, where they were never read and were just tossed.
Load More Replies...the CFO of one company where I worked had almost nothing to do (because the CEO was a micromanager), and he used to come up with the strangest assignments for me; after a while I learned how to tell which ones were worth my time and which ones I could ignore because he would never ask about them again
he went on to become a one-term member of Congress
Load More Replies...When I was in college, I had a job reshelving books. Each book cart had three shelves on each side, but only the top two were generally used. My friend moved books from one cart to the bottom shelves of others, making it look like he had shelved hundreds of books. He was promoted to a desk job for his "excellent" work, while I was stuck shelving books for two years. Our friendship did not last long.
That's really terrible. I also shelved books in college, and it really isn't that difficult or time consuming to file an entire cart back into the stacks.
Load More Replies...May not have been a scam per-se but years ago I regularly attended and provided data for meetings. We used excel so nothing but long lists of numbers and there would be hours of discussion over which department was responsible for what. Then the ability to create pie charts was added to Excel (it was years ago!). I presented the data as pie charts, the meeting was over in under half an hour and no one even looked to see if my data was correct.
In science class last year, when my teacher would assign an essay or essay type work, (on Google Docs) he would have certain requirements (12 point font size, Ariel font, 1.5 spacing)
Imagine the world where these people apply their efforts to create actual progress!
How much do you want to keep your job? As for over demanding clients, as long as you don't charge them for the imaginary changes -- why not? There are people who will never approve the first few submissions.
All I see are a lot of ways to be fired. Only a few on here are actually funny but the rest just weren't.
Whenever the word “client” was written, I saw Clint. So I was wondering for most of the post whether Clint was a universal name for scammed clients or not…
I worked in the sports department at a major newspaper, starting at the bottom by doing agate (standings, box scores, etc.). The work was shortening the city names (for example, San Francisco became San Fran or just S.F.) and player names (an example today would be Giannis Antetokounmpo) to fit into the boxes, and then inserting proper spaces to make sure everything lined up perfectly in the paper. This was in the late '80s and early '90s, and our computers were fairly primitive, so we had edit manually, which was ridiculously tedious. But I noticed the the computers came with save strings, which were basically lines of code that could be run through a document and automatically do changes (like the font size). I dug out a manual, followed the instructions for building save strings, but put in all the city and player names we frequently encountered. Bingo. I would watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 reruns on TV while the computer did my work for me.
my language teacher wants a summary of a book, topic doesnt matter, she only wants to see our ability making paragraph smoothly my other teacher wants a summary of a book about life of traditional tribe in my country i made 2 copy of 1 summary, sent it to both teacher, passed with satisfactory result
In other words, everyone writing in this post was utterly dishonest, and it never fazed them, nor does it likely do so now, and they maintain their extremely low standards of performance. Pathetic, adults in the working world and as college students, doing such bull excrement!
WildBerry- Insult the Desis One. More. Time. I f*****g dare you. You will have an angry thirteen-year old with three black belts in taekwondo coming for your racist ass.
I used to work in a small market research company as the combined research assistant and receptionist. I was responsible for collating and proofreading all the incoming information, and calculating some of the statistics. The male boss was easygoing, but lady boss was hard to work for a majority of the time. I remember one time, we had a new survey data pack come in, and I had a bit of free time (totally unusual), so I prepared one of the standard files a couple of days before it was needed - and she told me off for wasting time. Then 3 days later the same week, she asked me for that very file. *shakes head*
Huh. I never did those things with essays. Regardless of ones opinion on essay word count requirements, the requirements challenge your brain, which is exactly what higher education is suppose to do. Rise to the occasion and expand your skills instead of taking the lazy way out.
I know of someone who joined the work from home program in a big company but it for a certain location where she didn't live,so she put her friend's address as her own and flew down to that location for the day to get the eqipments and goodies for training and flew back and now she's been working from home.WhI dunno what this is but scame?
Had a boss who would print emails and have me file them in binders. She was older and not very computer literate. Oh so many binders! That's when I learned that the paper shredded is your friend.
Yes, and that is precisely WHY I read it! I am now much more informed on the achievements of the lazy, devious minds that take money for nothing! Aka: steal from their employers!
Load More Replies...What stands out the most to me is how much pointless work is being produced for managers who don't actually know about or understand the content. What's the point?
A friend of mine audited an accounting department for a pharmaceutical firm, and found that they were spending nearly 100 hours per month preparing special reports which had been demanded by managers who were no longer with the company. They prepared the reports and sent them to the relevant departments, where they were never read and were just tossed.
Load More Replies...the CFO of one company where I worked had almost nothing to do (because the CEO was a micromanager), and he used to come up with the strangest assignments for me; after a while I learned how to tell which ones were worth my time and which ones I could ignore because he would never ask about them again
he went on to become a one-term member of Congress
Load More Replies...When I was in college, I had a job reshelving books. Each book cart had three shelves on each side, but only the top two were generally used. My friend moved books from one cart to the bottom shelves of others, making it look like he had shelved hundreds of books. He was promoted to a desk job for his "excellent" work, while I was stuck shelving books for two years. Our friendship did not last long.
That's really terrible. I also shelved books in college, and it really isn't that difficult or time consuming to file an entire cart back into the stacks.
Load More Replies...May not have been a scam per-se but years ago I regularly attended and provided data for meetings. We used excel so nothing but long lists of numbers and there would be hours of discussion over which department was responsible for what. Then the ability to create pie charts was added to Excel (it was years ago!). I presented the data as pie charts, the meeting was over in under half an hour and no one even looked to see if my data was correct.
In science class last year, when my teacher would assign an essay or essay type work, (on Google Docs) he would have certain requirements (12 point font size, Ariel font, 1.5 spacing)
Imagine the world where these people apply their efforts to create actual progress!
How much do you want to keep your job? As for over demanding clients, as long as you don't charge them for the imaginary changes -- why not? There are people who will never approve the first few submissions.
All I see are a lot of ways to be fired. Only a few on here are actually funny but the rest just weren't.
Whenever the word “client” was written, I saw Clint. So I was wondering for most of the post whether Clint was a universal name for scammed clients or not…
I worked in the sports department at a major newspaper, starting at the bottom by doing agate (standings, box scores, etc.). The work was shortening the city names (for example, San Francisco became San Fran or just S.F.) and player names (an example today would be Giannis Antetokounmpo) to fit into the boxes, and then inserting proper spaces to make sure everything lined up perfectly in the paper. This was in the late '80s and early '90s, and our computers were fairly primitive, so we had edit manually, which was ridiculously tedious. But I noticed the the computers came with save strings, which were basically lines of code that could be run through a document and automatically do changes (like the font size). I dug out a manual, followed the instructions for building save strings, but put in all the city and player names we frequently encountered. Bingo. I would watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 reruns on TV while the computer did my work for me.
my language teacher wants a summary of a book, topic doesnt matter, she only wants to see our ability making paragraph smoothly my other teacher wants a summary of a book about life of traditional tribe in my country i made 2 copy of 1 summary, sent it to both teacher, passed with satisfactory result
In other words, everyone writing in this post was utterly dishonest, and it never fazed them, nor does it likely do so now, and they maintain their extremely low standards of performance. Pathetic, adults in the working world and as college students, doing such bull excrement!
WildBerry- Insult the Desis One. More. Time. I f*****g dare you. You will have an angry thirteen-year old with three black belts in taekwondo coming for your racist ass.
I used to work in a small market research company as the combined research assistant and receptionist. I was responsible for collating and proofreading all the incoming information, and calculating some of the statistics. The male boss was easygoing, but lady boss was hard to work for a majority of the time. I remember one time, we had a new survey data pack come in, and I had a bit of free time (totally unusual), so I prepared one of the standard files a couple of days before it was needed - and she told me off for wasting time. Then 3 days later the same week, she asked me for that very file. *shakes head*
Huh. I never did those things with essays. Regardless of ones opinion on essay word count requirements, the requirements challenge your brain, which is exactly what higher education is suppose to do. Rise to the occasion and expand your skills instead of taking the lazy way out.
I know of someone who joined the work from home program in a big company but it for a certain location where she didn't live,so she put her friend's address as her own and flew down to that location for the day to get the eqipments and goodies for training and flew back and now she's been working from home.WhI dunno what this is but scame?
Had a boss who would print emails and have me file them in binders. She was older and not very computer literate. Oh so many binders! That's when I learned that the paper shredded is your friend.
Yes, and that is precisely WHY I read it! I am now much more informed on the achievements of the lazy, devious minds that take money for nothing! Aka: steal from their employers!
Load More Replies...