Oh man. I've always wanted to tell this story. When I was in high school I worked at this sport shop/gas station. Like the downstairs area was a convenience store and gas station, and then this huge upstairs area was a sporting goods store selling everything from fishing lures to firearms. Well, the owners were incredibly stingy and though they had cameras everywhere, I came to learn that these cameras were not active. It used to be the shift manager's responsibility to change the tapes and reset the timer or something at the end of every night, and at some point the system needed to be updated or replaced or something and the owners were too cheap to do it.
So I start working there as an idiot 16 year old and it's about 6 months later that I figured this out. So naturally I start just grabbing candy and soda and whatever I wanted off the shelves. Of course, thieving little bastards are creatures of habit so this becomes a daily thing. And naturally, I'm curious how far I can push it and I start going upstairs to swipe hunting gear--gloves, hats, etc. Eventually I have a pretty awesome set of top of the line gear because, as I said, nothing was ever double checked.
I should also mention that inventory was taken once every year, in January, and done entirely by hand because the cheapskates couldn't be bothered to pay for a modern point-of-sale system that tracked this stuff.
At this point in time I decide it's time to turn this venture into a money making enterprise. Cigarettes were obviously the most popular thing in the convenience store. The pricing and taxes were always adjusted so most packs fell on even dollar amounts--$6.00, $7.25, $5.50--and people paid in exact change often. These people always just threw the money down, grabbed their pack and walked out, typically before I had even completed the transaction. So I'd just not finish ringing up the sale, and pocket the money. Some days I could head home with five or six times my daily pay in cash... but I needed more.
The POS system we had allowed you to go back and void entire transactions after the fact using your individually assigned employee code. Well, after working at this place for two effing years, I had pretty much learned everybody's codes. So when I got a big sale, say like for a fishing rod for a couple hundred bucks and the guy paid with cash without taking a receipt... I'd thank him, run the transaction, and then use some other employee's code to void the transaction and pocket the money.
I ended up working at this place for four years. I probably ended up making like $10,000 from this little scheme. Nothing as crazy as some of these stories, but for a 16-19 year old that's huge money. I used it to gamble a ton when I turned 18, I bought my first car with this money... I always had so much more money than I knew what to do with.
Fast forward to the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. I'd been there four years before going to school so I walked in, told the manager I was back in town, and she hired me back on the spot and handed me all of the keys to the place. However, there was a new general manager in town. This dude hated me... he had convinced the owners they couldn't operate a business like that without a working security system. Smart call, you blonde fuck. Obviously I wasn't deterred. I knew the place like the back of my hand. I knew exactly how wide the scope of the cameras was and where their blind spots were, because I was now a manager and got access to everything. Anyway, the GM and I probably had one on one meetings a dozen times that summer. He never directly accused me of stealing but he was convinced that I should not have been a manager and that I was letting people hang out at the store after hours and eat free junk food (I was, duh). He never got any evidence or caught me doing anything wrong, but that motherfucker was so on top of every move I made when he was working it was terrifying.
So summer ends, I go to school again, and we move onto next summer. I go back into the store to get my guaranteed job back and the manager says I have to go speak to the GM, who informs me that he's already thought about it and will not be hiring me again. No specific reasoning, they literally had help wanted signs everywhere, just said he knew I'd be coming back and just didn't want to hire me.
He's since been fired and every time I'm back in town I stop in to say hi to the owners. They love me and wish I'd never left. I know it's not as exciting or funny as some of these stories but man, I carried this little enterprise on for four years scot-free. Probably the most impressive thing I've done...