You Know You're a Pathetic Loser When...

...You try to scam a Taco Bell Cashier out of $12.

It's about 7 pm, Thursday night, and I'm working the drive-thru window at my Taco Bell. It's fairly busy, several cars already in the lane, and more coming. I have a customer at my window paying for his order, and at the same time, a man in a van pulls up to the order menu, places his order, rolls up his window, and pulls forward so that he is past the speaker and right behind the car at the window that I am giving the change to. He does this before I have a chance to repeat back his order (though I heard his order perfectly clear...1 Fiesta taco salad combo, with Pepsi, and 1 bean burrito kids meal, no red sauce, with a Pepsi).

I repeat back his order anyway just for the sake of saying that I did, even though I know he won't hear me...but I figure he might realize his mistake and roll down his window again so he can hear what I am saying. He doesn't.

So I finish giving the change to the customer at the window, and they pull up to the second window. The van man comes up to my window, and hands me a $20 bill. His order comes out to be $8.27. I ring it up, put the $20 in my drawer, take out $11.73 for his change, and I go to hand it to him, and everything changes...

(Obviously I don't remember the exact words that were said, but they are pretty accurate, give or take a few words)

Loser: "You got Pepsi on both of the bean burrito kids meals, right?"
Me: "Both? Didn't you just order 1 kids meal?"
Loser: "No! I ordered 2 bean burrito kids meals, no sauce, with pepsi."
Me: "Ok...well, I read your order back to you, but...
Loser: (His voice is getting progressively louder this whole time, bordering on shouting) "I ordered 4 combos:" (He holds up four fingers to better illustrate his point) "2 bean burrito kids meals, and 2 fiesta taco salad combos, all four with pepsi."
Me: "You want four combos???"
Loser: "Yes, four."
Me: "Ok..."


At this point, I'm just staring at him disbelievingly because I know he ordered 1 of each. And I was bewildered at his rising temper...I couldn't understand why he was getting so angry...so your order wasn't taken right, it's not the end of the world. There seemed to be something weird going on.

I then try to hand him his change so I can ring up the other 2 combo meals.

Loser: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I'm giving you your change so I can put the other combos on a new order."
Loser: "No! You messed up my order, I want my money back.

I almost laugh at this point because of the absurdity of his request. Basically, because I didn't include 4 combos altogether in his order (and I am 100% sure he only ordered 2 combos...plus he did not even attempt to listen to me repeat his order, so it's not even my fault) and then when he finds out what happened, he doesn't even want his food anymore...he just wants his money back.

So I give him another "are you really that stupid?" look, and tell him to hold on, as I get my manager. I go tell my manager, Thaddus, a brief summary of what happened, and he goes over there and talks to the "customer", while I stand a few feet away parallel to the window where I can see Thaddus talking to the customer, but the customer can't see me.

Thaddus goes up to the window, and says in a questioning tone, "What? You got your order wrong?"

I hear the guy talking to him, but I don't catch many words. When I talked to Thaddus later, he said that the guy basically said that I screwed up his order and that he wanted his money back. Also, I managed to catch one tidbit of their conversation.

I hear Thaddus repeat something back to the customer that I assume the customer had just said to him:
"He was impolite and rude?"

...My jaw drops. I think to myself: I was rude? I WAS RUDE??? What gives him the right to tell my manager a blatant lie like that? I was never rude to him in any way. I gave him a few quizzical looks after some of his inane comments, but nothing more. My voice wasn't bordering on shouting like his was. How the heck was I rude?

Anyway, Thaddus eventually realizes the only thing to do is give him back his money, so he checks with me first to make sure that the guy gave me a $20, and that I still have the change...so that this guy doesn't get away with more than he came in with. So he gives him his $20 back, and he leaves.

Thaddus turns around, and enlightens me about what had just happened. Apparently, he has seen that exact same guy come through the drive-thru before, at another Taco Bell he used to work at. He did the exact same thing there too. He ordered his order wrong on purpose, then he came up to the window, did his little performance while getting angrier and yelling, and said he wanted his money back, only that time, Thaddus had given him his change already. So Thaddus asked him for the change back so he could give him his $20 that he paid with, and the guy refused. So Thaddus said, give me back the change, and I'll give you back your $20. Seeing that his scam didn't work with him, he did what Thaddus asked and drove off.

Thaddus told me that when it happened there, he was thinking...Why is this guy getting so upset? And I laughed and told him I was thinking that too.

Basically, what this guy does is:
He orders some food, doesn't allow the cashier to repeat it back, comes up to the window, complains when the cashier gets his order "wrong", starts shouting and getting angry to try and intimidate the cashier into screwing up and giving not only his money back (the $20), but also the change from the $20, effectively scamming $10+ off of the cashier (and Thaddus explained to me that a lot of times it works because many Taco Bell cashiers are not fluent in English and get confused when people start shouting things at them, so they make mistakes and give too much money back)

The guy never even has the intention of buying food. He is just doing it to steal a few bucks from unsuspecting cashiers. And it obviously works or else he would have stopped a while ago (He did it to Thaddus about 4 months ago, so who knows how long he had been doing it up until then...and how long will he continue to do it?).

So it was just a really eye-opening experience for me. I couldn't believe that this pathetic loser actually makes a living off of scamming Taco Bell restaurants (and probably other fast-food restaurants) out of $12 a pop. Fortunately, I was aware of what I was doing and was smart enough not to be tricked by his scam.

The really weird (and almost creepy) thing about this whole ordeal is:
When Thaddus was closing my drawer, he made a refund on it so that I wouldn't end up being $8.27 short from the food that was "sold" on my register but which was never purchased by this guy. When someone does a refund, the register treats it as a whole new order in that it gives it a new order number, but it takes away the monetary responsibility from my drawer.

When the new receipt was printed out showing that $8.27 was taken off of my drawer sales, I looked at it to make sure everything was right, I signed it, and...the order number caught my eye momentarily. I did a double take, and stared at the number.

It was 666.

I thought to myself, "If that's not a sign of things to come, then I don't know what is."

I showed the receipt to Thaddus, and his eyes widen, and he starts to laugh, saying something along the lines of, "Yeah well, it makes sense...he's going to hell anyways."