I stole hundreds of dollars for years by manipulating a kiosk at a grocery store.

When I was 16, my dad forced me to get a job to put some gas money in my pocket to drive my car. He made me apply at a grocery store, and they hired me instantly.<br><br>My first few weeks were pretty lame, having to answer questions from customers, and cleaning up after people who left their carts in the middle of the parking lot. I was assigned to a department, produce, which was equally as lame. Then, one day, I got the opportunity to work for a few hours at the express lane registers. This was my calling, I thought. I loved working the registers, interacting with the regular customers, and I felt like I was doing something useful. <br><br>Anyway, one of the ways the grocery store made a lot of money was by offering a discount on certain items, provided you bought the required number of items. For example, a 24 pack of diet coke would be on sale if you bought two of them. There was a code you would enter for the discount, and then you had to type in the number of the items, followed by enter. Then, you had to select the discount on the screen, and then hit total. If you did this in the wrong order, you wouldn't get the discount, unless you adapted the method slightly. This is where the theft part comes in. <br><br>If you entered the code for the discount, hit the discount on the screen, and hit total without typing in the number of the items, it would give you the discount, plus let the employee edit the total number of the items, without ever having actually scanned them. This is important because the specific items being discounted were selected by the managers, and the managers never really paid enough attention to make sure that the items being discounted were actually items that the grocery store was getting a discount on themselves. <br><br>In other words, the pricing of the items we were selling might have been as follows: item A (full price $1.80 per item) 24 pk of item A $40, and 2 for $35. You would enter the code for the discount, select the discount for 2 item As, and then hit total. You would then edit the quantity from 1 to 2, scan a single item A, and then you've technically sold two items, at a discounted rate (let's just say $17.50), for a price you know is lower than the actual cost price of 2 items A. <br><br>At the time, I didn't really think much of this, I just thought it was a pointless gimic, and most of our customers were smart enough to know how to scan their items, and would never use the discounts because they took so long to use. <br><br>One time, I had a regular customer come in and buy 2 twelve packs of coca-cola, and I used the above method, without scanning the second twelve pack, and the customer never even noticed. I took the second twelve pack, threw it in the trash, and hauled it out to the dumpster. I did this repeatedly, at least twice a day, five days a week, for slightly over 3 years. I never got caught, and always made sure to cover my tracks. <br><br>Now, I'm not saying I was a thief, and I stole hundreds of dollars every day, but if I had to make an educated guess, I would say that I stole at least $400 per month, by manipulating the kiosk and stealing cases of soda.