AIBU to ask what cheeky things you've seen people to do in order to not have to pay

[IronFists234]

First off, this is supposed to be a cheeky fucker thread. This is not a thread laughing at people making attempts to cut back to save money. Just want to make that clear!

This thread is inspired by my friend I went swimming with yesterday. Our local pool does wrist bands that indicate what time you entered, so yellow for 2-4, blue for 4-6, etc...

My friend was very adamant we HAD to go swimming at the 4-6 slot. I didn't question it but found her insistence odd.

It turns out she had blue bands from her last swimming session! She had just kept them and not handed them in

When we entered the pool she shouted "oh don't worry I already have the bands" to the pool employees. So not an outright lie but they assumed she paid!

It's a busy pool as well, so I doubt they notice she hasn't paid

I asked her why she did it and she said she'd paid once and if she could get in for free by keeping the bands, why pay?

any other stories like this?

My father also once said he went to a barbecue where the owner requested everyone bring a 'portion of coal' but I still think that was a joke (or hope)

Fab thread!

My parents are friends with a couple of CFs. Whenever they go on holiday they always contact the hotel in advance to say it’s their anniversary to get something extra and make sure they get allocated the best room.

If they go to any big attractions they will try and ‘tag on’ to a large group/bus trip, and are often ushered through without having to pay.

We’ve had people in our village on cctv take bags of clothes that have been left outside charity shops.

My parents have a Scottish NT membership as it’s cheaper even though they mainly go to English NT places.

Once in my ‘youth’ I was with an ex whose brother and gf had gone to an outdoor concert. He’d come back to get some chairs and they’d stamped his hand. Ex got a sharpie and copied the stamp on mine and his hands so we got in free...

The thing about taking the piss at your employer’s expense, including nicking stuff as MissConduct and others have described, is that once people get it into their heads that other people are doing it, they want a piece of the action too.

It’s fascinating really. Never work in finance if you don’t want to be exposed to people’s worst behaviour, because we see it all.

Example: some years ago, my parents had a problem with ants. My mum happened to mention it to a woman she knew. Don’t worry, said this woman, I’ll bring you a couple of tubes of Nippon ant killer. When my mum tried to pay her for it, she said, no need, I’ve got an entire tray of it at home. We all get it from the hospital stockroom (this lady was a healthcare assistant). Blatant nicking from the NHS.

In one of my previous jobs, a senior and well paid member of staff tried to claim for the cost of a new passport because his had just expired and he was required to go abroad on business. We said no, on the grounds that he would have to renew his passport anyway unless he never planned to leave mainland Britain again. He kicked up an enormous stink, really massive, telling the finance director (my boss) that I ought to be fired. His principal argument was that he knew for certain that somebody else had got their passportpaid for so he should get the same. Public sector, of course. Your taxes.

Another time we had somebody adamant that their entire home phone bill should be paid for. All of it, line rental etc. Why? Because she occasionally worked from home and made calls from her landline, so rather than just claiming the cost of the calls, her employer (public sector again, naturellement) should meet the entire cost. Because she knew FOR CERTAIN that other people had this benefit, and she was ready to die in a ditch over it. She wasn’t missing out.

(She didn’t get it. She probably still sticks pins in a voodoo doll shaped like me, twelve years on).

It’s almost like an ego thing, with more senior people. You WILL do as I say and give me what I want! Even when they earn loads and the amount they are arguing over is derisory. It’s as if they think that they are so special that everybody should bend to their desires.

That’s not news though...Private Eye is full of public sector piss takers!

When I worked in a café a while back we used to get people coming in for a cup of hot water (to take away.) It wasn't charged for because it was just hot water. Then the owner cottoned on that people would come in to get their free hot water then add their own tea bag or spoon full of coffee once they left. So the owner put a stop to the free hot water and said if anyone kicked off just say it would now be the same price as a takeaway tea. Funnily enough nobody asked for a cup of hot water after that!

If buffets are so bad for the income of the provider, you would imagine they would have table service to order instead every time.

Yep.

I’m on a roll now. I’ve got another one.

One of the public sector organisations I worked for used lots of contractors. If they travelled away from their base on business they could claim expenses back, and I told my team to ask for original tickets and receipts to support the claim. That’s because I wanted to remove the risk of the contractors claiming a tax deduction in their own companies for the travel cost that we’d already reimbursed.

The howls of dismay! People kept trying to fob us off with photocopies of rail tickets and restaurant bills, or the ticket collection receipts. Anything to avoid yielding the precious tickets. We took a zero tolerance approach: no original ticket or receipt, no expenses.

The people who argued loudest against this approach were the contactors’ line managers, who were employed by the organisation. They’d sidle up to me and say, X (contractor) is really upset that he can’t put his ticket through his company.

Fucking idiots. It never dawned on them that public services are paid for by, yes, taxes and that they were asking me to collude with them in allowing contractors to defraud HMRC, by claiming a tax deduction for an expense they hadn’t incurred. Even when I patiently explained this to them, they were more concerned about having to deliver the disappointing news to the cheeky bastard contractors than about facilitating stealing from the exchequer!

Some of these are shocking!

We were at the petrol station the other day putting air in the tyres of the car. Put in the 50p and you get 3 minutes or so. Filled up each tyre with air and was waiting for the time to run out so we could use the vacuum when another car pulled up beside us and a man got out. He then took a pram out the boot and went over to the machine and took the air bit and began using it to pump up the wheels on the pram. I wasn't bothered because we were finished but it was obvious we had just paid for it and he didn't even ask or say anything.

Nowhere near as cheeky as some of these other cheeky fuckers though!

Sister sent her Santa list for her DD to the family and said all gifts should be from Santa so she wouldn't have to buy the presents. Ended up nearly all of the extended family didn't buy and send her presents and she had to buy them herself. CF.

Nettle that passport one is interesting. DH has the extra pages in his passport for visa stamps. He wouldn't need them if not for work travel: would your work fund the difference between a basic passport and the one he'd need for their travel? I'm wondering if that "someone else" had that kind of reimbursement rather than a full passport paid for.

pump up the wheels on the pram

Hopefully next time he tries that they'll burst. That's both greedy and stupid.

My twin girls were about 7 years old and my Mother in Law asked them what they would like for their Birthday present from her and my Father in Law, she then spoilt this nice gesture by saying "Nanny doesn't have much money so don't ask for much", she stunned me by this as I thought what an awful thing to say as we know my Father in Law pays tax on his/their pensions, I wish I had had the balls and told her to not bother.

My parents have a Scottish NT membership as it’s cheaper even though they mainly go to English NT places.

My parents did this (although NI membership rather than England), as they really only have 1 NT place nearby, and would have to visit it loads for membership to be worth the NI price. However, they've discovered that the local place doesn't get any money from their visit if they use the Scottish membership, so they're going to pay the extra to get the NI membership when they renew.

Blodplod that documentary was really eye opening. I read up about that scumbag online and he appeared in the local newspaper as a food bank scammer and did get quite a lot of grief. Makes you wonder how many other people are doing this?
I will not let this put me off however and I still regularly donate sanitary products as period poverty must be horrific to deal with.

Nanny doesn't have much money so don't ask for much", she stunned me by this as I thought what an awful thing to say as we know my Father in Law pays tax on his/their pensions, I wish I had had the balls and told her to not bother.

Not sure what this means? Do you mean they have a massive pension?

I don't think it's cheeky that they do not want to buy expensive presents, money may be tight?

These are oh my. Made me remember something from a decade ago.

An "administrator" (local services) had been submitting massive expenses every month just pennies under the sign off threshold - as they thought the limit meant they were meant to spend it (perk of the job ). It was nearly £12k of envelopes, office gadgets, a couple of laptops - before they got caught.

The organisation was so embarrassed they swept it under the carpet and reduced the £1000 a month cap on expenses to a £10.

The person resigned left post and unfortunately kept all the office kit as it was in their home - they said as they had, it was theirs. Still can't believe they didn't know they couldn't spend all that money every month on themselves General home office supplies

The local service almost went bankrupt due to serious lack of funds. Jobs that were meant to be paid from the local tax pot, had to be done by volunteers

When I worked in Woolies this bloke bought a DVD player back claiming it was faulty and wanted a refund. I couldn’t do refunds so got my manager. As she was processing it I said shall I go through the box to make sure everything was there, bloke got shifty and manager said no because it’s faulty. When he left she lifted the box up and noticed how light it was and realised the box was empty

See I think that getting a pack lunch out of a hotel breakfast buffet is fair game. I’ve been at hotels where they give you a little baggie to put a cheese roll and a piece of fruit into, especially in remote places or mountains or whatever when you are hiking or skiing and can’t get any other food. They put out way too much stuff anyway to make the buffet look full so there must be loads of waste.

When I worked at a hotel many years ago the only thing we reacted to was turist bagging loaves of bread! People making a pack lunch was fine though, or taking. Some fruit for snacks was also fine, but not taking everything

How’s this for cf-ery. Someone stole my bouquet and my bridesmaids’ bouquets from my wedding. Wedding was in the middle of nowhere so it was either a member of the family or very close friend.

Public sector workers have to produce receipts and are compensated to the penny on what has been spent and not a penny more. I've worked somewhere where normal protocol is that if you normal take lunch in, you can't claim it when you're working away from home.

The CF are MPs and Lords and their immoral stealing from public funds.

An example of thresholds for public sector workers is maximum claimable subsidence is £25 for 24 hours - receipts /actual spend applies.

Consultants can claim whatever rate their own organisation has agreed. Even is this is a daily reimbursable rate of 000s, they can reclaim this from the tax payers.

House of Lords "Daily Allowance Members of the House of Lords who are not paid a salary may claim a daily allowance of £300 (or may elect to claim a reduced daily allowance of £150) for each day if House of Lords records show that Members attended a sitting of the House that day or undertook qualifying work away from Westminster. It is for the individual Member to decide whether a claim for the daily allowance is made at
the full rate, the reduced rate or not claimed at all." Cheeky fuckers

Speaking of contractors to the public sector, back when I ran the local community centre we had to use the ones the council had chosen. Practically every time they came to repair something, a small fault would be left behind so they could be sure of billing twice for the same job

They weren't usually prompt for anything but when I finally told the workmen I knew exactly what they were doing, a phone call was made and their manager howled into the car park practically on two wheels in his haste to explain I'd "got it all wrong"

A few Christmases ago we hosted 40 people (family and extended family) for Christmas Day (provided pretty much all of the food and drink) and then the same people for Boxing Day (a tipsy DH invited them all back as they were leaving on Christmas night, and, much to his surprise, they all accepted the invitation!) plus a few extras. Once again, we catered the whole event on Boxing Day, including a particular brand of expensive champagne that is the only one SIL drinks (she didn’t bring anything to drink, just drank our wine, lots of it). A few weeks later, SIL invited close family around for a party to celebrate DNiece’s birthday...and asked all attendees (all of whom had been at ours for Christmas Day and Boxing Day) to bring their own meat for the BBQ and own drinks. She was happy to eat, drink (very well) and be merry for two days at my house, but didn’t want to put on a plate of sandwiches and a glass of prosecco for her daughter’s birthday party.

I've just seen a popular youtuber from the UK bragging about making a fake student ID on Photoshop to get student discounts.

@wheresyouwheeliebin - amazed at such cheeky fuckery but then again not so much after years and years of entertaining certain people without so much as an invitation to theirs for a. Cuppa- but mostly I wanted to say your user bane is my husbands favourite joke! So lovely.. great great name in my very humble opinion

User name not bane!

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