Let’s be real, not everyone’s cut out for a life of crime. Career criminals have to be smart, fearless, and have a healthy disregard for the law. Of course, every now and then, someone comes along who proves it’s best left to the professionals.
One guy turned to an online community to ask if he’d be a jerk to keep stealing from his local convenience store. You see, he thought he’d stumbled upon the perfect scam, but after an update to his original post, netizens couldn’t stop giggling.
More info: Reddit
Being a successful career criminal takes a lot of guts, a cool head under pressure, and some serious smarts
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
One guy, who thought he was scamming his local convenience store, turned to netizens to ask if continuing to do so made him a jerk
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
When commenters called him out on it, he admitted he didn’t really care what they said because he just wanted to keep getting free stuff
Image credits: Oscar Ramirez / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Then, in an update to his original post, the guy revealed that the only person he was fooling was himself
Image credits: Spiritual-Stay-5573 / Reddit (not the actual photo)
He’d accidentally mixed up the store rewards card with a gift card he’d been given by his mom and had been using that to “beat the system”
Image credits: unusually_hard
His big heist came screeching to a halt when he got to the cashier, though, leaving him with a story, and a bill, that left netizens screaming with laughter
For a brief, glorious moment, the original poster (OP) thought they’d cracked the code to eternal free snacks. After using what he thought was his convenience store rewards card, his total came to zero. Not once, but every time. Naturally, netizens had thoughts when OP asked if it was wrong to keep quiet about his sneaky little secret.
The mysterious discount felt like hitting the jackpot. Who wouldn’t want unlimited boiled eggs, questionable hot dogs, and lukewarm coffee, all for zip? For days, OP strutted into that store like a VIP, thinking he’d unlocked the ultimate rewards glitch. He even joked that he felt like he had “the most power in the entire world.”
But then, tragedy, or maybe justice, struck. On OP’s next visit, he confidently piled up snacks, swiped the “magic” card again, and, suddenly, the cashier told him he still owed $43.82. Turns out, it wasn’t a rewards card at all; it was a long-forgotten gift card from his mom, now completely drained. So much for a free ride.
In the hilarious update to his original post, OP confessed he’d thought he’d had it all, the rewards card that wouldn’t stop rewarding, maybe even the world, but now he just has a lot of eggs. Nutrition? Sorted. Dreams of being a criminal mastermind with a never-ending snack stash? Crushed.
Image credits: Zhen Yao / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Just when OP thought he’d won the golden ticket, his self-proclaimed crime spree came to a screeching halt. Getting called out by the internet for basically scamming the store didn't stop him from doing it over and over again, though. Psychologists call this moral rationalization, but just how does it work? We went digging for answers.
Leon F Seltzer (PhD) over at Psychology Today explains that moral rationalization basically means interpreting your bad behavior as way more justified or appropriate than it actually is. The not-so-great news? It's something we've all been guilty of at one point or another, whether we want to admit it or not.
Seltzer breaks it down nicely: we find ways of rationalizing unethical deeds so we can keep feeling good about ourselves, even in the face of behavior that doesn’t make us look good - or that we’d be quick to judge others for. Simply put, it’s one of the worst (and most persistent) flaws of human nature.
The experts from TalkSpace say that people may use rationalization for several reasons, including avoiding cognitive dissonance (that thing that happens when our thoughts and beliefs don’t match), preventing disappointment, skipping self-analysis, deflecting blame, hiding mistakes, or straight-up denying reality.
OP knew that what he was doing (or at least what he thought he was doing) wasn’t above board, or he wouldn’t have reached out to netizens to ask. Here’s hoping his egg-laden lesson will make him think twice before he plans another hilarious heist.
What would you have done if you’d found yourself in OP’s shoes? Have you ever found a glitch you thought you could successfully exploit? Share your thoughts in the comments!
In the comments, the jury was still out on whether or not the original poster was a jerk, but readers all seemed to agree his short spell as a criminal mastermind was hilarious
