The Most Incredible Ways People Outsmarted the System

7. Happy Birthday!

This was probably my crowning achievement in high school. I had an accounting teacher who was known to be tough as nails, especially when she would mark things.

We had an end-of-year project that was worth a very large portion of our overall mark, something like 25%. The one quirk this teacher had as she loved a singer named John McDermott. He’s a Canadian guy who sings songs like Danny Boy and older crooner things. Often appears in Rita McNeils Christmas specials. Anyways, she had a poster of the guy in the classroom.

I found out he was coming to town around her birthday, and sent him an email, just telling him how much my teacher loved him etc. He said he was flattered, and told me if I came to the venue while he was doing sound check, he would record a little video of him singing happy birthday and sign a card. I am flabbergasted, and go to the venue and get the card. He turns out to be the nicest guy ever and says he wants to give her front-row tickets. I very politely mention that she already has them. He then says “well then, why don’t I come down to the school and hand her the card myself”, to which I promptly agree.

The next morning, we wheel in the tv and video him singing happy birthday. The teacher starts shaking and crying. He walks in, gives her a hug and hands her the card, signs the poster and takes photos etc. the teacher is beaming!

Later that night, at the concert, he calls her up on stage and sings her happy birthday again.

Every single person in that class got 100% on the final project. Never felt better about something I have done in my life.

rothmaniac

9. A Cool Gift

In the same building, I noticed that the stairs went all the way to the roof. The only thing keeping people from walking out on the roof was a padlock that needed a key to be unlocked. So I went and bought my own padlock that came with a key and cut the existing one off with some bolt cutters and put my own lock on the door. I had rooftop access. I even took some folding chairs up there, and every now and then my friend and I would take a couple of six-packs with us and sit on the roof for a few hours in the evening. It was easy and quick to get up to the roof cuz the elevator was right by the side entrance of the building and it let off right beside the rooftop door. I thought about taking a grill up there and having a cookout with a few friends, but just never got around to it. My chairs are still up there. I should prolly go get them. I thought about passing the key down to a worthy sophomore or junior but forgot to before I graduated. I suppose I could still go back to campus some time and surprise some kid with a cool gift. Maybe someday. My lock might not even be there anymore.

10. Luggage Department

So I work in the luggage claim department for a major airline. All day I get to hear customers yelling and complaining. What I did is borrow one of the wheelchairs from the airport and sit behind my desk all day long. Customers come in all angry see me in the wheelchair realize they are about to yell at a guy who is possibly crippled and all of a sudden they turn into the nicest people. Physically my blood pressure has dropped and in general, I’m in a pretty good mood most of the time.

12. Guessed Wrong

My wife and I were at a super fancy restaurant in NYC. Reservations are not allowed, expect to wait. We get there and are told we would be waiting about 2 hours. No problem we planned on this. Some guy right after us shook the reservation guy’s hand handing him $200. Next thing I know I hear “Table for 2 for Thomas.” Thomas being my name and I asked for a table of 2 I say that is me. They sit us and we order drinks and apps. 5 minutes later they say we are the wrong Thomas but we could stay since we had already ordered. Guess who was the right Thomas? The guy who paid $200 to skip the line.

13. Money Back

When I was in college, I had this meal plan where the school essentially took my “actual money” and turned it into “campus dollars” that could only be spent at school dining halls and cafes. I didn’t mind so much until the end of the semester when I was informed that any unspent “campus dollars” would “go away.” I had more than a hundred bucks left, and only a day to spend them. Here’s what I did.

I went to the nicest campus restaurant — the one where you’re supposed to take your parents when they come to visit. Basically, a real restaurant with waitstaff, that also happened to take “campus dollars”. I got the most expensive thing on the menu, and then called the waiter over. I asked him if I could tip him in “campus dollars,” and he said yes. I asked him if he would have immediate access to those “campus dollars,” in the form of “actual money,” and he said yes.

So I made him a deal. I gave him a monster tip, and he gave me half of it back in “actual money.” Many years later, I am still proud of this. I made a server’s day, screwed the Man, and got my money back.

superkiy

14. Save Money

Whenever people come to the pool where I lifeguard and have guests with them, I always ask them if they live more than 50 miles away (our policy is guests from more than 50 miles away don’t pay guest fees). If they say no I give them the look and ask them again. They usually say yes after that.

Saving customers two dollars like a boss.

15. Windshield Wiper

The college I commuted to didn’t have enough parking for the commuters but roughly 10 times what it needed for the residents. one day I was forced to park in the resident parking and got a ticket. every day I had to park there I’d slip the ticket under my windshield wiper and walk on into class. The cars around me would get tickets but they’d just leave the old one on my windshield figuring they already got me.

Never even paid for it. Worcester State did a horrible job of enforcing parking fines 10 years ago.

Funkenwagnels

16. The Contract

I used to work in a camera store that sold warranties. No matter how the camera broke, they would fix it or replace it under the warranty.

The only problem was that the store would ship off the camera to be repaired, sometimes for months, up to five times before replacing it.

So, let’s say your battery cover breaks off. You ship it off and six weeks later it’s back. But, it’s really a brand defect, so, the cover pops off again. They won’t replace the whole piece or give you another camera. You’re out of the camera for months while it’s being fixed. They keep selling defective cameras and warranties.

I got tired of f*cking over customers. I thought it was dishonest.

I read the contract myself and found an interesting clause. If the camera was so physically damaged that it was obvious it couldn’t be fixed, we could take a pic of it and send that instead. The person immediately got a new camera.

When people would come in with a camera with a defect I’d seen 100 times, I’d ask if they just wanted a new one (the next model up, without the defect). They’d say yes and I’d tell them to take it out into the parking lot and run over it with their car. I’d pile the pieces on the counter, take a pic and give them their new, non-defective camera.

I slept fine.

17. It Costs Less

At my university, I would always order delivery from a late-night eatery and get a ride home with the delivery guy. Less expensive than a taxi, with a meal included.

18. Free Flights

Spirit Airlines offer you a voucher with enough mileage to get a free trip if you sign up for their credit card. I noticed that the flight attendants don’t look at the information – they just collect the application and hand you the voucher. I now fill out a bogus application on every single Spirit Airlines flight and I’ve had 3 free flights so far!!!

19. Grandpa Taught Me

I’m from Northern Ireland, and when ordering stuff online I’d always write ‘Belfast, Ireland’ on it instead of NI – the post’ll still get there, as yes, technically Belfast is in Ireland :P. The post would be directed via the Dublin sorting office instead of coming into the UK routes. Nine times out of ten, the Dublin sorting office would just send it on up to Belfast, instead of forwarding it to Royal Mail in London who would then slap a huge import bill on it (whereas the southern Irish postal service can’t charge me import, as I’m a UK citizen). The Republic of Ireland couldn’t give a f*ck if the Queen is out of pocket over a few quid 😛

My granddad was a royal mail postman for years, he taught me that one 😛

For anyone who’s confused- if you live in Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK), you have to pay UK import tax on stuff you buy from outside the EU. If you write ‘Ireland’ as your address instead of NI, the parcel will be sent to the Republic of Ireland (a different country, same island) usually forwarded straight to you instead of sending it back to the UK so you can charge. It’s a sneaky way of avoiding import tax.

20. Multiple Times

Back in high school, I discovered that if you call any “Questions/Comments” number on a food product, you could make up literally anything and get a coupon for a free whatever it was. So, for instance, we’d call Bisquick pancake mix and say we bought a jar of the mix but inside we found three already-made pancakes… sh*t like that, just nonsensical stuff. We did it so much that we’d pile up the coupons, go to the grocery store and check out a full cart of groceries and just hand the cashier a stack of these coupons and not pay a cent for hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. We did that multiple times, and eventually, the big companies (Kraft, General Mills, etc) catch on and you have to use different names and addresses. I’ll never forget the exasperation of the poor person on the other end of the line when I told them the chicken patties I bought just get more frozen every time I put them in the microwave.

reddituser

21. Loophole Works

If you want to cancel your cellphone contract without paying a fee, pull up the provider’s service map. Find a huge hole in the map, like a desert out west. Look for a town name on that map. Tell them you’re moving to Putzachateeawaka, Arizona and you want to cancel because they don’t provide service there. Boom.

3 times now. 3 times.

reddituser

22. A Bit Tricky

A guy in my neighborhood owned a piece of land where buildings had been planned to be built. After his wife died (eerie coincidence, yes) he turned it into a graveyard with only her grave in it so the government couldn’t take the land.

reddituser

23. Reward System

When I was a (precociously computer savvy) 10-11 year old, I found a website that parents could set up as a reward system for children doing chores. The parent would set up an account listing several chores and assign them point values. The child, after completing these chores, could then use the points to buy various items offered on the website. There was (somehow) no charge for any of the stuff.

So, I created two e-mail accounts, and two passwords on the site, and set up a really generous reward system where I got tons of points for doing imaginary chores. I used this to “buy” a sh*tload of Pokemon cards. That I then played with my Grandpa because I didn’t actually have any friends.

24. Return It

In Norway, almost every store has a 3 weeks free return policy. So when I had a movie project at school I bought a camera for about 700$ only to return it when I was finished.

25. Get Your Diploma

A professor in my 2^nd college refused to grant me the credits for work I’d done in my previous school.
She was supposed to, but because she was a bigwig of sorts, no one challenged her on my behalf.

My diploma was withheld on graduation day. The secretary smugly told me the dean was too busy to speak with me, and that I was out of luck. Now, I knew he was always on the office phone attached to the fax, so I took advantage of that.

I went home, found all my original papers (70 or 80-ish), and the moment his line went free, I began faxing the^. papers. One after the other, a neverf*ckingending stream of documents. After sending the 40^th or so paper, my mom’s phone rang. Picked it up, and the secretary was almost in a panic. She said I was “tying up the line,” the dean approved my papers— and, “He said, can you just please stop, and come get your diploma?”

Which I did. On my graduation day.

26. Zero Balance

My university used to have a debit card system for vending machines on campus. Your Uni ID would act as your debit card, and you could swipe them at vending machines to buy snacks.

My friends and I found out that the system could be gamed. If you only had $1.50 in your account (also the price of a 20 oz soda), you could swipe your ID at multiple vending machines that were next to each other, and then select multiple drinks/food from the machines, and only get charged $1.50.

The glitch was that account balance could never be a negative number, so if you got charged $1.50 five times at the same time, and you only had $1.50 in the account, your account would just end up with a $0.00 balance.

reddituser

28. Time and Money

When I was in college there was a pay-by-the-hour parking lot right next to the college of business. (Accounting major) The university charged $1.00/hour to use the parking lot or you could park 2 miles away, wait for a bus, and then ride it to and from campus. Being the savvy business student I was, every year at the beginning of the fall semester I would park in the pay lot, buy a ticket, and then run home and enter it into a spreadsheet. I’d record the first day of classes as day 1 in the first field and then enter the ticket number that I had received that day in a separate field. Needless to say, after 3 weeks, I would have a strong enough amount of data to plot a line of best fit (using simple algebra that I had learned in college) and was able to predict a ticket number for any given day. I’d then scan a ticket into my school laptop and use Photoshop to edit the date, time, and ticket number. Printed that b*tch out, stuck it in my window, and cashed in on free parking. Sure it was a bit dangerous, but it saved me a sh*t ton of time and money. Plus, my argument, if I was ever caught, was to explain that I used those skills that the university had taught me in my courses to take advantage of a flawed system. My ethics teacher would have been pissed, but I know my management and econ professors would have been proud.

Exon

29. He Looked Over

When I was a teenager I worked at a McDonald’s where the beverages were self-serve, we just sold you the cup. Once, on a particularly slow day when I was the only one at the registers, an older man walked in with an empty gallon of a milk carton, walked over to the coke dispenser, and started to fill it. It took a full minute or two, and he actually looked over at me once, where I was watching him utterly fascinated. When he was done, he put the little cap back on, nodded to me, and then walked back out to his car.

30. Like a Charm

Got a negative removed from my credit report. once you have a negative on your report it stays on for 7 years (there are exceptions). write a letter to all 3 agencies telling them that the negative is a mistake and that by law they must investigate it and provide proof of their investigation within 30 days. you can send these letters every 30 days as well, and they must investigate it each time. the agencies don’t have the resources to investigate each claim, so they often just remove it. When I wrote my letters the first two agencies removed the negative the first time, the other agency did the investigation and responded by saying that it was in fact accurate. I sent the same letter a month later and they dropped it that time. you should use old-fashioned snail mail as it is more difficult to process that way. worked like a charm and now I have a perfect credit history!

unclechett

31. Hundred Dollars

I have a complicated “cheating the system”

On my iPhone, there is a particular app that awards “M Points” whenever you do certain things in the app; the first time you open it each day when you watch one of the news stories, that kind of thing.

Well those M points you could trade in later for tons of things, including amazon gift cards. 5k M points was a $5 Amazon gift card. Watching a 10-minute video was worth (in the beginning) about 300 M points. The trick was that you could drag the bar to the end of the video and it would still trigger the M points. Basically, you could make about $5 a minute the first day they opened it. My buddy and I stayed up super late that night and made several hundred dollars in amazon gift cards that night, which were just coupon codes you attached to your amazon account.

The next morning they reduced the value from 300 to something like 100 points. Still worth it in that you could make 1/3 of the money which was essentially free.

The final blow was when they reduced the amount to something like 10 points, then it became too much.

In the end, after about a week, we bought 2 high-end gaming computers (parts then assembled) from nearly scratch. We already had a tower and power supply for one, but the other was completely built for free, courtesy of this app.

Was incredible.

32. Ziploc Bag

Saw a mother at the moves with her family of 4. They bought a large popcorn, one you get free refills on. After entering the movie theater, she pulls out a large Ziploc bag and empties the tub of popcorn into it. She sent each family member to get a free refill until each one had their own bag.

33. Always The Same

In high school, I had a Spanish teacher that gave t/f tests with like 50 questions. You could retake the test and get 90% credit for your new score if it’s higher. I think he assumed that nobody could memorize 50 true false answers so the tests were always the same.

I converted the answers to binary and then to a base32 number system with 0-9A-V. All I had to do was memorize a 10-character string and then convert it back into t/f answers. Never failed me.

34. Wrong One

When I was in high school I had a Spanish teacher who was nuts. An old lady who spent her whole day looking at fashion magazines. Every night she would give us pointless busywork of taking home 50 words in Spanish and writing each one ten times, which translates to having to write 500 words every night and wasting like 10 pages of paper. One day, while I was watching her grade them in class I saw she was simply reading the name of the top and writing it in the grade book as being received. She was going too fast to actually be reviewing the work, so I put it to a test.

Every day I turned in the same exact homework, the same words from a random night I had done in the past. Every day she gave me credit as if I had turned in a new assignment. I got by every day having to do no homework and never got caught. Even if I had I could have pulled the old, “Oops, I must have grabbed the wrong one off my desk this morning.” excuse.

35. Conned the Con Men

One day when I was in college I was walking through one of the on-campus parking lots back to my dorm when I saw these two guys trying to sell “high quality” surround sound systems out of their car. I recognized one of them from my high school, he was a grade older than me and a general putz. Out of curiosity, I listened to their spiel, it was some obviously bogus pitch about how they were installing them in the Whittemore Center but they ordered too many by accident and blah blah blah. Just looking at the boxes you could tell they were cheap Chinese knockoffs and worth probably nothing. I could clearly tell they were excited they had “hooked” me so I told them I just had to run over to the ATM to get the $300 they wanted. After a few minutes, I went back and told them I only had $301 dollars in my checking account and I needed $3 to deposit first so I could withdraw the $300 and not get hit with an overdraft fee because of the different bank ATM charge. So foaming at the mouth they give me $3 and I wander back over to the ATM. I ducked around the back and across campus to my dorm, $3 richer but mostly just entertained that I conned the con men.

36. Rich families

Private schools are notorious for accepting cash from parents paying for their kid’s tuition. And I’m not talking about monthly. I’m talking about dropping a year’s tuition in cash. Wealthy families will do this because the cash is undeclared and would be taxed otherwise.

reddituser

37. Don’t Judge

About four or five years ago I had a friend that worked at a grocery store. Whenever we would go grocery shopping he would act like he was scanning everything but only scan the cheap items. We would get like $70 worth of food for $15-$20. We never asked him to do this, he took it upon himself to. I never argued because I’m poor. Don’t you judge me!

38. Respect Him

Back in the day in high school, we had our “huge” junior term paper to do. Our teacher absolutely required that we have some ridiculous amount of like 100 note cards all with individual quotes on them, and citations from the numerous sources we were supposed to have collected and read for this research paper. Most of us in the class hated this teacher and she hated most of us, I think.

None of us was actually making the 100-note card citations and keeping them in little boxes and then organizing them. It was ridiculous. So when the note card deadline came up in like February or whatever, almost no one had all the note cards. I got busted in class for not having them and she called my parents and told them to talk with me because she thought I was a druggie burnout who didn’t do anything. Actually, I had done like 50 legit cards.

But one kid in class had made zero note cards. The night before he just made up a sh*t-ton of quotes and fake names and put them on cards and put them in his box.

The teacher thinks he’s a goody-two-shoes, so pulls out his box from the pile in front of the whole class, flips to a random card, and reads the quote, which is 100% made up the night before. It was something like: “We are the Molemen, we must make it over that hill. We are the greatest warriors to ever live.” – General Mole (1942). We were all like, ‘Oh, he is f*cked.’

Teacher raises an eyebrow, ‘General Mole,’ Jonathan? And I kid you not, without skipping a beat kid replies: “Yeah! Do you mean to tell me you don’t know who General Mole is? One of the greatest French generals in World War 2?” And she’s like ‘Oh,’ puts the card back in the box, and moves on to the next person to bust.

We all hated him for that cause he didn’t do any of the work we were supposed to. But I still respect him for pulling the wool over that lady’s eyes so easily. Wish I could b*llsh*t like that…

39. Gets an A

My friend is a college student and is pretty much the laziest person I know. He purchased dragon, that one program where you speak and the computer writes down the words automatically. He installed a microphone-type thing and hid it underneath the professor’s podium. All the notes he needs are transferred to his laptop, and he doesn’t do sh*t in class. Then he just reviews his “notes” and gets an A. I hate him for it, but I am a little impressed with his simple cheating.

violentfap

40. Friendly Assistance

41. Not Once

FREE FIRST CLASS. Every. Single Time.

Wait to be the very last person to get on board a flight. If there is an open seat in first class, just sit down. I used to fly to and from Denver and ATL all the time and not once did I even get questioned. They don’t have a first-class manifesto (or don’t check it). Worked maybe 15-20 times.

“Yeah, I’ll take a Jack and Coke, please.”

42. Hot Tub

When I quit a job over a decade ago, my boss forgot to submit my termination form. I kept getting paid for over 3 months. And I was a manager, making pretty good coin.

I knew they’d eventually catch it, and I thought they’d ask for the money back, so I banked every check and didn’t spend a cent.

So the paychecks eventually stopped after 3+ months, and I waited for the call or letter asking for the money. It never came.

Two years later I used the money to buy my hot tub. Now my *ss gets massaged by bubbling water thanks to my incompetent ex-boss.

43. Without Any Payment

I get a large cup of iced coffee from Starbucks every day for free.

Starbucks has this policy where you can get refills at $.55, or free if you have a Starbucks card. Now – normally they’ll ask you for your cup and your receipt, and then mark your cup when you receive a refill so that you can only get one refill per purchase.

Here’s the catch: every drive-thru Starbucks location I have been to never even bothers to ask for your cup, and will rarely ask for your receipt, so I’ve been asking for large ‘refills’ every day for the past three months without any issue at all and without paying a dime.

Enjoy your newfound source of free coffee (and not that sh*tty office breakroom kind).

44. A Few Weeks Later

Had a guitar broken at the neck (and briefly lost, but that’s beside the point) on an Air Canada flight back in 2008. Got a quote from a local music store for how much it would be to replace it. Called Air Canada and told them that not only could it not be repaired, but that I needed it for school (not a lie – I was getting my BMus in jazz guitar at the time) and expected them to reimburse me. Took the guitar back home, and got it fixed for about $90 (still plays and sounds great almost 4 years later). A few weeks later, I get a check in the mail from AC for about $1100 and promptly use said check to buy two new guitars.

reddituser

45. Present Every Day

When I was still in high school I was dumped by my first love; fell into depression and started skipping school to lay in bed. I know, lame, whatever I don’t do that anymore. Anywho, I skipped about half of my junior year of school. I achieved this by erasing the answering machine when messages were left and throwing out the letters that were sent home to my father about my attendance; he worked swing shift so most of the time he was at work when I was supposed to be getting myself up for school and then when he came home from work I would already be at my job in Burger King. So, after skipping about 50 days or so I decided it was time to get my sh*t together and go back to school. I get to school and my first-period teacher asks me what I was doing there and then says that I should probably head down to the principal’s office. Once there I was informed that I was expelled for missing school, but could sign up for summer school if I would like. So I went home and enjoyed the rest of my junior year off. I told my father that I was going to summer school in order to take some extra classes that seemed interesting and to “get ahead.” Once summer school started I found out that the only requirement to pass the summer was to get 100 percent on every test on every makeup chapter for every class. The make-up classes were super easy substitutions, though; for example, Earth Science was used for me to make up my Chemistry classes credit, while Algebra was used to make up my Trigonometry credit and so on. I had the most make-up work out of any student in there, but I was the only one that figured out that instead of reading the chapters and then taking the test over them, one could just take the tests over and over again until one received a 100 percent. This was made possible by the fact that they were all multiple choice answers and once you failed the tests you were told which answers were wrong. By process of elimination and common sense, I passed many, many tests over the course of an 8-hour day of summer school. It took me two weeks to make up my year’s worth of work. I had 7 classes to makeup, I finished them before any other student, most of which had only 1 or 2 courses to make up for. Now, when I was done I was informed that I was supposed to be stuck in school the entire summer because I was attendance based, however, there was no work for me to do. So the teacher in charge told me that “if anyone asks, you were here every day for the summer, but you don’t have to return.” She marked me as being present every day for the summer. I started my senior year of classes as if nothing ever happened and graduated school on time. Wouldn’t have been possible if the teachers hadn’t liked me so much, but hey it all worked out in the end.