Crime doesn't pay...or does it?

goodoldave submitted 295 days ago

Back in the 80's I had just received my degree in computer science but couldn't find any computer jobs due to my not having any real experience in the field. In the meantime, I took a job as a bank teller to pay the bills while hoping (without success) to be able to eventually transfer into their computer department.

Down the Street from my branch, there was an computer electronics store, and I knew everyone who worked there since I hung out there frequently and purchased computer parts from them. Because of this familiarity, one of their computer technicians came to my teller station one day and asked to cash a check his father had sent him. The account this check was drawing against wasn't from our bank and he himself wasn't a customer of ours, but since I knew who he was and could vouch for him (and our bank would just forward the check to the other bank for reimbursement, a common transaction in banking), I cashed the check and a number of subsequent checks he received from his father during the next few days.

I didn't think much of it until a week or two later, when my branch manager asked me to come into her office and she produced a photocopy of one of these checks, asking me if I knew who this person was that gave me all these checks to cash. It turns out this guy was forging his own father's checks to buy drugs!

SO, I identified him to her as the employee in the computer store down the street, whereupon she invoked the full force of the bank, the police, and the lawyers to get this guy to return the money he stole. He didn't have the money, having spent it all on drugs, so his manager (the owner of the store) paid our bank the missing funds himself out of embarrassment from having the reputation of his business being dragged through the mud by this guy. His manager docked the guy's pay until he was repaid, and then he fired him.

Now, I also knew the store manager/owner, and he was very VERY apologetic to me as well because he knew my own reputation with the bank was pretty crappy from vouching for his employee, and he asked me what he could do to make it up to me. A lightning bolt of inspiration came to me, and I asked him that, since his computer technician was now fired, if I could have his job, and he gave it to me!!! I became a computer technician right then and there.

THAT job was the big break I needed to get my foot into the door in the world of computers, and I parlayed that into another job, which led to a few other jobs, which directly led to the very well paying job I have now.

In short, I launched my career by getting a scumbag fired and then taking his job. Interesting way to launch a career, but I wouldn't recommend it.