Ever wonder what it's like for someone to go undercover for their employer to uncover whether or not some customers or employees aren't committing egregious acts? Well, here are several employees and their harrowing undercover tales of what they witnessed.
That’s Going Into My Report
Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
“I was secret shopping at a high end restaurant, around $100 per plate. The busser came over and refilled my water glass (that I had already drank out of) and over filled it, so he poured part of it back in the pitcher from my glass and proceeded to refill everyone else at the table from the same pitcher. I really wanted to throw a fit, but could only include it in my report. Ewww.”
Lots And Lots Of Sexual Incidents
“Former retail loss prevention here (best job ever by the way). Witnessed so much sex in the stockrooms, couples, singles, trios, you name it. We had cameras everywhere of course, especially in the stockrooms due to rampant employee theft. We had countless hours of employee sex on tape. We couldn’t reveal the cameras, which would tip off the thieves, so all we could do was watch.”
No Maintenance To Be Seen Here
“I once took my vehicle to an independent shop for routine maintenance. I said I was dropping it off for as long as it might take as I was ‘going to take a long trip the following month.’ I sat across the street in a diner eating soup and drinking coffee. I got a call that my vehicle needed about $4500 worth of work an hour and a half later. It never left the parking spot. I told them I didn’t want anything done, they said it was half apart already. F–K YOU FIRESTONE. I am an assistant service manager at a dealership. That Firestone was turned into a parking lot.”
Massage Shops And Soliciting
“I am a private investigator, contracted by the government to check massage shops to see if they’re soliciting. I usually get sent to shops which have had multiple complaints and an investigation is in its final stages and they need evidence to support their case.
So, I go to one place, everything seems normal except for being asked to strip bare for an oil massage. Eventually I am asked to flip over, therapist without asking just starts rubbing some ‘gel’ on my ‘parts’. At this point, I am obligated to refuse and finish the session. I ask her to stop but halfway through the sentence I am hit with the most intense pain. Turns out, she was new and was unaware that alcohol gel is not the same as massage oil.
Long story short, manager was convicted of coercing staff on the basis of their visas being revoked if they didn’t comply. And I had to stand in court and tell the events of that day.”
The Ghostly Passenger
“Worked as a ‘ghost passenger’ for an airline. Basically, I flew around and graded flight attendants’ performance. While still parked at the gate with the door open one flight attendant began berating passengers who were using their smart phones (which was completely permitted at the gate). She threatened to have the person in front of me thrown off the plane if she didn’t put hers away. She also threatened me. After we left the gate and were taxiing to the runway I looked back to see her sitting in her jump seat….using her phone. Took a photo of it and included that in my report. She initially denied using the phone and claimed I was being unruly on the aircraft. After she saw the photo she changed her tune.”
High Theft Items That Would Make You Blush
“I was a secret shopper at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma. The area with the most theft was the family planning section, specifically pregnancy tests. But sometimes you would catch a kid stocking up on lube, finger vibrators, vibrating penis rings, and Extenze. Condoms were just not a high theft item. I can’t even count the times I had to call the parents of some good Christian child who was trying to get busy after a football game. Remember folks: Abstinence, not sexual education, is the key!”
Role Playing In A Card Shop
“I used to own a game store where we buy and sell Magic The Gathering cards in Maryland. There was a big tournament in Pittsburgh the weekend before where someone’s collection was stolen, worth a few thousand dollars.
That day, we were visited by someone we’d never seen in the store before looking to sell a collection, a collection matching the description of the stolen collection.
I told them that we were interested but needed to set up a longer time to sit down and look through the collection. We set up a time for the next Tuesday and they went on their way. We then called the police in Pittsburgh who connected us with the detective. He worked with our local Montgomery County police and they set up a sting.
There were three cops in the store pretending to play (One actually knew how and is now a regular) and two more cars outside. When the guy came into the store, I did exactly what I would have done with a regular collection. Rung it up, negotiated and paid the guy for the collection. Once the money exchanged hands, the cops busted him. Collection was returned to the kid in Pittsburgh and the guy ended up with some plea deal involving probation.”
Voluntary Jail Time
“Helped manufacture methcathinone so that I could get arrested with the suspects and spend time in the cells to discover how the drugs were being brought into the prisons. Was recruited due to my work circumstances, age and environment; had to change provinces when I was finished with the deal.”
Yikes Indeed
LIUDMILA ERMOLENKO/Shutterstock
“I worked as a HIPAA inspector for a bit. Sh-t is scary. I’d go in and say I was looking for my mom that they called me she was in an accident. (I was early 20s). Pretty much every place I went gave me all kinds of protected info on the patient (the company would have placed fake records in the computer). One smaller urgent care place was like ‘Hmm, no one with that name. Here’s our sign-in log for the week, take a look!’ with last names, first names and ‘reason for visit.’ Yikes.”
Painful Research To Witness
“I work as a researcher studying illegal wildlife trade. In markets, I have seen critically endangered animals being sold openly for pretty low prices. I’ve also seen plenty of animals dead or dying in these markets with no food or water in the baking sun. But worse than that, I have friends who have had to watch slow lorises having their teeth pulled out with nail clippers and not been able to do anything.”
The Pickup
“I worked for an armored car service for a while as a undercover guard. When a place had a lot of money or if it was a risky area two plain clothes guards would arrive before the truck. I would scout the place and outside to make sure the uniform guys could get in and out safe. We wore a color of the day and the local cops knew who we were as did the uniformed guards. It was a pretty easy job and I only once waved off a pickup because of a bunch of Latin Kings sitting on benches out front.
I hung out a while to see what was going on and hoping they would leave so we could make the pickup. As I sat on a bus bench across the road I watched one of the guys take out his needle point. I never would think that a gang member would tote his needle point to a stick up job.”
Secret Shopper
Tinatin/Shutterstock
“I worked as a secret shopper for a while for a small store. The most egregious thing I found were employees would hide inventory if they knew a sale was coming up. I’d also go in and ask questions about what equipment I should use just to test their general knowledge. Most failed but they were young kids getting paid sh-t so I felt bad squealing on them. I also forgot to add that I had to put up with being hit on by teenagers and creepy older guys. I had to play along and see if they knew their sh-t despite throwing terrible game.”
The Showroom Floor And Stolen Credit Cards
“I used to work for furniture showroom stores that sold out of catalogs. I ran two stores and helped others. One of my jobs was to go to other stores and pretend to be a customer. Most of the scenarios involved various selling points, product knowledge, and up sells. I had to get a written estimate as proof. But also I checked store security, the condition of the store, and so on.
Worst was I entered a store and there was no one in there. It was during open hours, but the entire show room was vacant. So I wandered into the back room, I changed a few things around, and I went into the till, and put in a note on the back of my business card that I had been in their till. After half an hour, I just left. I would’ve locked the store up if I had the key.
I called the manager and let her know, and she got in her car and immediately drove to the store. There were employees in there by the time she got there, but she checked under the till and saw my business card. She spoke to the employees, who said that they were there the whole time, but were at a loss to explain the business card and the stuff in the back room I had messed up. I think she fired her staff on the spot, I can’t remember what happened after that.
Another time I was part of an FBI sting. There was a group of people that were using stolen credit cards to buy large ticket items and have them delivered to the store for ‘Parking Lot Pickup,’ which was an option that a lot of people that lived in rural areas where delivery was not available. But of course, you wouldn’t have to verify your address, either. All we cared was that you showed up and picked up the merchandise you ordered.
The group of people that were using stolen credit cards were actually made up of a few former employees of the company who knew how to game the system. But the FBI was wise to a lot of their thefts, and they set up a sting operation at my store with the drivers. All they had to do was sign for the furniture to complete the deal that they had picked up the stolen merchandise that they had paid for with stolen credit cards. Once they did that, several armored men with guns jumped out of the back of the truck and surrounded the 4-5 people, ordered them to the ground, where they were handcuffed and carried away. They didn’t even resist, so except for that one moment where you knew that a bunch of agents were going to jump out of a delivery truck, was actually kind of boring.”
Undercover And Taking Selfies
“I do Social Engineering for financial institutions (Banks, Credit Unions etc). I went to a credit union in Texas where the entire place failed on a miserable basis for security. I walked in with a fake badge that stated I worked for a made-up company and I was there to an inspection of the building. I dressed in a polo and khaki pants with matching colors to my badge and walked in to the front desk. The girl there was probably in college or just out of school. She immediately let me into the back room and I walked into offices and desks that were unoccupied but located in rooms with other employee’s. I walked up to empty computers in use and plugged USB drives in, huge no no, and began typing random things into computers and taking pictures of myself at the computers. Employees would literally look at me and go back to their jobs without thinking anything of a guy taking selfies at their friends work desk. Once I had been in every office I went to the Vice President’s office and opened her desk and looked through files to find personal peoples information and found tons. I went into the file room and took personal loan documents off the shelf and took pictures of myself accessing them. When I was done I walked to the person who had contracted my company and laid out all the information I had found and all the things I had done and the guy just sighed. This scenario has happened a couple of different times, most places fail somehow. Sometimes it’s fun and interesting, sometimes its boring and there’s nothing worth staying.”
Spilling Out All The Details To A P.I.
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“25 years ago, give or take, I did some work as a private investigator. Someone I knew did it as a side job out of a large law firm’s office, and he hired me to help him out. Lots of interviewing witnesses to something that may have happened several years ago and stuff like that.
One night I had to drive about 45 minutes out into the country to interview someone involved in a possible DUI incident where he ran a stop sign and severely injured someone. I posed as someone from his law office, and never let on that I was working for the victim’s. I thought myself pretty sneaky for doing that. As we’re sitting there and I’m asking some round about questions hoping not to tip him off, he just goes and tells the whole story of how drunk he was, how much he had been drinking, where he had been drinking and tons of other details. As I’m listening to this I’m thinking that if he finds out I’m from the other side of the case, he could kill me pretty easily. I quickly ended the interview, drove a couple towns over and wrote down everything he said in more details and turned it into the lawyers the next day.”
Uncomfortable Subject To Document
SFIO CRACHO/Shutterstock
“I’m a TV Producer. I was working on a popular documentary a while ago. We were following a woman who was addicted to heroin and had resorted to prostitution in order to make money to support her habits. One day, a friend of hers got thrown into jail. She decided she needed to work really hard to bail them out. So she called her friend who owned a crack-house that he let girls like her turn tricks in at about $10 a pop. Basically, I witnessed this girl share needles with many people and watched as John after John came into the house and disappeared into the bedroom with her for a little bit.”
Hanging Out With Booth Babes
“When I worked QA for a video game publisher, they had me work an E3 as a secret player. Basically I got to play new games for that publisher and act like they were amazing in front of press. While I was taking a break I saw one of the producers hooking up with a booth babe. He didn’t recognize me, but I knew he was married and had a kid on the way, I didn’t say sh-t. He got laid off when the rest of us did about a year later, but that’s just kinda how E3 goes.”
They Could Have Scammed You
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I used to do training at a call center. I always included being aware of social engineering attempts in my role plays. Management liked this so much that they started having me do this as a secret caller. I hate to say but I got a lot more people than I should have. Even started doing it ad hoc for other divisions when word got round. The worst was an agent that I’m not sure if she really just didn’t care or was just so overly helpful she didn’t think twice, but man I could have stolen three or four people identities if I was actually running a scam.”
An “Over The Top” Moment
“I used to investigate insurance fraud. The one thing I saw that made me the maddest was when I was working in the run down area near the Philly Zoo and saw a strung out mother walking with her toddler and jerking his arm and screaming at him for not keeping up with her quick walking pace. The kid was not even two years old. I really wanted to get out of the car.
The funniest one was where I had to go undercover in a bar to investigate this one person. You ever see the Stallone movie ‘Over the Top’? Yeah, that’s pretty much what this guy ended up doing right on the bar, right in front of my hidden camera, and looking direct into my camera lens. It was awesome. The armwrestling match went on for minutes and this by a guy ‘too hurt to work.’ At times it was very entertaining to work undercover.”