Who hasn't found themselves screwed over by a loophole at one point or another?
Such as getting a gift card to a restaurant, only to discover it doesn't apply to alcohol, can't be used for dinner, and can only be used during the week.
Or, on a more serious note, discovering that maternity and paternity leave counts as vacation days, forcing you to go back to work when you're not ready, and precluding any potential vacation plans.
Of course, loopholes can work to our advantage as well.
That is, as long as no one finds out.
Redditor SterlingBoardman was eager to learn about loopholes people took advantage of until they were found out, leading them to ask:
"What loophole did you exploit for years before someone found out?"
Key To The Kingdom
"I was really good friends with my building superintendent, super, at a job I have since left."
"He was also the super for several other buildings in downtown."
"My friend, the super, got a terminal cancer diagnosis and on his last day at the building he gives me an envelope with what appeared to be a parking garage card inside."
"He said 'Phys you have been such a great friend I wanted to give you my key to the kingdom'."
"'It should save you a lot of money because it works in every city owned parking garage in downtown'."
"I left that job in 2012 and to this day the card still works at over 12 parking garages in downtown."
"Go see a concert or sporting event?"
"Swipe the card for the O-rena, no longer the official name, garage."
"Need to park at the courthouse or city hall garage, swipe the card."
"Want to go see a movie or go to a club or park?"
"Swipe swipe swipe, free parking day or night."
'Bruce you left us way too soon, but gave me a gift that just never stops giving."
"Miss you buddy, and thanks for saving me a ton of money."- THE_PHYS
la GIFGiphySupermarket Sweep
"Growing up I worked at a chain grocery store."
"They had a policy in place that if an item price label didn’t match the scanned price in the computer, the first item was free and any subsequent items would be for whichever price was lower."
"Every few months an elderly woman would come in and spend 4-5 hours shopping."
"When she would come up to the register, she would have a full cart and near everything would be free."
"I had to ring her out a handful of times and only caught a few items overall that she was wrong on."
"At one point, she found a comforter BBB mislabeled and got it for free, $40-50 sticker price."
"More than once the store manager would watch her on the store cameras to ensure she wasn’t switching the stickers but never saw her do anything sneaky, just very calmly looking over every item shelved one at a time."
"Eventually the policy changed and she stopped coming in at all."- DrunkPhoenix26
Daddy Needs A Free Burger!!
"There is an app for a local burger chain where it allows you to 'roll the dice' to get a code for a free double-patty burger upgrade."
"It was designed so you could only try it once per day and it even shows the date of the roll on the code so the cashier could verify it."
"However, I found out that you can just change the date on your phone and try again immediately."
"If you got nothing, change it again and just keep going until you get the code."
"Then, when you got the code, you change the date back to current date and the app updates the code so it looks like you rolled it today."
"I got free burger upgrades for years until they finally got rid of the feature all together."
"I don't know if anyone ever figured out this exploit, they removed it for other reasons."- SpookyPlankton
happy homer simpson GIFGiphyOkay Then.
'My friend used to restock condom machines in pubs and collect the money from them."
"The machines would always break and get jammed all the time but because it was condoms no one would ever tell someone that the machine ate their money. "
"He would just count how many condoms were gone and give that amount of money to the company and pocket the rest."
"He moved onto another job."
"Apparently the next person that did it collected all the money correctly and threw all their figures out."- thebollard
Dedicated Fan
"Years ago I was a season ticket holder for an awful NBA team."
"My tickets came electronically via PDF."
"I had OK seats in the upper part of the lower bowl, but nothing great."
"Anyway, on nights where I knew it would be empty, which was most nights unless a superstar like Kobe or LeBron was in town, I would use the full version of Adobe Acrobat to edit the PDF's to indicate a much better seat location than mine. "
"The bar code still scanned just fine because I didn't mess with it, but when the usher took my print out all he saw was that I was sitting on the floor."
"Got away with it for years until the team actually got good for a while and the place was packed."- neglectedhusband24
Evaluate The Menu Carefully...
"Spoons old menu."
"if you ordered 2 sides of 'half rack of ribs' and a portion of chips."
"It would work out cheaper than if you ordered the ribs meal."
"You gotta sacrifice the 2 or 3 of onion rings you get with the meal."
"But the instead of a dash of chips you'd get a whole basket."
"And it was a couple quid cheaper."- Shad666
Labor Day Cooking GIF by MunchiesGiphyTaking Collect Calls To A Whole New Level...
"When I was a kid there was a pay phone down the street that if you put your quarter in made a call but no one answered it would give you back two quarters."
"Went there all the time and called home when I knew no one was there to answer."-Reddit
No system is 100% foolproof, leaving the possibility for someone to cheat the system wide open.
But let's be honest, if you could cheat your way into having a free burger every day, could you really resist?