12 Workers Who Looked Innocent, but Hid a Dark Truth

At first glance, some people seem completely ordinary—just another coworker, manager, or employee going about their day. But sometimes, the most unsuspecting people are hiding shocking secrets. From employees who stole from their own workplace to those involved in serious wrongdoing, these stories reveal the dark truths lurking behind seemingly innocent faces.

• This cashier at work was scamming people when they bought gift cards. She would keep the ones that people bought and then switch them out with blank ones.
  A lady caught her doing it and called her out right there in the store. She started screaming for someone to call the cops. The manager almost had a meltdown. Then the cops came and arrested her at her register.
  This was on Christmas Eve, so it was pretty dramatic. © Unknown author / Reddit

• She was my manager at a fast-food place. She was a middle-aged lady with two teenage sons—super nice and the first manager we had who was truly organized. She had apparently not been making the cash drops for some time and had pocketed $30,000. Police took her away in the middle of the lunch rush. © grislyaddams / Reddit

• When I used to housekeep at a hotel, our head housekeeper would go into all of our checkouts and steal our tips before we could get to them. I remember a few times seeing tips in my rooms and foolishly not thinking to pick them up before they disappeared. A few of my other coworkers witnessed similar instances.
  At one point, a guest came up to me and said she'd leave a big tip in her room for me because it was a mess. I found out later that the head housekeeper cleaned the room herself.
  She walked out about a year later after our GM demoted her to a regular housekeeper because everyone had complaints about her. She was a very awful person in general. © Unknown author / Reddit

• I work in a fast food restaurant. Once, a man came through the drive-through and ordered a decaf but told us to make sure it was decaf because he had severe allergic reactions to caffeine and could literally die from it. He told us all this, and we said we understood and would double-check that it was decaf.
  I made the decaf and set it on the handout counter at the window. My coworker, who was making a coffee for the next order, also set it down on the handout counter. My manager grabbed a coffee and was about to hand it out when my coworker said, "Wait, that's not decaf!" My manager said, "So?" and handed it out anyway.
  Five minutes later, the man was in the hospital. Thankfully, my manager got fired. © Positive_melon_40 / Reddit

• One of our store managers would take money out of the drawers of cashiers he didn't like. It was mostly the mouthy older ladies who had worked at the store for years and had an opinion on everything. Several of them got fired after their drawers came up short too many times in a row.
  For some reason, they never really suspected this manager as the one who might have created the issue. He finally got busted one night when he had the plainclothes security guy help him carry some groceries to his car—groceries he didn't bother to pay for. © ekimlive / Reddit

• I quit a former employer once I realized that he had misrepresented how the company was doing and what I would be doing. There is "spinning," and then there is outright lying.
  Fast-forward four years later—after that company collapsed—he was "launching a startup" and reached out to a lot of people on the development team to engage them in building his e-commerce website. He stiffed them all; none of them ever got paid. © Mm_Donut / Reddit

• I hired a musician for live music in my bar. Turns out the gear was stolen, and they arrested him after the second song. © Berlin_Blues / Reddit

• I was a mechanic who found out that the company was not letting me fix customers' cars that had oil leaks, even when the customers had paid for a 200K-mile warranty. The manager would tell the service writer to say that the warranty company declined it, and eventually started making me take a photo to him so that he could tell me the leak wasn't bad enough to fix.
  The customers paid for a warranty, but the company wasn't holding up their end of the deal because it was costing them money. They are one of the most profitable car dealerships in my town, now have three dealerships, and are expanding. © Idontgetitbrah / Reddit

• A previous employer was successfully sued by the government after his secretary made a whistleblower complaint about his billing practices. The secretary ended up with over $400K from the government as her reward. This was about 20 years ago, when $400K was worth a lot more. © Tricky-garden / Reddit

• I work for a Class 1 railroad. A signal maintainer was submitting false tests and not going on trouble calls but was still paying himself for them. There were 38 total offenses, with penalties of up to $105K for each offense per day.
  He's looking at serious jail time for falsifying documents... © p**derhound109 / Reddit

• I almost died giving birth to my son. My baby and I stayed at the hospital for 10 days, and I was totally alone. A kind nurse would visit me at night and give me updates about my baby. I never forgot her smile. 2 years later, I saw her on TV on the 10 o’clock news.
  I discovered that this woman was not a nurse. Turns out she had been caught trying to steal a newborn from the hospital—a baby born to a single mother who, like me, had no one with her.
  As the investigation unfolded, it was revealed that she was working for a dangerous organization.
  Thankfully, she and the entire group were caught before they could harm anyone else.

• I showed up to work (tech support) one day in the late '90s to see several blue Air Force vehicles in the parking lot. Inside, there were a handful of officers and enlisted personnel chatting with various managers for about half an hour. Then they all left... or so we thought.
  They moved the cars around back and hid in various offices. Then they called a guy who wasn't scheduled that day, told him we were short-staffed, and asked him to come in to cover. He came in and sat down at his computer. He was there for about 30 seconds before he was swarmed by USAF personnel, put in handcuffs, and marched out.
  Turns out, he had been breaking into government computers from work. © goodwid / Reddit

Restaurant work is chaotic, but sometimes the drama feels straight out of a telenovela. These 11 stories prove it perfectly.