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?
- People Describe Their Craziest Cheap Hotel Horror Stories ... ›
- People Break Down The Best Loophole They've Ever Exploited ... ›
When giving a speech and making an argument, the most effective way to reach other people or get your point across is to speak with conviction.
However, speaking with conviction doesn't always mean people are speaking the truth... or even coherently.
Redditor MonkeyGentleman420 was curious to hear more stories of ludicrous things people said with unwavering conviction, leading them to ask:
"What is the stupidest thing someone has told you with complete conviction?"
We Know How Often Birds Check Clocks...
'That we set the clocks forwards and backwards so the birds don’t get confused with their migration patterns."- alliecita410
Speaking From Experience?
"'Two people can breathe underwater forever if they have a hose'."
"The first person breathes in while the second breathes out, then the first person breathes out and the second person breathes in etc'."- PahoojyMan
Dream On...
"She said:'
"'If you are dream about falling and you hit the ground in your sleep you'll actually die'."
"'It's been proven'."
"I said 'If you die in your sleep, how can anyone know what you were dreaming?'"
"Ruined a favorite story of hers."
"Sorry."- FrankieMint
falling GIFGiphyBecause ALL Cops Ask For Your SSN Before Cuffing You...
"From a coworker: 'If you don't have a social security number then the government can't do anything to you'."
"I asked if that meant, if I didn't have an SSN then I could just go kill someone on the street and the government couldn't arrest me."
"'Yep', he said, 'if you don't have an SSN then they can't enforce any laws on you'."- AllAboutThePotatoes
Keep Them Away From Needles...
"A former coworker insisted that the body believes the ears are injuries, and we are all constantly trying to heal our own ears closed."
"The only thing keeping them open, you ask?"
"Ear wax."
"We worked in healthcare."- Reflection_Secure
Credit To the Visual Effects Designer
"A girl I worked with was convinced that every single mythological creature was real."
"I’ll never forget one of her claims."
“Think about it, every movie you done seen all those creatures and aliens and sh*t, all that’s real."
"Someone has to have actually seen it to come up with that!”
"Apparently there’s no such thing as the human imagination to her."
"So yes, transformers are real, Godzilla is real, Independence Day is real."
"This was a 20-year-old that said all of this."- Dragonborn83196
Unicorn GIF by MOODMANGiphyIn Theory... Still Wrong!
"That the speed of light wasn’t like an actual number, it was just a figure of speech."- sunbearimon·
Check The Date...
"Sunburn is not caused by the sun, it is actually caused by sunblock."
"If you don't use sunblock then you will never be burned."
"Sunburn was created by the sun cream industry to sell their products."
"Seems easily testable, why not lie on the beach all day in one position with no sun block and see what happens?"
"Make sure you fall asleep for maximum effect."
"You go bright red and then blister to the point that you get taken to hospital for a combination of sunstroke and the beginning of shock then spend the rest of the holiday indoors face down with regular application of creams and replacement paraffin patches on the burns."
"It puts a bit of a dampener on your 2 week break."
"Sunburn is mentioned in Livy's history of the second Punic war and others over 2000 years ago which is solid proof that the 'Big Sunscreen' claim is ridiculous."
"However it would be hand-waved away by a True Believer of big Sunscreen."- Magnus_40
Sonne Sunburn GIF by Mitteldeutscher RundfunkGiphyIgnorance Is Not Always Bliss...
"A distant relative, recently retired, once told me that he was going to hire a gardener and a housekeeper because 'the government will give you a grant to pay for them now'."
"This was a few minutes after a lengthy rant about how the welfare state should be scrapped because only lazy people lose their jobs and need to claim benefits."
"The same relative, some years ago, also announced with absolute conviction that he was going to hire a neighbor as a cleaner because 'she won't have anything to do now her kids are grown up'."- Plantagenesta
The Price Of Never Looking Up!
"Pineapples aren't real."
"They're entirely manmade and do not exist in nature."- tricksterloki
ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR!!!
"My dad was experiencing end stage renal failure (was on dialysis at the time and has since had a transplant)."
"My best friend's boyfriend at the time looked at me dead in the eye and said he could reverse his condition with a vegan diet and that the only important organ in the body was the skin, so as long as you take good care of your skin, your other organs will function properly."
"Mind you, by the time my dad got on dialysis his kidneys were functioning at 11% and his SKIN WAS JUST FINE."- lyingintheleaves
But What Causes Cavities?
"I'm a dental hygienist."
"We had a patient come in with terrible teeth."
"They thought toothpaste caused cancer."- dilapidatedfungus
If Only...
"That women don't burp or fart, because only men have (the ability to pass) gas."
"Spoiler alert: he was horrified when I burped in front of him."- sequoia_summers
Guilt Is Easier When You Know It's Coming.
"First girlfriend was religious, and apparently it was okay that we had sex 'as long as she feels bad about it after'."
"Pre-planning regret was her loophole to do what she wanted."- Lone_Buck
season 2 famalam GIF by BBC ThreeGiphyWhen people do speak with conviction, more often than not they firmly believed what they say.
So much so, that they have trouble believing the person brave enough to correct them.
In spite of the concrete evidence thrown in front of them...