One day at the first Foodland I worked at, I was sitting near the front door in my little raised-up bookkeeper office, what they now call a courtesy counter. I was idly watching the cashiers and making mental bets about who would be next to need a roll of nickels or a pad of trading stamps.
The main part of my job there was approving customer checks. As a general rule, if I never saw the customer before, I would ask them to bring the check back after they finished shopping and were ready to check out. That weeded out the people who thought supermarkets were banks and just wanted to cash their paycheck and be on their way.
I’d note their driver’s license or other ID on the back, then scribble my initials up in one corner to tell whatever cashier they went to that the check was okay to cash. Probably 98% of the checks I saw looked fine and I approved them. But I had a good eye for people who wrote personal checks without enough money in the bank to cover them, and if I didn’t feel right about a check, whether personal or payroll, I’d just say “Sorry, we can’t cash that.” If they argued, I’d give a reason like “Sorry, I don’t know that company”, or “Sorry, that’s an out-of-state bank.” I didn’t get fooled very often.
If they still argued, I’d call the manager over and he’d listen to their story and make a decision. If a check bounced, it was something of a demerit for whoever approved it, and of course Foodland was out the amount of the check
On this particular day, a skinny guy about 30 years old came to the desk. He looked like a regular working man, wearing working man clothes, and he had a working man’s paycheck, something like $180, a good week’s pay back then, from one of the local chicken companies. It was already signed on the back. He passed me a beat-up paper driver’s license, looking at the floor as he did so.
I’ve never seen a worse fake ID. The poor thing looked like someone took the top half of one washed-out driver’s license and the bottom half of another, put them together with scotch tape on the back, then handprinted on it the name that was on the check.
I couldn’t believe anyone would offer such an obviously fake ID, and I said “Can you just wait here a minute?”, took a dime out of my cash drawer and dropped it into the pay phone on the wall behind me. The customer asked what I was doing, and I said “I’m calling the police.” He turned and ran out the front door. Operating on pure greyhound/mechanical rabbit instinct, I was right behind him. I ran out of the office, slamming the door behind me, and began chasing him through the parking lot.
When we got to the back fence and he jumped over, I came to my senses and stopped. I didn’t have a plan, not of catching him, tackling him, or anything else; it was just blind instinct. To be honest with myself, I think it was mostly because I was insulted by being offered that terrible fake ID. I didn’t consider the possibility of getting punched, stabbed or shot in the face until I got to the fence and stopped. As I’ve admitted elsewhere here about a different subject, “I was a young guy myself then, and I too was prone to doing stupid young-guy things.”
I took my time walking back to the store, getting my breath back and trying to come up with the funniest way to tell the story of what just happened. When I got back inside, the cashiers were cashiering, the baggers were bagging, and nobody even glanced at me. I sat at my desk for a while, looking out across the checkout area, waiting for someone to meet my eye and mouth “What the hell was that about?”. But no one did.
The paycheck and fake ID were still on my desk.
As my breathing returned to normal and it became obvious that no one had noticed my impulsive chase, I was overtaken by a fresh impulse. If you have even a speck of latent opportunism in your soul, you will have already guessed what it was. I destroyed the license, scribbled my approval on the check, cashed it, and put the money in my pocket. The check went to the bank along with the rest of the day’s receipts, and of course it bounced and was reported to the police.
A few weeks later, two detectives came to the store. They had a folder with the bounced check in it, and they asked if the scribble on the back was my approval. Yes, it was. They asked if I remembered what the customer looked like. No, I don’t think so. They said if we showed you his picture, do you think you’d remember him then? Yeah, maybe. They produced a small stack of 3×5″ front-and-side view mugshot cards, maybe six in all. They told me to take my time and go through them slowly, one at a time. As I did, they watched me for a reaction. My customer was the fourth one down. When I reached the bottom of the stack without picking one out, they asked me to try again, and really pay close attention this time.
I went through the stack once more, with the same result, and opened my hands in the universal what-next gesture. They knew their guy’s picture was in that stack, he’d probably cashed those checks all over town, and I know they were disappointed in me that I didn’t recognize him. They thanked me and left.
I spent that windfall on my family, with us probably taking a jaunt somewhere we couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Yes, I am a little embarrassed by my impulsive act, but I won’t say that I regret it.