'Gift cards don't work that way': Taco shop drive-thru employee dumbfounded, denying a customer when they try to purchase a meal with a $0 gift card

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Dec 27, 2025 4:00 AM EST

What's the ultimate scam? Acting supremely stupid and pretending you don't know how the world works. 

Scammers get pretty creative in this day and age, and it's not very often that we see an OG classic like the "Gift Card Workaround." However, if you've ever spent a day in the shoes of a customer service employee, either in retail or food service, you've seen it all, especially idiotic customers who couldn't run a scam right even if you handed them the keys to the register vault. 

Customer service employees are trained to be good little minions, the face of the company, and the smile customers see when they walk through the door. But as most workers know, the minimum wage paycheck is hardly worth the effort of contorting your smiling muscles into changing your natural expression of boredom, dismay, and genuine dumbfoundedness. Having worked in the food service industry for many years (to be fair, I worked at In-N-Out Burger, which is by far the best fast-food chain to work for), I have gained valuable insights into customer management. It's tougher than you think to smile and pretend that the customer is always right, because oftentimes, the customer is oh-so-wrong that it tingles in your bones for the rest of your shift, immortalizing their tale on the Customer Wall of Shame in the colleague break room. 

An employee in this next story was no stranger to knuckledragging customers. Working for years at the local taco shop, they had seen it all from late-night taquito runs to breakfast burrito hangover cures. However, this particular day, they were far too sharp on their shift to let a pair of scammy hooligans attempt to run their scheme on them. As they whipped out the likes of a brand new, $0 gift card, they hoped to purchase their entire meal and then some, but this clever cashier saw right through their guise, calling them out and forcing them to pay like everybody else. 

Because playing dumb can only get you so far in this drive-thru, and you're going to have to be a little smarter to pull the wool over an experienced customer service person's eyes. 

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  • Fast food employee handing a customer their food order at the drive through.
    via KCKATE

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "Gift cards don't work that way"

    Hey, y'all! This is something that just happened at work and, dang, it gave me a headache which I still am fighting. This happened at the taco place | work at.
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • About roughly around 7:00sh, a couple pulls up to the drive thru and orders about 40ish dollars worth of food. They also ask if we could sell them a 60 dollar gift card. I activated the card, told them their total and they pulled up to the window.
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • They asked if they could apply the gift card balance towards their order. The problem with that is they didn't even pay for the freaking gift card yet. They
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • were basically asking me if I could give them their order for free. I told them I couldn't do that until they paid for the card.
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • Fast food employee talking to a customer at the register.
    via valantinerussanov

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • They did try to argue. They told me to just do it but I wouldn't budge. I told them they had to pay for it. They eventually relented and paid for their order and left.
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • I don't know if this is entitled or just plain dumb but either way, it gave me a pretty big headache. Seriously, gift cards don't work that way, guys!
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • Cubsfantransplant They tried to scam your store. Good catch.
    via Cubsfantransplant
  • teh_maxh Their order was 40 dollars. They add a 60 dollar gift card, bringing the total to 100 dollars. They pay 60 of that with the gift card and now owe 40 dollars, just like before. I'm not sure why they'd want to bother.
    via teh_maxh
  • OP PurpleBirdieLady623 I really honestly don't know what they were thinking
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • SATerp That scam probably works, somewhere.
    via SATerp
  • OP PurpleBirdieLady623 Yeah. Definitely not at my restaurant
    via PurpleBirdieLady623
  • nowstheworstoftimes Unfortunately, I bet it's worked for them in the past.
    via nowstheworstoftimes
  • shibumi7126 Not exactly the same as this scenario, but I used to work a Papa John's and we had a man and woman come in one time. The man kept trying to pay for their $100ish order with a gift card we had just seen him sneakily take from the display of gift cards near the register. He tried for 10 minutes or so, to get us to accept a gift card that had no balance, as payment.
    via shibumi7126
  • star_wash They knew what they were doing
    via star_wash
  • mrdumbazcanb They're trying to trip the cashier up. They knew what they were doing
    via mrdumbazcanb

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employee gift card customers employees taco shop pay
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