bait

i was returning the rental car and overheard the clerk talking excitedly with someone on the phone about getting played. it seems a guy had hit several car rental places that morning and got away with 20 bucks each time by posing as a blockbuster employee (?!). too lame a scam to waste space on, let’s just say it took advantage of the usual human foibles of greed and shiny objects.

what caught my ear was the way he talked about it. “he on top of his game,” the owned clerk said authoritatively, like some kind of an ebert of scams, a connoisseur of sleazy human behavior. “he had me fooled,” he crowed.

i know invariably each of us is the protagonist of our own little life drama, but there is a difference between healthy self-esteem and flat out self-delusion. it’s possible that the perp was extraordinarily intelligent, an einstein of street con if you will, but i doubt it. more likely, people were just stupid.

Posted by cellpharmer at May 6, 2007 08:50 AM