A cashier was conned out of $1,400 from his register, according to a Sept. 11 e-mail from my company's loss prevention. Con artists and register shortages are problems that confront most cashiers at some point. When till counts fall short, somebody's got to pay.

I lost my job at Burger King to a con artist. In February 2002, a man paid his $1.07 order with a $50 bill and requested change for a $50. A clumsily charasmatic dishonesty emanated from his brown eyes. During the exchange, I was confused but knew exactly what was happening. Rather than heeding my instincts, I made the mistake of hoping I was sharper than he was. My register shortage reflected the amount of "change" I handed him. The incident was embarrasing enough that I never spoke a word of it.

Company policy dictated that cashiers having shortages of $50 or more get tested for drugs. My manager referred me to the wrong clinic for testing. There was another location, but I was in college and juggling four news stories for the campus rag. I failed to throw some piss their way in a timely fashion and was quickly fired.

Although rarely seen, counterfeit money is an obvious issue. Working drive-thru at my first job, a customer passed me a $20 bill that looked real enough. After close, the manager counting my drawer gave it a second look. I took the bill from her hand, felt the paper and peeled apart two slips of paper. They don't always look very fake, but the feel of real federal paper is unmistakable.

Last December, a jerk off insulted my intelligence with even funnier money. Following protocol, I laboriously rolled my eyes and paged a manager. They took the bill into the count room and played with a marker before telling the maggot to ram Andrew Jackson's clone up his candy ass. Even the assistant store director kissed my ass over that save. Counterfeit pens are overrated and unnecessary if one really knows what to look for.

Despite the intrigue of federal crime and illusionist cons, common register shortages are a greater threat to profits and employment. Technically, cashiers are not considered to be short or over unless the discrepancy limit has been exceeded. The limit is $2 in fast food and about $7 in grocery stores. Regardless of a shortage's true cause, disciplinary action for discrepancies greater than $20 are typical. The consequences range from a meaningless write-up to termination.

One hideous night at Jack in the Box, I was blamed for two shortages; one of them being $164. I was contending with a wrapped around drive-thru and a woeful incompetent was pretending to work front counter. We got overwhelmingly bumrushed and the incompetent fell worse than behind. With foolish disregard to my pay rate, I sent the bum to the fryer and assumed control of her station as well as mine. There I was, an admirable worker in rare form and clueless of my impending bitch slap.

The punk's register was found to be $164 short and I took the fall. In the write up, I was reprimanded for using a register not my own and was guaranteed termination for another shortage of any amount. Every single cash handler in fast food shares registers as a matter of necessity, regardless of a universal company policy prohibiting it. Prior to recieving discipline, I overheard the inept woman telling a co-worker that $165 had been stolen from her purse in the break room. She failed to report the theft and had no intention of doing so. This tumor was not written up for the shortage. An expert review of video footage saved my job, but I kept seeing her at work. Given our use of drop boxes, $164 did not vanish quickly or inadvertently.

At Jack in the Box, I got a pink sheet of paper. At my first McDonald's, I lost a few green ones. In that particular franchise company, the policy was that shortages were solely on the cashier's dime. I always worked nights in an isolated drive-thru booth, where assholes were free to rape my unattended drawer. In the fall of 2000, $20 shortages became a pattern. That year, I lost $85 to a single shortage. Obviously, there is no reason for the company to take action when cashiers have wallets. Bearing all this in mind, I took to borrowing lunch or cigarette money from my register. The practice of making cashiers reimburse the register is fairly rare and rightly so.

After quitting Jack in the Box, my former night manager told me about a rash of shortages. He said that a private investigator had been questioning all employees in the matter. Utilizing lame police tactics, the investigator accused the night manager of stealing and encouraged him to confess. My hunch is that he knew something but wouldn't say. Silence is often the moral approach. Personally, under-employment has prompted me to scoop off a few dollars on several pathetic occasions. I never pocketed more than I needed for laundry, cheap smokes or a bland meal. Ironically, there were never shortages or suspicions when I actually stole.

"... Over the course of 10 minutes money was exhanged 21 times with the con artist," the company e-mail read. A cash handler should never be confused, or quite that stupid. I have known multiple cashiers who were fired over shortages. Most of us are honest, but I find it hard to judge a poor thief too harshly. High dollar mistakes are unlikely ones to make, but shit does happen. In a job that requires little thought, momentary inattentiveness can add up to months of joblessness.