Pass/Fail

The same girl asked me for change 5 different times today. To give her at least some credit, she did catch me on both sides of a clothing change; out of my fancypants duds for my final interview with a certain unnamed national retail chain, and into my hipster wannabie garb complete with designer (if not wholesale) jeans and Puma zippy.

Begging, however, ranks higher on my list of moral reprehensibility than scamming. Scam artists are the scum of the earth. At least beggars have had to swallow their pride and have the decency to ask you for your money outright. Scammers want nothing more than to rip you off, sucker.

I believe everyone on the planet gets scammed at least once in his or her life. It happened to Ben and me on the streets of Liverpool a couple years ago. A moderately well-dressed, middle-aged, white woman stopped us on the street corner and explained that her wallet had just been stolen and she had no money to get on the bus home. All she wanted was spare change to call her children and tell them she was okay.

Ben and I being suckers; we decided to help her out. It should be said that even though we'd been in the UK for a few days, both of us were still in that phase where foreign currency feels much like play money. Our inability to feel any sense of value associated with the thick coins filling up our pockets led us to give the woman something in excess of 5 Pounds sterling. A total sum of more than $8 using the exchange rate of the day. Not a lot of money, but certainly a phone call and a week's worth of bus trips to scam other passers by.

I remember my dad getting scammed once in San Francisco as well. We were about to buy fare cards for the Cable Car at the Fisherman's Wharf. A man standing next to the fare machine stopped us from putting our dollars in, and became our personal transit broker. He took our money in exchange for 3 fare cards. How convenient for us that we didn't have to use that clumsy machine. Thank you kind sir. Naturally, the fare cards were expired.

It should be noted that both my mother and I saw directly through this particular scheme, but were powerless to stop my father from diving into the abyss.

Do you have any embarrassing stories of being ripped off? Maybe we could do a TV show about them. Where's John Stossel when you need him? Or did he already do this story 1000 times?