Getting creative by thinking outside the box

[Conquistador_del_mar]

From The London Times:

A Well-Planned Retirement



Outside England's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8
buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant
attendant. The fees were £1 for cars ($1.40), £5 for busses (about $7).

Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he
just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent. The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility. The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee. The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the
City payrole.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (or some
such scenario), is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed
completely on his own; and then had simply begun to show up every day,
commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per
day -- for 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7
million dollars!



And no one even knows his name.

[McGary911]

Snopes debunked it, but it's a great story.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/carpark.asp

I grew up in a beach town (Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ), and will admit we pulled a similar scam on a much smaller scale. Every once in a while, if we got an especially warm spring day, the first tourists of the season would trek down to the beach to enjoy the weather. The pay lots weren't staffed that early in the season (no one expected those warm days). We'd go to the local lumber store, and pick up a couple of those nail pouches that go around your waist (look just like change belts). Those along with a folding chair by the entrance, would get you $1 per car easily (it was a while ago).
That little scam would usually make us about $20 a head, which we often would spend in the boardwalk arcade which owned the lots anyway. So they got their money, those quarters just took the long way to the cashboxes in the pac man machines. :)

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Snopes debunked it, but it's a great story.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/carpark.asp

I grew up in a beach town (Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ), and will admit we pulled a similar scam on a much smaller scale. Every once in a while, if we got an especially warm spring day, the first tourists of the season would trek down to the beach to enjoy the weather. The pay lots weren't staffed that early in the season (no one expected those warm days). We'd go to the local lumber store, and pick up a couple of those nail pouches that go around your waist (look just like change belts). Those along with a folding chair by the entrance, would get you $1 per car easily (it was a while ago).
That little scam would usually make us about $20 a head, which we often would spend in the boardwalk arcade which owned the lots anyway. So they got their money, those quarters just took the long way to the cashboxes in the pac man machines. :)

Too funny! Yep, I sort of figured it was just a story, but I found it creative like what you apparently did.
Your nail pouches reminds me of when I was hired years ago (1972 or so) to be a ticket taker at Dallas International Motor Speedway outside of Lewisville, TX one summer. They gave me a roll of tickets and a white pouch to wear for a money belt and left me at one of the entryways for the afternoon. After about 3 hours, I was almost out of tickets and had about $15,000 strapped around my waist with some pretty tough characters driving up and no security! They finally sent around a car where I dumped all my cash in the trunk and they gave me a fresh roll of tickets. Amazingly, none of about 8 of us got robbed on that Sunday afternoon. Bill

[Ghost]

I love stories like this.

I knew a guy in highschool who had that bookish-glasses boyish-look that could have passed for 16 or 30. His mother worked at a lab where she had access to equipment like geiger counters. He claimed (dunno if he really did it) that he put a shirt and tie on, grabbed a clipboard, made some BS forms, and went door to door testing microwave ovens for radiation leaks. $10 a pop.

Maybe yes, maybe no. But I guarantee it *could've* worked.