I cannae doo it, Cappin!

[Broomjockey]

minor off topic, but I find it interesting how many people are saying "How can this person not know how to write a cheque?" And then there's how many threads where people write cheques, and they're cursed for taking so long to do so, and how many places don't take cheques anymore, and so on. Maybe this guy just simply didn't know? Because despite the fact that so many of you learned to write cheques when you were young, maybe he missed class that day, and just never needed them. It's not like they're omnipresent anymore.

Now, it was sucky of him not to have another form of payment, but as far as I can see, he was fairly polite, and didn't try to haggle it out or anything. So, minor suckage anyway.

[Andara Bledin]

I'm thinking it wasn't a scam merely because he didn't take any effort at all to try to get anyone to write out the check for him. Nearly every scammer listed on this site at least makes some token effort to run the scam beyond the setup, some to the point of getting arrested for other things they'd pulled previously.

And if it was a business check of some sort, it could be that the only experience he has with checks is when they had him submit his signature when they made him a signor on the account.

I was wondering that myself. I learned how to write checks in a required "Life Skills" class in junior high. I think I was twelve.

Yeah, my junior high school had a Home Economics class for all 6th grade students that was a full semester of actually economics, including how to balance a check book and how to write checks. We spent a full week on just checking account stuff.

^-.-^

[RetailWorkhorse]

To be honest, I don't think he was trying to scam you. I've had a couple people ask me to show them what to do when it came to filling out a check, and on at least one occasion I filled it out myself (bad hand writing skills and he wanted the bank to be able to READ the silly thing).

I learned how to write checks when my grandsire had picked up a play-set from the....60s? So my sister and I would play "Shoppe" with our cousins and would fill out the play checks. 5-year olds playing around, my Grandfather decided us Kiddies would just HAVE to go to Business School and run a fortune 500 company when we were adults (this coming from a self-made man with little education. Thanks for the support, Papa <3).

[Imogene]

Update: Told MOD J about this story while waiting to clock in today. She responded: "With the size of the check, and the fact it was a company check, yeah, I wouldn't have let you run it anyway."
Our cash office worker was standing right there, just as confused as I was when he asked me to fill out his check, and she was just going, "What? No... no.... NO!"
So, I think I did right.

[Whyme]

Sigh. My husband is 37 and can't fill out a check. He never had a bank account before me either. I used to have him try and write checks to get him used to it but he would get confused, "What's this line for? And this line? And this one?". Yet, he's a math whiz. It's very frustrating.

Though I'm not sure why the guy in the OP's post would have had a business check without the employer making sure he knew how to use it

[PepperElf]

i think you did the right thing in saying "no"
something strikes me as fishy....

i mean it's one thing to have a stamp for your company, or to tell him "put this as our company name..." but it sounds more like he wanted you to fill out everything including the total.

and that strikes me as odd... as in ... the kind of odd that makes me wonder if it's really his check even.

and if it's his company check... a man with his own company should know how to fill out his own bloody check book. and if it's not his company, just one he works for... what kind of company gives check book privlages to someone who doesn't even know how to fill out out?

O_o

[texasbelle5]

How do these people get up, get dressed and get to work in the mornings?

Sheesh, it doesn't take a NASA rocket scientist to figure out how to fill out a check.

And who uses a check nowadays? That would have raised my red flags. He wanted you to fill out his check? Very fishy.

[Andara Bledin]

Though I'm not sure why the guy in the OP's post would have had a business check without the employer making sure he knew how to use it

The employer did the same thing most of the rest of the people who responded did: They assumed that every adult knows how to write a check. Hell, with the prevalence of gift cards and bank cards these days and the lack of favor checks receive, most kids won't ever learn how, either.

And who uses a check nowadays? That would have raised my red flags. He wanted you to fill out his check? Very fishy.

My company sends out one of the drivers with a signed blank check about once a month. However, he does know how to fill one out, and our company is known to the people he's doing the purchasing from. We actually go through a lot of checks that don't have anything to do with regular bill payments because we deal with a lot of auction houses and the like and they all take checks, although some require bank letters of guarantee, first.

^-.-^

[Kogarashi]

I don't think it was a scam either (I think he would've put up more of a stink), but I also think you did right in not filling out the check yourself. If your system isn't set up to print it, you shouldn't have to do that for the customer, especially for such a large amount.

I know at Wal-Mart, the register can print everything so that the customer just has to sign the check, though now the register just prints VOID in all the spaces and runs the check electronically, so the customer signs a slip not unlike a credit card. He probably hoped you had a similar check-printing setup.

As for me, I learned in 6th grade math. We did a unit on money, with fake checkbooks, deposit slips, and account registers. Each day, the teacher told us what we were buying and/or depositing, and we had to keep a running total in addition to filling out the checks and turning them in for grades. I haven't forgotten since. That also taught me to fill the entire "amount in words" line, with a horizontal line if nothing else, and it always gets me when I see customers leave half that line blank.

[Caveat Emptor]

I was never formally "taught" how to write a check. I learned by looking at checks my parents had filled out.

[Eben56]

Working with a lot of construction contractors, we have lots that come in with a company check and we fill it out for them. There are a LOT of people that do not know how to read or write.
A scammer would not have drawn extra attention to himself and then walked away quietly. He acted embarrassed.

[Andara Bledin]

That also taught me to fill the entire "amount in words" line, with a horizontal line if nothing else, and it always gets me when I see customers leave half that line blank.

I've never quite understdood why you should bother to fill the entire line. I never have. After all, once you get to the 17/100 for the change portion, that pretty much tells everyone there's going to be nothing else on that line unless someone's tampered with it.

^-.-^

[Cyphr]

scammers used to scribble out the first part and put ina new value this you can modify the old number to without raising red flags. so it would like you scribbled out because you wrote the wrong value a line or a zigzag makes it that much harder to do

[wynjara]

I taught my college roommate how to fill out a check. She'd never been shown. I wouldn't have been except that my mom sat and showed me. In my school, the only classes that were taught how to do practical things like fill out checks and balance books were the special ed classes. Never did figure out if everyone else was supposed to be visited by the magical CheckBook Fairy or something.