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Prank call leads to Burger King employees smashing the windows to relieve toxic gas

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Video here.

Damages totaling over $10,000.

Chicago Tribune said:
A prank caller tricked workers at a Minnesota Burger King into smashing the windows of the restaurant to keep it from exploding, police said Saturday, mirroring similar deceptions at Burger Kings and other fast-food restaurants in other states in recent months.

Police said employees at the restaurant in the Minneapolis suburb of Coon Rapids got the call Friday night from someone claiming to be with the fire department. The caller said the restaurant could explode, so they needed to relieve the pressure. The manager and other employees believed the caller and smashed all the windows on the ground floor.

"Officers arrived and found that the manager and employees of the Burger King were smashing out the windows," Sgt. Rick Boone told the Star Tribune. "The manager explained they'd received a phone call from a male who identified himself as a fireman who said there were dangerous levels of gas in the building and they had to break out all the windows to keep the building from blowing up."

The restaurant was boarded up Saturday, and investigators were trying to identify the caller.

Frankly, that's what they get for removing jalapeno chicken fries from their menu.
 

norm9

Member
Which is? Never saw it.

From Wikipedia about Compliance's inspiration which were phone call scams-

The strip search phone call scam is a series of incidents that extended over a period of about ten years before an arrest was made in 2004. The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police officer and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of female employees, and to perform other bizarre acts on behalf of "the police". The calls were most often placed to fast-food restaurants in small towns, located in rural areas of the United States.

Over 70 such occurrences were reported in 30 U.S. states, until an incident in 2004 in Mount Washington, Kentucky (population 9,117), finally led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart,[1] a 37‑year-old employee of Corrections Corporation of America, a firm contracted by several states to provide corrections officers at private detention facilities.

On October 31, 2006, Stewart was acquitted of all charges in the Mount Washington case. He was suspected, but never charged, of having made other, similar scam calls.[2][3]
 

entremet

Member
From Wikipedia about Compliance's inspiration-

The strip search phone call scam is a series of incidents that extended over a period of about ten years before an arrest was made in 2004. The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police officer and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of female employees, and to perform other bizarre acts on behalf of "the police". The calls were most often placed to fast-food restaurants in small towns, located in rural areas of the United States.

Over 70 such occurrences were reported in 30 U.S. states, until an incident in 2004 in Mount Washington, Kentucky (population 9,117), finally led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart,[1] a 37‑year-old employee of Corrections Corporation of America, a firm contracted by several states to provide corrections officers at private detention facilities.

On October 31, 2006, Stewart was acquitted of all charges in the Mount Washington case. He was suspected, but never charged, of having made other, similar scam calls.[2][3]
This authority bias at work.
 
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PreFire

Member
$10,000 of glass damage? Fuck. Does BK insurance cover this, or does the owner have to come out of pocket? You can't really blame the workers who are probably young, and were frightened and obviously believed the person on the phone was of authority. Then again, saying the building could "explode" was kind of crazy lol. I would have just evacuated the restaurant and waited a good distance until the fire department and police showed up.

Pranks like these are so stupid, not funny and dangerous. Hope they catch the caller, make them pay for the damages + more.
 

Zombine

Banned
This is genuinely one of the oldest 00s Era prank in the books. It's scary as shit too because a lot of people comply with the request.
 

Quixzlizx

Member
From Wikipedia about Compliance's inspiration which were phone call scams-

The strip search phone call scam is a series of incidents that extended over a period of about ten years before an arrest was made in 2004. The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police officer and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of female employees, and to perform other bizarre acts on behalf of "the police". The calls were most often placed to fast-food restaurants in small towns, located in rural areas of the United States.

Over 70 such occurrences were reported in 30 U.S. states, until an incident in 2004 in Mount Washington, Kentucky (population 9,117), finally led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart,[1] a 37‑year-old employee of Corrections Corporation of America, a firm contracted by several states to provide corrections officers at private detention facilities.

On October 31, 2006, Stewart was acquitted of all charges in the Mount Washington case. He was suspected, but never charged, of having made other, similar scam calls.[2][3]

There was a Law & Order: SVU episode about this, starring Robin Williams. Which was immediately what I thought of when reading the thread title.
 
That's bad, but at least the BK workers didn't do the shit like in the movie Compliance.
Yeah, thought it was the same guy for a sec. Kinda tame for that sick bastard though.

I normally read up on these 'based on true events' movies to find out how accurate they really are, and I was honestly expecting to find out that most of it was BS. Oh shit nope, that actually happened. Fuck.

I was kinda depressed for a while after that.
 

Skeyser

Member
All the windows too lmao

I mean, I could understand panicking and breaking one maybe. Though if I fell for it I think I'd just tell everyone to leave and run out, not going to die to save a BK.
 

Obscura

Member
I can't even begin to comprehend how, not just one, but multiple people with functioning human brains fell for that. And then decided smashing the windows is the correct response? That is impressively stupid and dangerous.

If they couldn't bother to think "hey, not one bit of this situation makes any sense or adheres to any known logic" then they ought to pay for the damages.
 
I can't even begin to comprehend how, not just one, but multiple people with functioning human brains fell for that. And then decided smashing the windows is the correct response? That is impressively stupid and dangerous.

If they couldn't bother to think "hey, not one bit of this situation makes any sense or adheres to any known logic" then they ought to pay for the damages.

When I worked at Target in 1998/99, I prank called a guy who worked at the electronics counter and pretended to be corporate. I told him we were installing a new video game display so we wanted him to take all of the games off the shelves (this is when they were still locked up behind glass) and stick them in a cart in the middle of the aisle.

Sure enough, an hour later, he had taken every single game out of the case and into a cart.
 
When I worked at Target in 1998/99, I prank called a guy who worked at the electronics counter and pretended to be corporate. I told him we were installing a new video game display so we wanted him to take all of the games off the shelves (this is when they were still locked up behind glass) and stick them in a cart in the middle of the aisle.

Sure enough, an hour later, he had taken every single game out of the case and into a cart.

"I was only following orders."
 
That's a fucking EPIC prank call lol! How stupid do you have to be to believe the fire department would just call you up and be like,"Yo! You're building is about to explode, you better take the time to break all the fucking glass rather than escape."
 
When I worked retail we would get sent a list of scams going on at different establishments, It was amazing to see what people fell for. Towards the end it was a lot of bomb or sniper threats if you don't activate a prepaid visa and give them the info.
 

Speevy

Banned
I'm going to Burger King and call a woman claiming to be part of the bomb squad. There's a bomb that will kill everyone in 30 seconds unless you have sex with the guy holding the cell phone.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
The common understanding we have for what should be taken serious and what should not be taken serious is about as low as its ever been.

IMO fooling someone now a days is a lot easier because we have so many videos of real people doing just about anything and then you have so many places to go on the internet to learn about everything in existence. One meme is someone else's motto for their entire life.
 
How dumb can you be, lol.. Just prop the doors // ceiling open.

They couldn't just prop the door open?


This is the first thing that came to mind. I wouldn't believe the prank caller just because I'm familiar and work with high pressure processes but even if I wasn't familiar with how pressure works I would have propped the doors open, evacuated the building, turned everything off, got the hell out of there, and called 911 and told them everything.
 
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