Flip Flop Flashback

August 18, 2015 11:16 AM

When I was visiting New York twenty years ago as a teenager I stepped on a well-dressed man's flip flop and broke it. He started screaming at me and demanding hundreds of dollars. Thankfully there was a pushy adult around who told him to get lost, that I was a kid and didn't even have hundreds of dollars to give him (which was true). Was this a scam?

Reading the post about NY stock photography today brought back this memory, and it dawned on me that this must have been a scam (the comments mention a similar scam where someone drops broken glasses AND men wearing flip flops with suits, although not at the same time).

It was a scam right? Has this specific thing ever happened to anyone else?

posted by insoluble uncertainty to Grab Bag (12 answers total)

Yeah, that's a pretty common scam here in the city. The glasses one happened to my husband once; he was walking along Fifth Avenue and some guy bumped him and then started yelling that my husband had broken his glasses and had to pay for them. My husband just said something like, "Well, maybe you'd better not bump people if you're that worried about your glasses" and kept walking. I've never heard of the flip flops one, but yeah, same idea.
posted by holborne at 11:20 AM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

I was trying to remember another similar scam and I just remembered it: the "You broke my watch!" one. Same as the glasses/flip flop one.
posted by holborne at 11:44 AM on August 18, 2015

Yes.

(I mean, really, how are you even supposed to *break* a flip flop by stepping on it?)
posted by monospace at 11:46 AM on August 18, 2015

(I mean, really, how are you even supposed to *break* a flip flop by stepping on it?)

Pretty easy, actually -- you step on the back, the wearer keeps walking, and the thong part gets ripped out of the rubber sole. It's happened to me once or twice .
posted by holborne at 11:59 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

.... but flip flops like that cost about a dollar.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:12 PM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: It was not a $2 pair of rubber flip flops. I guess it was technically more of a sandal--leather, and with a strap around the back, but it was a very lightweight one with extremely thin straps and a thin sole like a flip flop. The back of the sole was floppy and free and perfect for stepping on.

I know it's possible to break shoes this way because I also broke one of my mother's sandals a couple of years before this incident by stepping on the back. So when it happened my first reaction was "oh shit, not again!"

You guys have convinced me that it was indeed a scam, but it will still totally make my day if someone else reports having seen the exact same thing.
posted by insoluble uncertainty at 12:30 PM on August 18, 2015

See also: whacking into your car, dropping a brown paper bag and finding that the expensive lightbulb in it is broken, 40$ receipt is in there, too, proving its cost.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:32 PM on August 18, 2015

Best answer: This class of short con is sometimes called the Melon Drop - bumping into someone, dropping your worthless [vodka bottle | grandma's vase | glasses | takeout] and guilting the mark into paying up. The name comes from apocryphal accounts of grifters running the con on Japanese tourists.
posted by zamboni at 12:41 PM on August 18, 2015 [9 favorites]

You'll also see it under the name the 'glim dropper'; it's a pretty old short con. There was a guy in my old neighborhood when I was a kid who briefly did it to a few people with a pair of glasses. It stopped when he tried it on my dad, who said that if he ever saw the guy in our neighborhood again he'd call the cops and/or break his legs.
posted by Itaxpica at 2:07 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

In Hong Kong, there's an equivalent famous painting con.
posted by frumiousb at 4:13 PM on August 18, 2015

The glim dropper I'm familiar with is a lost property long con. The original one involves at least two people, one of whom has a glass eye.
posted by zamboni at 5:58 PM on August 18, 2015

Just as likely that it was somewhat-expensive designer sandals - pretend that they overpaid then magnified the dollar value in their hissy fit, for additional 'emotional trauma' and them being an asshole.
The glasses thing is easy to cause (you do the bumping while they aren't looking, so they think they caused the accident) and then blame on someone else, see they choose their victim in advance, and they don't go for broke kids. It is a lot harder to pick a mark and get them to stand on the back of your sandal.
Some people just blow riiight up when given the chance, so they were probably just legitimately the sort of person who blows their top. I mean, very possibly a scammer in other areas of their life, such that that is their default response, but unlikely to have set you up to step on their sandle.
posted by Elysum at 3:25 AM on August 19, 2015