"I soon realized the end users had no idea what they were asking for when I was giving them a 'new' PC as an upgrade after retrieving the 'old' PC.

"I would take the old PC back to the shop, add a sound card, replace the floppy with a CD-ROM, defragment the hard drive and then wait for the next 'critical' upgrade request."

And his shell game works. The upgraded users are delighted with their, um, vastly improved machines -- so happy that they thank fish's boss by taking him to lunch.

Boss returns from his free lunch furious and immediately calls fish on the carpet. Why have you been handing out so many high-end PCs without my authorization? he asks fish. And where are the purchase orders? Have you been going around me and ordering them through another department?

"I informed him of the scam and explained that the upgrades were merely the multimedia kits he had ordered to upgrade the old PCs with," fish says. "He was befuddled, then amazed and eventually pleased with the results -- so much that I got a decent raise that year.