Why Criminals Make the Best Employees

If I were an employer, I would hire criminals to work for me. No, I am not in the "waste management" business. Suppose I was a coffee shop owner and I needed to hire a cashier, or someone to handle marketing.

The most attractive candidates would be those who do not yet have a criminal record. On the application under the question "Have you ever been convicted of any felonies or misdemeanors?" I would like to see the word, "No."

I would then add a question to the application. "Have you ever committed a crime for which you have not been caught?" If the answer there was, "Yes," then I know that I have a winning candidate, someone who would make an outstanding employee.

Criminals who have so far evaded the long arm of the law already have a rich employment history. The fact that they committed a crime and got away with it speaks volumes about their character. To pull off a stunt like that, one must be dedicated, determined, educated, intelligent and an excellent team player.

Let's look at the group of criminals from Ocean's Eleven for a moment. If any of them walked into my coffee shop and asked for an employment application, I would hire them on the spot, even if they had a past record with law enforcement. Card magicians, pickpocketers, weapons dealers, professional poker players, Chinese acrobats and explosive experts do not become masters of their trade overnight. No, they spent countless years practicing and mind-numbing hours honing their skills to perfection. They are dedicated to their skill, determined to become the best in their chosen field. In short, they're no slouches. I'd put these guys in charge of my marketing campaign.

It would take a madman with a genius IQ to pull off a simultaneous heist of three casinos. Someone who can do that is obviously not only well connected enough to gather all the data needed to get the job done, but is also an excellent project manager. This person must properly motivate all the team players so they work in unison. Not a single one of them slacks off on this job. No, that would spell disaster for them all, so they take their work extremely seriously. This is one deadline everyone is afraid to miss. I'd make this person the project manager for my marketing campaign.

Now let's take a look at a scam artist. A scam artist, although I don't consider nearly as smart as the guys in Ocean's Eleven, would still make a dedicated worker. It's a lot of work to be a scam artist. There's the mock business you need to register (have you ever applied for a business license? The paperwork alone is enough to scare most sane people away from opening a business!), the numerous aliases, the plethora of people you must contact and convert to victims, the hundreds of stories to keep straight while victim-hunting, the defrauded checks, fake bank account and tax evasion. Then, once they've saturated an area and people are catching on, there's the picking up and moving to a new state and starting the whole process all over again. Talk about work ethic!

One might work at this for years and years before seeing a tidy profit. How much does a scam artist make? I mean, a dedicated scam artist probably works more than eight hours a day, right? Does the money they make defrauding people equal to a pleasant hourly wage, or do scam artists shoot themselves in the foot, toiling for hours upon hours, only to find they've made minimum wage if they stop and equate the number of dollars made versus hours worked?

Still, I'd hire a scam artist to be a cashier. Then I'd make them work double shifts. It should be a walk in the park compared to their previous career and they're already used to making a low wage. And one more bonus: they'd never have to worry about getting busted, losing it all, and wrecking their reputation for years to come.