When I was bricklayer back in England in the 1980's we got paid per thousand bricks we laid, piece work or price work as it was known.
3 occasions I can think of where people got money for nothing.
1. The guy who measured up how many bricks we'd laid at the end of the week on a big jobsite (quantity surveyor) asked my work partner to build his mom a garden wall at her house, in return he said he'd add/fake that my work partner had laid several more thousand bricks than he really had on the big jobsite. Thereby having the company pay for the construction of his mom's wall.
2. The same work partner of mine, he was about 55 when I was about 27. We were working on a big hospital job and the regular quantity surveyor was off on holidays. So a younger guy was sent to measure up the bricks we'd laid.
So my work partner walked him around the job site making small talk and showing him this wall and that wall that we'd built. At one point he even had his arm over the young guys shoulder and telling him stories of old.... when he'd got the guy a bit confused he walked him up the building site, then walked him down a corridor to measure the backside of a big wall that the surveyor had already measured the other side of! Thereby measuring it twice!! $$ and we got away with it.
3. Me and the same work partner working on a new school in a posh area of Leeds. The truck that delivered mortar wasn't allowed to enter until 9am due to people at a private school nearby complaining. But we were all on the job at 8am and couldn't lay bricks until the truck arrived.
We complained but didn't seem much we could do except get ready for when the truck arrived.
But I found out after I left there that the bricklaying contractor who we worked for had been getting paid for that hour x 5 days a week x around 20 men, but he'd pocketed the money for himself.
The bricklaying contractor had been in jail not that long ago and his son had run the business while he was inside. Hid son was the 'dope dealer' on site and a hardman, but he got beat up by another guy that was harder than him.
A funny side note is that when we left the job that my partner had been paid to build the surveyors mums garden wall. My partner didn't want to tell the surveyor who he knew well, that we were leaving for a more lucrative contract, so he insisted that we tell this story... The story went that my partners wife had breast cancer and my partner needed to take time off to be with her, and I was to say that I was going to work closer to home (about 40 miles away) on my own and say goodbye to my partner. (these kind of loose 2 man partnerships being common for bricklayers)
But in reality we met up on the new jobsite on the Monday following that Friday. But when I received my last cheque in the mail from the 'bent' surveyor who we'd just left and lied to, I'd been ripped off! So I asked my partner if he had been ripped off to? No, he hadn't !!!
So the surveyor wouldn't pay me right and had no idea that me and partner were still working together due to his wife being in perfect health... so I went to see him on the job in the office hut, a small argument broke out between me and him in front of his colleagues, and of course he had no idea that me and partner were still working together and that i knew just what partner had been paid.
So I just looked at the surveyor and said loudly "Garden Walls" the look on his face was priceless!!! and I left... my cheque for the correct amount followed within a few days.
That was just in about a 12 month period.
All I wanted to do was go to work and get paid for what I'd done really, but ended up in this sort of 'lock stock and 2 smoking barrels' film.