Delhi sneaker brand employee creates 100% discount codes, orders Rs 2 lakh worth shoes, quits within a week

A Delhi-based sneaker brand alleged that a recently hired CS employee generated 100% discount codes and used them to place orders worth about Rs 2 lakh before quitting within a week.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Arjun Singh, the founder of Gully Labs, said the employee joined the firm a couple of months ago and made the discounted purchases during his first week on the job. According to the post, the orders were shipped to the employee’s friends.

“We hired a CS person a couple of months ago. Within the first week of joining he made INR 2L of 100% discount orders - sent to his friends and quit in a week,” he wrote.

When confronted, the employee initially agreed to cooperate and returned about half of the products, Singh said. The remaining items had already been used.

He further alleged that the former employee later sent legal notices accusing the firm of harassment after it sought the return of the products or reimbursement.

“Then he started sending legal notices that we were harassing him in response to our notice to return the products or reimburse us! So now - we are enabling permissioning on our backend etc. amongst other things,” he added.

Following the incident, the brand said it is strengthening backend controls, including tighter permission settings, to prevent misuse of internal systems.

We hired a CS person a couple of months ago. Within the first week of joining he made INR 2L of 100% discount orders - sent to his friends and quit in a week.

When caught - initially he decided to cooperate and returned half the shoes but the other half were used etc.

Then he… https://t.co/OyxgNOq2OP

— Arjun (@arjuns__) February 21, 2026

Netizens reaction

The incident sparked widespread debate on social media, with many users pointing to weak internal controls as the real issue rather than just employee misconduct.

“This is why early-stage trust culture dies fast. One bad hire costs ₹2L + legal fees + now you're implementing enterprise-level access controls with 10 employees. The real damage isn't the stolen shoes ... it's the operational overhead of treating internal team like potential thieves forever. Gross,” a user wrote.

“Lesson is to keep guardrails in place and be vigilant. Never "blindly" trust anyone,” another wrote.

In one of my previous companies, people used to talk about an ex-employee who exploited loop hole in the rewards system and got himself 5-6 iPhones. He was just warned.

It worked like this , his account had balance of 10 rupees and he would go and purchase something expensive…

— Siva Ram Nyapathi (@sivaramnyapathi) February 22, 2026

Do this-
Stringent Code of Conduct (CoC): Mandate a detailed CoC covering misuse of company perks/resources as 'gross misconduct.' Explicitly ban unauthorized discounts/codes—breach = instant termination. Train on Day 1 + quarterly refreshers via quizzes.

Background…

— Robin Bhakhan (@bhakhan) February 22, 2026