When I was working minimum wage at a gas station many eons ago, we would have '2 for $x' specials where x is less than 2 times the individual price of whatever item.
People would often not want to buy 2, but I would ring up 2 in the till for the special price and charge them for the single. Then when the next person did the same, I would charge them for the other single.
So over the day, I would sell 10 energy drinks at say $4, but ring them up as 5 '2 for $6' specials. This would put the till up by $10, and then I would use that $10 to have a free meal.
I used to work at a place on an hourly wage. There were two PCs you would clock in on. Most of the time, people would just use the one. But one time, I had to use the other. And I noticed the clock was behind on the other. By about ten minutes.
So after that, I would clock in on the computer showing the prior time stamp, and clock out on the computer with accurate time. Ten minutes a day, five days a week, for a whole summer? About a free $100
sorry to burst your bubble but if there were two PCs capable of clocking you in, then 99% it wasn't either of them keeping track of the time, but rather a separate server they were connected to
I've worked in IT. You are most likely correct, and anyone with any sense would do it that way, but I would absolutely believe that someone could be incompetent enough to use the computer's time stamp. I also wouldn't be surprised if users had access to change the clock.
I wasn't really sure that it would work, but I checked my paycheck and it seemed to be working. This was in 2006 at a country club. So it's not shocking that a) they had a paid some nobodies to give them a bad time keeping software and b) it was designed to not need the internet.