In previous entries I’ve mentioned my opinion of state-run lotteries. I consider playing Powerball equivalent to flushing your money down the toilet, but if you have an office pool going when a jackpot reaches $100+ million, then chip in your $5 because if you don’t you know your co-workers will have a winning ticket, thus making you the only person in the office for the next workday. Back when I used to work at the Quickie-Mart during my college days, I got to interact with these gambling junkies on a frequent basis, and let me just say that these are some of the scariest, not to mention most pathetic, mo-fo’s out there. They were so scary that I dubbed them “Lottery People.”

There are two types of Lottery People. You have the ones who play Powerball, Daily Numbers, etc., and then you have those that indulge in those instant scratch-off games. Today’s entry will deal with the former; I’ll get to the latter another time. A considerable amount of Lottery People are these little old ladies who have been playing certain numbers for their entire lives, but there are also younger, equally dumb, contestants. However, the most aggravating are the blue-haired seniors.

During my Quickie-Mart days we had two cashiers, and in-between our registers was the dreaded lottery machine. When a customer had numbers to play, the person whose register she approached had to go to the lottery machine and enter the numbers, all the while your customer line grew and grew. I think the biggest annoyance was that our regular customers who played the lottery always had with them a piece of paper which had their list of numbers written on it. Now of course instead of handing the sheet over to us so we could enter in the numbers, they would proceed to READ THEM OFF ONE AT A TIME. Even when we asked for their precious chicken-scratch many of them would refuse to do so. One time I had this regular customer who was an old hag that always refused to let me read off her list. A day or so later when she came back to play her numbers she claimed I previously messed up her numbers, and the number I erred on hit for the first time in her life. Did I screw up her numbers? I don’t know, but seeing as how Rule #2 of the Lottery People Handbook is to double-check your numbers after you received your tickets, I don't really care if I did or not. Then again, there are many rules in the Lottery People Handbook that aren’t followed, such as:

#4: If you place a certain set of numbers, MARK THEM DOWN on one of those insta-sheets you can just give to a cashier so he or she can run them through the lottery machine error-free.

#8: If you have more than several numbers and are in a hurry, don’t buy your tickets during the MORNING or AFTERNOON RUSH HOUR, when the Quickie-Mart is at its busiest.

#15: When checking your numbers, don’t do it at the register, and don’t be surprised if customer who has been waiting behind you for 10 minutes pushes you out of the way so he can pay for his gas and pack of beef jerky. Go to a low-traffic area, double-check your numbers, and return back to the register if there’s a ticket that’s incorrect.

#16: If the lottery machine ticket paper needs re-filled, getting pissy and impatient will not help matters, considering those machines are a bitch to re-fill. If you get pushy or annoying, the customer service representative may deliberately take his time re-filling the machine just to piss you off even more.

#23: Should you enter a store and find a long-ass line at the lottery machine, don’t act all surprised. There are many idiots in this world, and sometimes you'll have to wait if you wish to part with your money in a senseless fashion.

#42: In the rare case you actually get a winning ticket for a nominal amount of cash, please let the cashier know this and what the amount is before this customer service representative goes to pay you out. Believe it or not, a Quickie-Mart employee is not supposed to have $300 readily available in large denominations somewhere within his or her cash register.

Back to that person earlier in this entry who claimed I screwed up her winning number. Being the remorseful soul that I am, I told her that from now on I would no longer enter her numbers for her and told her to have our other customer service representative perform this service. And just who was my other co-worker? This old broad who didn’t know, nor ever bother to learn, how to operate the lottery machine; when she had to get her picks entered (of course she played the lottery – she was old), another co-worker had to punch in the numbers for her. The look of terror my elderly customer had on her face told me that I knew she would never bitch about her incorrect lottery numbers ever again. Even though during my times as a cashier I experienced many infractions from the Lottery People Handbook, I have never witnessed anyone breaking the #1 rule of this guide: Never have someone old enough to receive senior discounts ring up your numbers.

With all of these wacky incidents, one would think that the instant scratch-off breed of Lottery People would be better behaved. Hey, it’s not like you have to do any kind of data entry service for them. Well you would be wrong. In fact, some of my more egregious encounters with Lottery People were via the instant win method.