2/11: You Can Bet On Not Winning The Lottery
Well, the Powerball jackpot has reached the $250 million mark, which of course means now that businesses across America are now engaged in office pools in hopes of getting the ultimate workplace bonus. Naturally my place of employment engages in this behavior whenever a lottery reaches the $150+ million mark, and I participate in my office lottery pool. Do I think I’ll win a share of this prize? Not at all. But I do know that if I don’t chip in my $5 it’s assured that my co-workers will win, and lord knows I don’t want that to happen.
A few jobs I worked at over the years have done these lottery pools, and I have always suggested the following in hopes of getting an easy win: Always have one person that regularly partakes in the office lottery not put in any money. The reason I say this is because nearly every office pool that wins these mega-lottery winnings always has some disgruntled employee suing because they weren’t offered a chance to put in a few dollars. Of course, this idea always gets shot down, but if I won part of a $100 million jackpot, I’d gladly skim a few million off the top to the person who didn’t put money in because the karma that helped us get this money was worth much more than any monetary contribution the “stiffed” person would have given.
Anyway, I know playing the lottery is like flushing your money down the toilet, but there’s no way I want to be left out of an office pool. Would you want to be that one schmoe the day after the winning numbers are called watching everyone else turn in their resignations because they each won several million? Of course you wouldn’t. And believe it or not, but the main reason I’d want to win the lottery is so when the several co-workers at my job who never participate in these pools ask to get a cut of the proceeds (and believe me they will), I can tell them to kiss my ass. Also, it would feel so great to tell any family members who I haven’t seen in at least a decade approach me with their hands out so I can say “fuck off.” The seven-digit bank account is a mere afterthought when compared to the glory of telling people you hate to jump off a bridge.
Even though I don’t regularly play the lottery, there have been two instances where I came close to winning. The first time took place years ago. I was no older than seven or eight, and I was in downtown Shittsburgh with my dad for some reason. We walked by a store that had a lottery machine, and he told me to pick three numbers for the Pennsylvania Daily Number. Not really wanting to do this, I just blurted out “804.” The old man bought the $1 ticket and gave it to me for safekeeping.
When 7 p.m. came around, it was time for the Daily Numbers to be drawn. The first number was “8.” The second was “0.” I was now up on my feet in my grandma’s living room shouting, “Come on 4! Come on 4!”
It was “5.” Sure the jackpot wouldn’t have been that big with the drawing being only three numbers between 0 and 9, but that wasn’t the point. I had aunts and uncles play this stupid game every night, and the looks of disgust I would have gotten for picking three correct numbers one night would have caused a rift in the family that probably would still go on to this very day.
The second time I came close to winning a lottery was a few years ago when I lived in the Cincinnati area. Some lottery called Mega Millions was up to an extraordinary high amount, and I became the person in charge of getting lottery entries together. (Swift Terror may remember this, seeing how we were employed there at the same time.) I didn’t mind coordinating this office pool, because that meant not having to do any real work for a day or two.
After a few days of getting the word out to the several hundred people in our building, I got entries from 57 people who chipped in $5 each. I walked down to the local Quickie-Mart and got 285 tickets. I came back, made copies of each ticket and passed them out to everyone. The Friday drawing was that night, and I didn’t stay up for it because I knew we had no chance of winning.
Or did we?
The next day I woke up and began to compare all the tickets with the winning numbers. I remember the drawn numbers had a funky order to them, like “1, 5, 6, 32 and 49” with some special colored ball being a different “25.” This unique order of numbers made it easy for me to go through the tickets, because the first several numbers were close to each other. Oops, this ticket’s low number is 24 -- loser. This one starts out with 12 -- next. Going through the tickets was smooth sailing until I stumbled across one ticket that read, “1, 5, 6, 32.” For an instant my heart stopped beating, and I think I was just seconds away from peeing myself. Naturally, the next number was off, as well as that hippie colored ball. The rest of my tickets weren’t even close to matching the winning numbers. When I looked to see what I had won for picking four correct numbers, it was $150. What really made my heart sink was that if there was one more number correct, we would have gotten a $175,000 prize, which when split up would have been a few grand per person. (If you are getting a sense of déjà vu over this story, I made a thread about this subject when it actually happened.)
Anyway, those are the two times I have come close to winning the lottery. Will tonight’s drawing be any different? The odds are 1-in-God-Knows-How-Many that it won’t be, but you never know. Somebody has to win this tax on the stupid.
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