Customer Suggestion for Lottery

[purplecat41877]

Yesterday, a customer brought some lottery tickets that didn't win and wanted the report for each one which I was OK with doing. If I see numbers missing on the lottery sheet, I'll print out a report especially if they don't show on the main screen and write the numbers on the sheet. The customer suggested that the winning numbers should be posted on a printout slip and not handwritten. I let him know that he would have to talk to our main office since they have the power to approve that stuff.

Upside of the customer's suggestion: The print out slips would show the correct winning numbers.

Downside of the customer's suggestion: The lottery paper would run out more quickly and not all of the service desk employees, including the front end manager, know how to print the reports.

[KayEm]

Quite frankly I think the lottery should be outlawed. The only people who win are people who don't need the money anyway. It's double taxation, that's all the lottery is.

[Becks]

At the gas station I worked at, there was an option/button (hey, it's been a while) for printing out the winning numbers. No problems. And we only really ran out of the paper for the machine when Megabucks and/or Powerball jackpots where insanely huge. :still shudders at the memory of trying to change the roll of paper with tons of people in a 10'x5' (or so it seems in my mind) space:

[Kiwi]

a customer said this to me once, and it always stuck with me, she said it after she over heard my coworker telling me she was going to get her weekly lucky dip

"lottery is a tax for stupid people"

I wanted to respond "people like you then" but I bit my lip and handed them their parcel and sent her on her way

oh its soooo hard to keep the upper moral ground!!

[appliance god]

I alway regard the lottery as a "high risk-high dividend investment

[thegiraffe]

I live in Florida, and the Florida Lottery funds a scholarship fund called Bright Futures. Basically, if you're a Florida resident and do well in High School (3.0+ GPA with like a 980 SAT), you get 75% of your tuition paid for at an in-state school, and 100% if you have a 3.5 and like a 1280 SAT. Bright Futures is paying for 75% of my tuition (my university is paying for the rest since I had a 3.5, but not the SAT score). Thanks to the lottery, a large part of my education is free. Therefore, I deem it perfectly acceptable!

[KayEm]

I would consider it blood money and want no part of it. Nothing against your decisions, Giraffe, but personally there is no way I could use money that came largely from people with addictions to fund my education. I just don't think it's right. But that's just me. I've seen too many people affected negatively by the lottery and state gambling.

[Barefootgirl]

The only people who win are people who don't need the money anyway.

Nobody needs all that money. My dad won some money once, he definitely didn't need it, of course, but it made him happy. I think

It's double taxation, that's all the lottery is.

Unlike taxation, though, you can choose not to pay it. If I go racing, and bet on the Tote, i get taxed on my winnings, plus I am gambling my money away. I am the only person to blame for this, the government isn't forcing me to go and bet.

Some people have issues with gambling, but that is their responsibility. Some people are alcoholics and will drink everything up to and including floor polish - but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed to buy a bottle of wine to have with my dinner. Fast food is disgusting and unhealthy, and if you ate it for every meal, it would kill you - but having a burger once in a while as a treat is absolutely fine.

Banning everything because some people cannot control themselves would lead to an unpleasantly totalitarian state, rather like that parodied in the film Demolition Man.

[KayEm]

Gambling is a serious disease, Barefootgirl. There's personal responsibility, of course, but there's also the responsibilities of the entities that provide these things. You can't excuse their side of things, it goes both ways. They put something out there that they know full WELL people will become addicted to therefore they share in that responsibility. People have had their lives ruined by gambling, and I don't think that is ok.

[technical.angel]

People have had their lives ruined by a lot of things, KayEm, and I'm sure as hell not going to let someone take away my car, my internet, my computer, my DVD player, my PS2, my food, my soda, or any other various and sundried things that people can hurt themselves or others with, or become addicted to.

People with Praders-Willi syndrome can literally eat themselves to death because they never feel hungry. They can't control theirselves. So should ALL the food be taken away from EVERYONE because a small percentage of people can't control themselves?

Internet and video games addictions are becoming widely accepted mental health issues. Should we pull the plug on the internet and ban video games to protect these people?

You can't just pull one right and be safe. If you ban one thing, it leaves the door open for everything else.

Jenni

[TNT]

I've of two minds about the lottery.

One the one hand, I see too many people who don't have enough money to live dump most of it on the lottery.

On the other hand, in my state the lottery has funded a prescription drug program for the low-income elderly a long time before the federal government got around to it.

So... there were a lot of winners... just not the people who bought the tickets.

Anyways, lotteries can hardly be considered gambling because of the house percentage. Most casino games pay out 90 to 95% of the amount bet. The lottery pays out 50%. So it's not gambling... it's a sure thing that the lottery buyer is going to lose in the long run, barring the rare mega-jackpot winner.

I, however, am a winner for 2006... so far I bought a single $1 ticket and I won... $2! I kept that tidy profit (much to the shock of the person where I cashed the ticket). Just my little way of sticking it to The Man.

[Rapscallion]

We're not here to change the world. We're here to discuss sucky customers. Let's leave the persuasion to when talking to politicians, m'kay?

Rapscallion

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

a customer said this to me once, and it always stuck with me, she said it after she over heard my coworker telling me she was going to get her weekly lucky dip

"lottery is a tax for stupid people"

I wanted to respond "people like you then" but I bit my lip and handed them their parcel and sent her on her way

oh its soooo hard to keep the upper moral ground!!

That just so happens to be my opinion on the lottery. I do not buy lottery tickets, not even when the Power Ball jackpot is astronomically high.

I'd rather save my money for something nice than gamble it away. But if that's what you want to do with your money, then have a nice time.

The only time I ever play the lottery is at Christmas, when I get the "gift" from the managers consisting of a Christmas card with a scratch-off ticket inside.

[Crafty1289]

I think i posted this on one of the old boards but here goes

I hate the UK lottery. Yes, it brings people into our store, but all commisions go straight to corporate! So we do not see any direct financial benefit from it!

Anyway, theres this one guy who used to come in every draw day with THIRTY full playslips - that is, 210 plays on Lotto. There's always a problem with his slips. The way our lottery machines work is you can feed the playslips in faster than the printer prints the tickets (the printer stores the backups that have been read and processed) - but it occasionally happens that the playslip reader misses one when you feed them in too fast for the reader to read them. Personally, I wait for the beep to say it has read the playslip and it is safe to insert another, but some staff are impatient and end up with £203 as the total, so they have to start matching tickets with playslips and sometimes it can take up to 20 minutes to serve this guy.

Thing is, he is soooooo self-entitled. He once looked at me like he just found me on the bottom of his shoe because i told him one of his playslips was greasy and wouldn't read. He thinks this is OUR problem and 1. will not budge until WE sort it for him, by copying out 7 plays onto a fresh playslip, and 2. will not hand over any money either for the £203 that have gone through. He only everhands over £210.

The fact is, HE wants to play the lottery / organise the syndicate/lotto club, so it is HIS responsibility to fill in the playslips in a computer-readable manner.

Then when we fill out his new slip (cancelling £203 of tickets is near-on impossible and would take twice as long again, or we would do this instead), he moans at us because the new playslip is LONGER than the rest. He has a fistfull of old playslips, the new ones have other games on too, and are longer. So he asks for the OLD playslip back! I swear, next time he comes in, i'm going to break the damn machine, or conveniently run out of ticket paper OR i'll turn the machine around and get HIM to serve HIMSELF.

And the facility to print the winning numbers here is easy - its a menu driven system. "online reports > 1 > 2 > 2 > print"

Then theres Euromillions - i believe it costs €2, so we charge £1.50 in the UK, some people are dumbfounded by this, all the other games cost £1 - i'm like "theres this thing called the exchange rate"

[Titi]

Yesterday, a customer brought some lottery tickets that didn't win and wanted the report for each one which I was OK with doing. If I see numbers missing on the lottery sheet, I'll print out a report especially if they don't show on the main screen and write the numbers on the sheet. The customer suggested that the winning numbers should be posted on a printout slip and not handwritten. I let him know that he would have to talk to our main office since they have the power to approve that stuff.

Upside of the customer's suggestion: The print out slips would show the correct winning numbers.

Downside of the customer's suggestion: The lottery paper would run out more quickly and not all of the service desk employees, including the front end manager, know how to print the reports.

you don't have to print out the winning numbers on the machine? We had to.

Another upside of it, (at least if your state has a noon drawing as well.) first the lotto machine goes down for the drawing and then you have to wait for all the printouts, so you can't run any lotto (except for selling scratch tickets) for awhile.

One time the state didn't give back the machines for use for over 30 minutes. And then it's at least another 5 to print the winning numbers.