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Coin Toss

Zeta Reticuli Star System
United States
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January 17, 2006
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Mar 21, 2008, 7:29 pm

What are some of your pet peeves with lotto sales agents, and other players? I'm not talking about your numbers not hitting, or hitting if you don't play them, what I mean here is irritations such as no play slips for the game you want to play.

I'll start with that, here's a few of mine:

Lotto Sales:

No play slip available (this is very common around here. Granted lotto is usually a sideline, but still...)

Clerks who don't know you can play Pick 3 / Pick 4 for 50 cents.

Other players:

Strokers (people who intentionally give the clerk a hard time, or hand them a lot of play slips one by one)

People at scratcher vending machines (and for some reason, it's usually females that do this)

People that "bogart" the machine. Even when they know someone else is waiting to use the machine, they put their money in, stand in front of the slot to put your money in, and scratch their tickets right there.

What are your peeves in this regard?

Someone here on LP once mentiomned "The Lottery Store" in South Carolina, I'd love to see that place!

Those who run the lotteries love it when players look for consistency in something that's designed not to have any. So many systems, so many theories, so few jackpot winners.

There is one and only one 'proven' system, and that is to book the action. No matter the game, let the players pick their own losers.
MaddMike51

United States
Member #58,526
February 18, 2008
710 Posts
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Mar 21, 2008, 7:57 pm

Quote: Originally posted by Coin Toss on Mar 21, 2008
What are some of your pet peeves with lotto sales agents, and other players? I'm not talking about your numbers not hitting, or hitting if you don't play them, what I mean here is irritations such as no play slips for the game you want to play.

I'll start with that, here's a few of mine:

Lotto Sales:

No play slip available (this is very common around here. Granted lotto is usually a sideline, but still...)

Clerks who don't know you can play Pick 3 / Pick 4 for 50 cents.

Other players:

Strokers (people who intentionally give the clerk a hard time, or hand them a lot of play slips one by one)

People at scratcher vending machines (and for some reason, it's usually females that do this)

People that "bogart" the machine. Even when they know someone else is waiting to use the machine, they put their money in, stand in front of the slot to put your money in, and scratch their tickets right there.

What are your peeves in this regard?

Someone here on LP once mentiomned "The Lottery Store" in South Carolina, I'd love to see that place!

My pet peave is machines that dispinse scratch off tickets that don't give the ticket that you paid for.Recently my wife & I went to a casino and on the way home we stopped at a truckstop to eat.After eating we stopped at the ticket dispinsing machine to buy a few tickets.I put in $3 and could hear the machine shifting its gears to dispense my ticket...but no ticket dropped into the machines tray.I told my wife to go tell the kid behind the counter.The kid told her that he didn't have a key and wasn't authorized to give refunds.We got into an argument over this and I told him to call his boss and have him bring the key to the machine.He refused.All this time I'm reaching my arm up into the damn machine trying to retrieve my ticket and raising hell with this punk kid and drawing a crowd.The kid said if I didn't leave the premises he was going to call the sherriff,to which I replyed that maybe he should call the cops since the machine ripped me off.After shaking the machine violently for several minutes,the ticket finally dropped into the tray.It turned out to be a losing ticket,but it could have been a $33,333 winner.When I got home I emailed the lottery and made a few suggestions of what they could do with their lottery ticket machines.Tickets need to be under glass on the counter so situations like this won't occur.I won't put my money into any kind of vending machine anymore.
JustFrozen

OC, CALI
United States
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March 19, 2008
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Mar 21, 2008, 8:36 pm

On the contrary I hate clerks who take the scratchers on a roll that just gave out losers, which makes me want to buy from machines instead. It seems both have their negatives
justxploring

Wandering Aimlessly
United States
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November 5, 2005
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Mar 21, 2008, 8:45 pm

I don't have too many since I've gotten used to the people at the counter. Still there are some things that bother me just a tad. Let's see...

A tourist will occasionally ask the clerk to explain all the lottery games while I'm in line. This happened a couple of nights ago. "So what kind of lottery games do you have? Is there a big jackpot this week?"

Then there are the people who give their pick-3 or pick-4 numbers every which way to the clerk instead of filling out a card.

Okay - this isn't a pet peeve, but it happened one night. A woman wanted 10 advanced plays for Lotto and the card has boxes to check. She had already checked the 5 (or whatever) on her card so she kept getting 5 advanced plays. But she would give the tickets back to the clerk and say she didn't want them. The clerk must have been new because she kept putting the card back into the terminal and the lady would then say "No, that's wrong. I want 10." I finally had to butt in & say "You need to either erase the box where you checked the 5 or fill out a new card. The machine only knows what you wrote and maybe she can't manually override the card. (Who's on first?)

I just thought of one big annoyance - the people who walk up and just shout "give me a QP for tonight" when you are still at the counter doing business as if you're invisible or they run the world. It's worse when the clerk actually prints them in the middle of your lottery purchases. I'm not usually aggressive, but I'll put my hand up and say "Stop. I'm not done here." (Sometimes I think of Midnight Cowboy...great scene with the taxi & Ratso Rizzo. "I'm walkin here." Totally impromptu according to Hoffman)

Of course, the most common one is when mistakes are printed. On other threads we've discussed this but just the other day I got 5 QPs out of nowhere. Still, most of these clerks are pretty efficient and we all make mistakes when we're very busy, so I usually try not to make a big deal out 1 mistake.
JustFrozen

OC, CALI
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March 19, 2008
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Mar 21, 2008, 9:00 pm

ya mistakes happen to everyone. it's humanly impossible to print those out day after day without making an error eventually.

but the " Is there a big jackpot this week?" wow that would even embarass me , especially because i have yet to see a lotto store that doesn't have big colorful signs showing the current jackpot amount. was this not the case that time?
KY Floyd

NY
United States
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October 16, 2005
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Mar 22, 2008, 2:18 am

"People that "bogart" the machine. Even when they know someone else is waiting to use the machine"

A long time ago, when people used pay phones instead of cell phones, somebody did a study on how long people stayed on the phone. They found that people stayed on the phone longer when somebody else was obviously waiting to use the phone, though I don't remember how much longer.
mylollipop

United States
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October 21, 2005
623 Posts
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Mar 22, 2008, 2:44 am

When people see a long line and insist the clerk explain every game! One clerk said, "Ma'am there are brochures that explain each game. Please get one of those and when you select which games you want to play, then you may get back in the purchase line." The customer started to open her mouth, but the responses from the line of about thirty or so folk disuaded that! LOL.
LOTTOMIKE

Tennessee
United States
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October 15, 2004
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Mar 22, 2008, 2:55 am

being lied to that the machine is down when the clerk is just to lazy or doesn't feel like messing with it.i actually threatened one person with the lottery commission after doing this to me one time and they got nice in a hurry.

great topic
justxploring

Wandering Aimlessly
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November 5, 2005
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Mar 22, 2008, 5:46 am

Quote: Originally posted by LOTTOMIKE on Mar 22, 2008
being lied to that the machine is down when the clerk is just to lazy or doesn't feel like messing with it.i actually threatened one person with the lottery commission after doing this to me one time and they got nice in a hurry.

great topic

I don't threaten anyone, but I have noticed some stores shut the machines down early. I'm not sure what the rules are, if any. I think they should be in operation as long as a store is open for business. Sometimes I think the clerk looks at a lottery playing as a nuisance.

Oh, Coin Toss mentioned no play slips. What about no pencils? I always have a pen in my purse anyway, but I started to carry my little green lottery pencil with me. LOL
Wheeler

25

Pittsburg, Ks
United States
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January 17, 2004
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Mar 22, 2008, 6:23 am

I don't have any complaints about my store or the clerks. I get there early enough and I am ususally the only one there. I get my tickets and leave a happy camper

The store I go to doesn't have a scratcher machine. They are on rolls or under glass in some of the other stores
jim695

Columbia City, Indiana
United States
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December 9, 2003
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Mar 22, 2008, 9:25 am

Wow! Where do I start?

I guess the one thing that annoys me more than any other would be people who are simply too lazy, too busy or too self-important to check their own tickets for winning numbers. The way I see it, the object of the game is to match three or more numbers in order to win a cash prize, so asking someone else to tell you if you've won anything is like asking the dealer if you should hit 18.

Next on my list would be the dishonest cashiers who take advantage of those mentioned above. People like that make their own bad luck by trying to capitalize on the good luck of their loyal customers and friends. These stories frequently appear in LP.com's headlines, but for every story we read about, we have to wonder how many of these incidents go unreported because the winner doesn't know he's just been ripped off.

I don't like it when people buy 50 or more daily game tickets for pools, but they won't fill out their bet slips. Instead, they stand there reading from a multi-page list while the cashier manually punches each digit into the machine for EVERY SINGLE TICKET. At some arbitrary point during the process, the ticket buyer will inevitably blurt, "Oh, wait; no, no, no; I meant six-five-eight, not eight-six-five. Just go ahead and cancel this one and give me six-five-eight." This usually happens when I've put off buying my PowerBall tickets until the last minute. So I drive to the nearest store and end up in line behind the designated ticket buyer for the pool, with thirty-six minutes to go before the drawing, which leaves me six minutes to get my tickets. I've learned my lesson, though; now, I buy my tickets on Mondays and Thursdays.

I hate computerized drawings. Whether the game is being manipulated or not, this format is simply not suited for lottery games. The potential for subterfuge is too great, and cannot be overcome with claims of integrity and honesty by those who control and conduct the drawings. By design, computers will only do what users or programmers tell them to do; they cannot function by their own accord. Since the casual observer can't see what's going on inside the computer, he can have no confidence in the integrity of its programming. Asserting that computer-generated lottery games are just as thrilling or reliable as those drawn mechanically is ludicrous; lottery drawings are visual games, and part of the fun is watching the numbers tumble around in the hoppers as each winning digit or number appears in the chute. As we've all learned, an anomaly in a mechanically drawn game is much easier to identify than it is when the game is conducted using an RNG. When the public reports legitimate complaints of this type to the lottery, their standard response is to tell us that we're not seeing what we're seeing, and that we just don't understand how fantastic these new machines really are. We're told to just keep playing and let the lottery worry about whether we can win or not.

Another thing that sticks in my craw: When people take the time to sign up for membership and then begin posting that everyone here is wasting their time playing the lottery. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it really gets my goat. They usually go on about how no one really wins the lottery and they might quote a scripture or two in order to lend some credibility to their tirade. I normally don't respond to such posts until the thread is three or four pages long and the personal attacks are flying like shrapnel. I often scratch my head wondering why anyone here would respond to such nonsense in the first place, but by then my own anger has gotten the best of me, and I'll put in my two cents. If you don't like lottery games, then the solution to your problem is very simple: don't play the lottery. Further, don't sign up on lottery-related forums just to tell hard-core lottery players that you don't want them to play, either. The people you'll meet here have NOTHING in common with you, and we prefer to believe that we can, and WILL win the lottery, and nothing you say is likely to convince us otherwise. Most of us migrated to this site because we wanted to share ideas and to support each other in our common quest. We don't cotton to outsiders who don't share our creed, so go find a news forum or a conspiracy site on which to discuss your twisted views; we don't want to hear it.

I guess that'll do for now ...

Come, Pinky; we must prepare for tomorrow night...

Jim
PrisonerSix

Baton Rouge, LA
United States
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May 7, 2004
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Mar 22, 2008, 10:55 am

I don't have too many complaints about clerks, but have had a few problems. For the pool I run, I usually hand 2 or 3 playslips to the clerk to run through the machine to buy multidraw tickets. Sometimes, they'll run the same slip more than once. Since I run multidraw tickets, sometimes the clerks think the machine is malfunctioning by telling them both playslips will be $16(4tickets for 4 drawings), but I can understand that since they probably don't see that very much.

As for checking tickets, I check my own either via phone or the lottery web site. I've read stories about dishonest clerks here which gives me incentive to check my own. When I check my own tickets, I always circle the numbers so the clerk knows I've checked them and won't try to pull a fast one. There's a small mom-pop type store near me where the owners/employees know me since I'm a regular, so I think they can be trusted. They had a $10,000 winner once and didn't try to scam the customer.

The only real problem I had with clerks was a chain of stores around the New Orleans are when I lived there in the early 1990s when the lottery first started. The clerks at this chain wouldn't cash small scratchers, only exchange them for more tickets. They gave reasons like they couldn't ring up no sale or couldn't give a refund unless the register was open, i.e. to get them to cash a tickets I'd have to buy something for cash. I simply quit buying tickets or anything else from those stores.

Other than that, I've had few problems with clerks.

Prisoner Six

"I am not a number, I am a free man!"
Litebets27

Maryland
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January 14, 2005
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Mar 22, 2008, 11:26 am

Quote: Originally posted by LOTTOMIKE on Mar 22, 2008
being lied to that the machine is down when the clerk is just to lazy or doesn't feel like messing with it.i actually threatened one person with the lottery commission after doing this to me one time and they got nice in a hurry.

great topic

I know what you mean.... I witnessed this first hand. As I was buying my tickets, the store clerk who was waiting on me looked up and saw a car pull up with three people who she knew were coming in to buy tickets. She stated" I really don't feel like fooling with this d... machine today. She hurried up and gave me my tickets and put up her homemade sign, "MACHINE IS DOWN." When I left the store I told the people in the car what happened. They thanked me and stated that they won't bother her today and drove down to the next store to get their tickets.

My biggest pet peeve is when I am sitting in the store figuring out what numbers I need to play and playing Keno and people are constantly talking and talking and talking as loud as they can about how well they know how to win on a game, or how much they have won, or is tell someone how to play the game or what they would put their money on if they were them......uuuuhhhh!!!! I want to put up a Quiet sign.

litebets

Feeling, PRICELESS!!!

Come on Jackpot!!!
pacattack05

United States
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June 22, 2005
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Mar 22, 2008, 11:54 am

There's this one woman who sees me almost everyday, and still asks me if I want a plastic sleeve for my one betslip which only has 2 selections for the p-3.

I'd say about 80 percent of the time when I go into any store, the clerk takes the slip from my hand and puts it into the machine without looking to see how many selections I have, and assumes I only played one bet. As soon as the first ticket is printed they fly over to the counter and then realize there's more. But now, they're not sure if there's more than two, so they stand there after the second and final one is printed waiting for the third ticket to be printed. So now when I walk to the counter, I have a checklist of things to say to them before I hand them the slip.

1. I don't need a plastic sleeve.

2. There is only 2 tickets on the slip.(or whatever amount at the time).

3. I don't need the betslip, you can throw it out please.

4. No, I don't want a QP for tonight's lotto.

5. I know both tickets have same set of numbers.

6. My grandmother's name is BB.

7. My social security number is...........

8 I like chocolate icecream.

9. My shoes need shining.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

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