What's the lottery up to?

As stated in my opening post, I work at a customer service counter in a grocery store. One of the many things that I am responsible for is selling lottery tickets. Now, my state has several games that are played, and of course one of them is Powerball. I had never played the lottery before I entered into this line of work. In fact, the only time I play now is when I buy a mistake ticket. Because I am a retailer for the lottery, I of course should know how the games work and be able to explain the rules to my customers. Occasionally though, I get a woman like this, who if she did win, could really use a new brain.

I was standing at the counter updating the lottery board, which tells people what the winning numbers are and what the jackpots are up to. This woman comes up to the counter just as I'm hanging the board back up. "What's the Powerball?" she asks me. I explain to her how it's played. Then she wants to know what the jackpot is up to. After explaining all of this I ask her if she would like to purchase a ticket. She stops and thinks really hard about it and finally says, "Well, what if I win?" What if I win? What kind of question is that? I mean, if you win, you get lots of money. How hard is that right? Apparently it's pretty hard. I answered back something simple like, "You could buy a house and give money to charity. I guess you could do whatever you want, since you'd be a multi-millionaire." She then says that she'll take a ticket. I ask her if she would like to pick her own numbers or let the computer pick for her. She decides at first to pick her own numbers. I let her know how high the white ball numbers and power ball numbers go, and get ready to input her numbers. She starts out by giving me a number that's way too high, so I stop her and again tell her how high the numbers go up to. She again gives me a number that is too high. I finally said, "Maybe we should try a quick pick and just let the computer generate a ticket." She agrees. I hand her the ticket, take her money and wish her luck.

Three days later the same woman comes back to the counter. She again asks me how to play Powerball. I get a little frustrated that she is asking me again, when I just told her three days before. I give her the brief rundown and ask her if she wants a ticket. She does, so I get her a quick pick. (There's no way I'm going to try and let her pick her own numbers again.) I hand her a ticket and take her money, wishing her luck as I do.

The woman who has now been to me twice to buy lottery comes up a third time to buy a ticket. She's getting better at understanding how things work, so she just hands me a dollar and tells me that she wants a quick pick. I'm relieved because she's finally getting it. I hand her the ticket and wish her good luck. This happens on one more occasion, so that now I've sold her a total of four tickets over the course of two weeks.

Now I should stop here to say that every customer that buys lottery, I try and wish good luck. The store that I work at requires us to use friendly greetings and partings. How much friendlier can you get than wishing someone good luck, right? I don't always say good luck though, and here is the mistake in doing so.

This same woman hands me the ticket that she had purchased for the last drawing that was held. This is the first ticket that she has brought to me to check if it's a winner, so I have no clue that she has won her dollar back on the first three tickets in a row that I had sold her. I scan the bar code at the bottom of the ticket and then inform her that it says, "Sorry, not a winner." I toss the ticket in the trash and ask her if she'd like another one. She just stands there looking at me like I've just run over her cat. I ask her if there's a problem. She lets me know right away that there is a problem. "The first three times I came in here to get a lottery ticket from you, you wished me luck and I won my money back...every time. This last time I came in you didn't wish me luck and now look, I have a losing ticket. This is all your fault." I of course assume that she's just kidding with me, but she is really convincing at being angry. I apologize for having not wished her good luck and then smiled politely at her. Her scowl stayed put. I again asked if she would like another ticket. She says, "You also told me that I had the winning ticket. I asked you if this was the winning one and you said that it was." Now, I never come right out and tell people this is the winning ticket. I know better than that. But occasionally a customer will say, "Now this is the winning ticket, right?" And to humor them and go along with the joke I will say something like, "Well, I hope so...I have a good feeling about this one...or possibly." I'm not going to argue with this woman on my exact wording though, because at this point I still believe her to be somewhat kidding around with me. She instead proceeds to get irate with me because I had told her that it was the winning ticket when it wasn't. I finally understand that she is completely serious and say, "Ma'am if I had the power to pick the winning lottery ticket, do you honestly think I would be standing here selling tickets? No, I would be off on a permanent vacation somewhere far away from here." You could almost see the lights flick on inside her head as she realized that I had no control over the lottery. She just gave me a dollar, took a new ticket and walked away. But not before making me wish her luck.

I have no idea if she's on another winning streak or not. Frankly, I could care less. But I make sure of two things when I see this woman. 1. I will never ever, ever even slightly joke that she might have a winning ticket. 2. I will always wish her good luck. Because if she doesn't win, I don't think I could put myself through another ridiculous discussion with her on why me not wishing her good luck has been the ruin of her millions.