Comment by Blackout@fedia.io on Passive income

I just walk to the 7/11 and buy a scratcher. I never win anything but I could make at least $100,000 in just one day!

I know you’re joking, but I used to work at a convenience store and the scratcher addicts were the most depressing part. I guess I should be grateful that the store I worked at wasn’t in an area where more depressing kinds of addicts would be around.

I remember one day walking into a 7/11, in maybe 2002, and there were 2 guys in suits, totally dishevelled, collars undone, looking like they’ve been awake for 3 days, depression coating their faces, and they had a stack of scratch tickets that they were silently just scratching off.

The story I have in my head is that their business fell apart and this was some past ditch desperate attempt to save it with the little money they had left. I have no idea what actually happened but here we are 20+ years later and I still think about them occasionally.

The one thing that going to a real casino taught me is that, despite what Hollywood would have us believe, casinos are not full of impeccably dressed classy people, but very old retirees that look like they only have a few years left to live, and disheveled men who look less well dressed than me in my PJs at home, who are gambling away large sums of money in a fit of anxiety and addiction.

Really depressing crap.

And yet Donald Trump still managed to lose money somehow, which should have really told us something about his supposed “business accumen”.

Oh yes. The bankruptcy of Trump’s casino was a thing to behold. I wish I could find the video of the people who worked with him back in the day as they all remarked as to just how absolutely ignorant he was about all aspects of both gambling and managing a casino.

But with the power of daddy’s money, he “earned” his position as CEO/owner nonetheless!

Which is already so cringe it hurts, but then to turn around and use that to prove how “well” Trump - not daddy, but himself - could run the entire nation…

As a nation, we deserve our fate I suppose.:-( We should do better. We need better. We won’t survive unless we aim to be better.

Maybe he had some morals about it…

For being a good sport I’m upvoting your comment to help balance it out:-).

Trump has no morals.

I associate my time in Las Vegas mostly with elderly people with oxygen tanks, chain smoking while they put coin after coin in the slot machine. Just sad.

Vegas is a good place to go if your idea of a good time is eating and hanging around the pool. Other than that, it’s a glittering shithole in the desert built on the losses of prior visitors.

https://www.pinballmuseum.org/

Also, the Hoover Dam is nearby.

Now you just hook your debit card to the machine and you don’t even have to put a coin in!

And they took the pull handles away because they can siphon money out of retirement accounts much faster if the ~~victim~~ player only needs to press a button.

Oh for real. Walking through a casino is like being immersed in despair and obsession. I find no enjoyment in it at all.

And smoke. Don’t forget about the smoke

That makes me think of the chinese guys that took cash from the bank they worked at to buy lottery tickets. The idea was to use the winnings to pay back the money and keep the rest.

They got lucky and it worked the first time. Then they decided to try again and lost.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Bank_of_China_robbery

gambling is a helluva drug

The guy who started FedEx literally put his company’s payroll on a roulette table just to make enough to stay in business.

I know of a few small stores that owe their livelihoods to the local gambling addicts and the lottery machine. The entire business if dedicated to a few whales since selling snacks and coffee to randos didn’t work out and they would otherwise close. They even set up private rooms where they could sped the day scratching tickets as they would come in and blow and entire pay/welfare/retirement check.

The logic is always the same, “I’m up $500 today” not even calculating the losses and “I just need one big win”. People will farm gamblers like cattle.

That’s really sad. It’s the equivalent of putting lab rats in a cage with a cocaine/amphetamine button.

Perfectly legal since the state owned the equipment being used to ruin lives.

A similar establishment by me also diversified into bongs. A wall of bongs, a wall of lottery, a wall of smokes, a locked case full of smaller smoke accessories, half a wall of cooler, and three tiny islands of “food.” It’s very bright and clean but also sad as fuck.

Dude it was depressing stopping off at the beer store on the way home from work for a 6pack so I could kick it and relax on the couch…

…and there’d be a group of blue collars going there to cash their weekly paychecks, buy a couple 40s and $50 worth of scratchers. They’d win $10, and buy $10 more worth of scratchers. They’d win a TICKET, get another and win nothing, then complain that they were “so close” to winning 10-grand.

Work at a rutters. had multiple guys who were serious come in with like 20 $1 and 5 $20 every other day. We had one guy who’d buy $100-$200 every visit (up to 3 times a day). Must’ve been in his 50s but he said his wife didn’t know. Scratch offs scare me now I’ve only ever seen one $1500 win but I’d only work part time so.

Am I reading that right that they’d spend upwards of $600 in a single day on a scratch-its?? Holy shit.

As far as I know, I would get told he already visited by people in 1st shift and he’d come in like 6 and spent $100-$200 then come back an hour later

I used to work at a liquor store that had a lottery machine (scratch offs, state lotto) and yea the addicts were pretty depressing. This was a liquor store so we had sadder ones, but still.

I never understood the appeal of scratch offs, 100k? If you gotta dream, dream big, play the lottery

Instant gratification is a hellava drug

The keno addicts at the bar i work at are wild. They just keep silently putting in money and watching the drawings. I prefer that to the ones who try to explain their strategies to me or complain that some number appears in every drawing. Or the guy who came in Wednesday night and kept betting $10 that the first pitch of every at bat of the Mets/Brewers game was gonna be a strike. It’s bleak.

“No, you don’t understand! I have an angle!”

Our national betting company has started showing “stimulated” football games for people to bet on, with screens showing highlighted actions and all… It’s so depressing.

I remember hearing a story like twenty years ago about a person that figured out that serial number were disclosing payouts. They would buy a bunch, find the winners, scratch them, then return the losers for their money back. I think I heard about it on a planet money or this American life ages and ages ago.

Who in their right mind is accepting returns of lottery tickets, scratched or not???

Store clerks who just want to get through their shift without committing battery upon their customers and are definitely not paid enough to deal with that shit.

Not paid enough to say “no refunds” but given the ability to authorize giving out money for unofficial reasons? If it’s unauthorized, then they’re essentially stealing cash and assuming an extremely high risk of getting fired to avoid confrontation.

I’ve never worked a gas station, but I’ve worked fast food and I would have been fired soooo fast if I were giving out unauthorized refunds. Maybe even prosecuted if the amount was large enough. I’ve seen people fired for less.

I work at a gas station that does food, and we can refund almost anything at the whim of the cashier, sure there should be a reason, but you don’t ask a manager or whatever you just do it if it’s the right thing.

Lotto on the other hand belongs with things like phone credit and fuel. If the system even lets you, it’s going to log it and management will know and expect a good explanation on what the fuck you are doing.

I just quit after calling the police. Dude said they were too hard to scratch off and wanted his money back. Was dressed to the nines (as was his date), in a seedy movie rental store, trying to return lottery tickets by amicably dropping threats of coming behind the register.

I sure hope his date was impressed. Nobody else was.

Edit: also, this was about 20 years ago, so may very well have been a scam attempt.

I won like $250 on the first scratch off I got with my boyfriend. Broke my reality, I want to try it one more time to see if we’d win anything but I gotta stay safe

One of my best friends buys 4 lottery tickets a week. It’s like $20. Definitely worth it for indulging the fantasy.

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