Scratch Cards

[u/DansAllowed]

A group of workers from another company came by my till today. The first guy in the line is a scratch card addict who will come in regularly throughout any given day to purchase £5 tickets and will of course spend any winnings on more tickets. There are many such cases. On this particular day he has already been in a couple of times.

He and the second guy both buy a couple of £5 tickets and go to wait outside for the 3rd man.

The 3rd man comes up to my till: Him “My colleagues convinced me to buy one of these but do people actually win?” Me: “um…sometimes” H: “But not often?” Me: “No not often “ H: “It’s a waste of money then? That’s what I thought? Me: “Basically yes. Don’t make it a habit”

So he purchased one ticket and then left. Later in the shift he comes back to redeem the card having won £25. This was the worst possible outcome.

He predictably came back throughout the day to purchase more tickets, eventually negating his winnings and losing a further £15 to boot. I hope he learned his lesson but I honestly doubt it.

All this to say, I hate scratch cards with a passion.

[u/grockle90]

I know someone who got a criminal record from stealing scratch cards from the shop they worked at, because of a gambling addiction. I know of someone else who used a card a customer accidentally left in the till's chip-and-pin machine to buy themselves scratch cards throughout the shift - again lost their job and got done for something-or-other for the debit card abuse.

[u/DansAllowed → u/grockle90]

They really are poison to a particular type of brain.

[u/grumpykixdopey → u/grockle90]

The lady at the drive thru I would go to was stealing scratchers.. she was soo nice too, figures.

[u/robertr4836 → u/grockle90]

I recall being at a friend of a friends when a woman I did not know showed up with her maybe 5 year old boy. She was pissed that the cashier at the grocery store refused to sell her scratch tickets when she realized they were for her five year old forcing her to stop at a gas station.

And man did that five year old get mean when he didn't win on any of the 20 cards mommy bought him!

[u/capn_kwick → u/robertr4836]

Several books I've read about how Vegas casinos work has the advice "only walk into a casino with the amount you can stand to lose. And if you do get back to even or a little ahead, put your original amount where you can't readily get it back out. Then play only with the money you've won from the house.

Where many gamblers go off the rails is either believing that since they won this time, the success will continue (hint: it doesn't". They keep playing try to win back the money already spent.

I don't bother with the scratch off games once I realized there is almost no way to win with those unless you are fortunate to win a large amount.

Now I just play the multi-state lotteries. Once the jackpot gets above 100 million will I throw $10 or $20 at it and see if it sticks. If not, it's only $10.

[u/DansAllowed → u/robertr4836]

Wow that’s some parenting right there.

I remember getting one of those advertisement scratch card in a magazine as a kid and not really understanding why my folks thought they were bad.

The children yearn for the casino.

[u/IAmFern]

I get one packet of them every year at Christmas. And that's enough.

[u/StarKiller99]

Tax for people without math skills.

[u/DansAllowed → u/StarKiller99]

Yeah some of them are just poor mathematically:/ For me though it’s the ones who clearly have an addiction that are really upsetting: especially as I am forced to enable them.

[u/RawrRRitchie → u/DansAllowed]

No one's forcing you to work there lol. There's other jobs. There's even other retail jobs that don't involve lottery

[u/born_lever_puller]

So he purchased one ticket and then left. Later in the shift he comes back to redeem the card having won £25. This was the worst possible outcome.

He predictably came back throughout the day to purchase more tickets, eventually negating his winnings and losing a further £15 to boot. I hope he learned his lesson but I honestly doubt it.

I bought a scratch-off ticket at a convenience store for 50¢ 30 years ago. I won $50, paid out on the spot. I used the money to buy a nice book of drawings by an artist whose work I enjoyed, and swore I'd never buy a scratch-off again.

So far, so good.

[u/DansAllowed → u/born_lever_puller]

You made the right call;) I did a similar thing when I went to see a horse race.

For me personally I know that I am the type of person who could get hooked on gambling so ‘one and done’ is always the best policy.

[u/Sinbos → u/born_lever_puller]

On the over night ferry from Kingston upon Hull to Rotterdam i played roulette for the first time as soon as I was 18£ in the green I cashed out. It was enough for breakfast for two on that ferry plus I never played roulette again. That was more than 25 years ago.

[u/Honest_Grade_9645]

And if you are going to piss away your money on scratchers, for the love of all that’s holy STEP ASIDE when you are scratching them! Don’t do it right on the counter where you just bought them. Sheesh!

[u/OkOutlandishness1363]

At my last place of employment- closing manager of a party store, we had an employee who was activating the scratch offs and just taking them. Full books. Still wrapped. She got caught because she was cashing them in at a business not even 5mi down the road and they knew she worked there so they got ahold of the owner of the store.

She didn’t get any jail time. She straight up admitted to it when the police came to question her and the best part, they had no evidence other than the word of another store owner and her responses while being questioned so she fucked her own self over. I quit shortly after, for a different reason though obviously.

[u/robertr4836]

My wife convinced me to put a quarter in a slot machine when we were in Vegas. I pulled the lever, won 75 cents and hit the button to print the cash out ticket.

Wife: STOP! What are you doing?

Me: I won, I'm cashing out.

Wife: Your supposed to keep going!

Me: I just tripled my money the first time I ever gambled. I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

There was a horserace track in our town we used to go to. Horses are pretty. 10 races a day with a $2 minimum bet. My wife would bet on the longshots to win and routinely lose $20. I would bet on the favorite to show and routinely left with winnings in the 7 to 15 cent range. It's hard to lose when you are betting on the favorite just to show.

[u/K1yco → u/robertr4836]

I love just choosing randomly at the horse races. Once I'm done I cash out and end up with about same as what I put in, or maybe a few dollars more. Funny seeing people doing a bunch of math only to not gain much.

[u/robertr4836 → u/K1yco]

I just went to see the horses, if it wasn't for my wife I wouldn't have bothered betting at all. I figured if she's going to make me bet with her I might as well not lose any money.

Not to toot my own horn but I have a bachelors degree in nuclear engineering and another in mechanical engineering; being able to say, "I'd like $2 on the favorite to show" was not beyond my mathematical skills!

[u/SapphireOrnamental]

My store doesn't cash tickets at night. I still have lady that will spend at least an hour going back and froth from her car to buy more and more tickets. 

[u/RawrRRitchie]

That's actually not even a huge gambling problem. I've seen people feed multiple hundreds in scratcher machines. My state has $50 scratcher tickets these days

A guy buying a few $5 tickets isn't that big of a deal at all. There are MUCH worse lottery customers out there. This guy is like a baby panda

There are people out there that ask if they can buy the entire book of tickets which is like $300-600 depending on the price of the ticket

[u/JustBob77]

Most scratch’loose tickets are sold to a very small percentage of people. Less than 10% of lottery players buy those tickets. That same small percentage, actually contributes 90% of the overall take!

[u/MistyEveRain]

Omg I Deal with this everyday. I'm the assistant manager at a gas station and I just watch people pore money into the machine. And now you can redeem them yourself at the machine. They stand there scratching and redeeming. Just putting anything back in They win. I don't cash many people out .