8 People Win Largest Lottery: About Those Who Didn't Chip In $5...

According to this article, eight people from a meat packing company will share in the largest lottery jackpot.
Personally, I think it is great that three of them are fairly recent immigrants and young enough to go to school and make life-altering changes for the family and friends.

But it is mentioned in the article that, although they asked everybody in the company if they wanted to join in the lottery pool for $5, some didn’t.

  1. Would you have joined in the pool?
  2. If you hadn’t joined in, would you be happy for the others or kicking yourself in the ass by now?
  3. And what would your family say if they heard you didn’t cough up the $5?

For me, I most certainly would have joined in. Have done so wherever I have worked.
If I hadn’t joined in (doubtful, see above), I would be happy for the others, but it would hang over my head for the rest of my life.
If my SO ever heard I hadn’t joined in with $5, he would kill me on the spot and not think twice (he is a big lottery fan).

A former coworker’s BIL was having a rough time. He had a single dollar. He always played the same numbers in the Lotto. Played 'em every week. But he had this single dollar and he was hungry. He bought a burger from McDonald’s instead of a Lotto ticket. The numbers he would Have played won.

A pair of friends of another coworker won the Lotto. My coworker was apparently happy for them. I don’t know, but I think they may have given her a gift.

Me? I would have joined the pool. I always played when I was working, since I didn’t mind paying the Tax On People Who Are Mathematically Challenged. If I were not going to be in the office, I would give a coworker money to cover me before I left. But if it were impossible for me to join, then I’d be happy for the winners. And I’d be kicking myself for the rest of my life. I don’t have a family of my own (just a sister and her family), and no SO. So no one would say anything if I didn’t join.

The biggest risk with the lottery isn’t that you won’t win but that you will. We have a lottery winner in the family (an uncle that won $4 million and it can be bad news. he is destiture and miserable now).

I am seriously down on the whole premise of lotteries so I don’t usually play but if I was in that situation, I would feel a little disappointed. I am not a jealous person on non-zero sum things however. If someone else gains something and it doesn’t hurt me, excellent. It has jack shit to do with me and I would just be happy for them (while I hope they don’t screw up their lives).

I had a minor version of this happen once. My best friend’s little brother loved to play scratch-off lottery tickets even though he was underage. One day he begged me to drive him to the store and buy some tickets for him. I said I would if he would by me five and five for himself. I bought the tickets and got back in the car and he told me to tear off half. I did and we scratched. I won nothing and he had a ticket that won $4000 dollars. That money would have been like $4 million to me at the time because I was scraping for college. He didn’t give me any and I didn’t expect him to because we already had a fair deal. These people had a fair deal as well.

I wouldn’t have played and I would have been both happy for my co-workers and pissed off. :slight_smile:

The only time I play the lottery is when there are office pools when the lottery gets really big. I will be damned if I’ll be the one schmuck who decided not to play that day.

A local company had a group of co-workers who won a fairly large lottery. There were around fifteen people in the pool. They ended up with about 2 million each. It was all over the local papers. One guy who usually joined the pool decided that he wanted a breakfast burrito instead that morning. You do not want to be burrito boy.

I probably would have joined the pool but if I hadn’t I would still be glad for those who won. And jealous. But, hey, that’s life. I’d be able to get over it. My family would be okay with it too. None of them would be mad.

  1. I never join office pools. I actually do this because I want to be left alone when people are selling crap for their kids or other minor office annoyances.

  2. I’d be happy for the others. I know the odds in playing the lottery.

  3. I’d lie to the family/friends. I’d say I wasn’t there the day the did the pool. I just wouldn’t want to here it. There is one person who would probably beat this dead horse for years to come.

I’d be practically homocidal if I was left on the outside of that thing. I totally understand the math involved in the lottery, but to be that close would be something that would probably drive me nuts for the rest of my life.

In a similar vein I never play anything but quick pick numbers. I don’t play every drawing and if I had “regular” numbers that I always played and they came up in a week where I didn;t play I’d be vivid. By playing QP numbers I insulate myself against possible insanity.

Oh, definitely. I just couldn’t play a particular set of numbers repeatedly because then I could see how that would become a habit. Once you get married to numbers, It would probably be easy to begin thinking “well, eventually my numbers will come up, right?”

I only play the lottery when the pot gets big enough to get notice on the news; otherwise I don’t hear about it or really care. I think it’s a good deal, honestly: a dollar or two once every few months and I get to have big fanciful daydreams for a couple of days.

I’d cry every day for the rest of my life.

I wouldn’t participate because I never participate in office activities like Secret Santa and lottery pools. If a lottery pool in my department won I’d be envious for the rest of my days, despite knowing on an intellectual level that I was free to play if I wanted to and so it was my own fault. My family has other things on its mind right now and probably wouldn’t pay much attention.

On the flip side, I like to think that if I did win some huge lottery prize, either singly or as part of a pool, that I’d do some grand ridiculous thing for my cow-orkers on my way out the door.

No matter what almost all lotteries are still an idiot’s bet. I might not win a million dollars, but the far greater likelihood at the end of the year, is that by not playing I will still have tens or hundreds of dollars I didn’t piss away.

The best way to play the lottery is to buy one ticket, tear it up, and then enjoy the enormous sense of relief when your numbers don’t come up.

Especially if you worked in a freaking meat-packing plant. “Well, I could have a ridiculously nice house, a luxury car, whatever business it pleases me to own, be free to go where I like and do whatever catches my fancy, and still have an an incomprehensible amount invested, but no, I’m here elbow-deep in dead pig, like I am five-days-a-week from now until retirement, (if I’m lucky), worrying about the mortgage and hoping I can manage to keep up with things from month-to-month.”

Ugh.

I would have been happy for the winners, and I wouldn’t tell my family I didn’t participate.

I heard on the local news last night that a couple of the winners went back to work at Con-Agra, to help train their replacements. Me? I’d be “There’s the door, here’s where you punch in, this is how you turn on the machine. Oh, and that’s a pig – we use everything but the squeal. See ya!”

They won too much! :eek: Hard to believe, but after a certain amount, large sums of “easy money” tend to lead to ruin and more problems. After taxes, I think they’ll all get around 20 million+ each- WAY too much.

Some advice: buy only an occasional ticket- just enough to allow you to daydream “if I won the Lottery”. Get only “Quick-picks”.

If you do win, as soon as you get your check, buy an annuity that will pay you enough to live comfortably on. Say, maybe $60,000 a year, depending on where you live. Then, if you blow it all, you’ll still have that, no matter what.

I read the CNN article. They seem like nice, normal folks and I wish them all the best. And the people that showed up to support them seemed very nice and genuinely happy for the folks who won. A couple of the winners actually worked the late shift after they’d won because otherwise they’d have been shorthanded and they couldn’t let the happen. As long as they keep that sort of ethos and get someone trustworthy to help them handle their money I’m sure they’ll all be fine, with no more or fewer problems than normal folks.

You’re already being fairly vivid.

I get into the lottery pool at work often enough that if the woman who collects came around and I didn’t have any money on me, she’d cover me on the condition that if we win, I pay her back with 100% interest. I usually remember to grab a buck somewhere before the day is over though, so she’s never had to send Nikki the Chin and his violin case over the house to pay me a visit.

If I didn’t play, I’d probably never see them again, as they’re all in their late 50’s or early 60’s and would surely retire. For as childish as our department can be, I don’t think there’s one person who would be anything less than happy for them.

My family would probably say something like “You can’t win if you don’t play” once…a day…for the rest of my life. Then they’d carve it on my tombstone.

My biggest problem with winning 22 million would be in deciding how to spread it around among my family and friends. I’d feel absolutely rotten if I kept it all to myself.

Take 2 million and divide it up among 40 friends and coworkers for a nice 50 grand each. Then another 5 million for ten family members for a nice 500 grand each. I’m left with 15 million - I think I could cope with winning “only” 15 mil.

I run the lottery pool where I work. These are the rules I set up for it:

  1. You have to pay to play. If you forget to pay me, you’re out even if you are a regular player.
  2. Winnings too small to bother splitting up are used to purchase additional tickets for the next drawing.
  3. If we win a jackpot, the very first thing we will do is retain the services of a lawyer and get down on paper exactly who is a partner in the ticket and how much of the prize money each partner receives.*
  4. Co-workers who don’t play get nothing from the group. If you want to give somebody money out of your share, that is up to you.
    *- This is mainly for tax purposes. We have members who have adult children they would want to take care of, for example. In order to avoid having the money taxed twice, you cut those people in as partners in the ticket. They are getting a share of their parent’s cut of the jackpot, of course, not an equal share of the prize.