God Damnit! I know the economy sucks and it causes you to want to win the lottery. I could care less Mr. Homeless man that you spend all your panhandling money trying to win more. But buy your ticket and get the fuck out of the way instead of scratching and exchanging while holding up the line. If you win you can always get back in line. I go to convenience stores because of the, you know, convenience. If I wanted to get held up in line I would go to the supermarket, where shit is half of what is here, and stand in the ‘15 items or fewer’ line and get held up by some douche with 27 items.
Some day, when I rule the world, it will be legal to drag these sorts of people outside and curb-stomp them. That includes anyone who violates an “X Items or Fewer” express lane item limit. And anyone who labels an express lane as “X Items or Less.” Or, for that matter, “X Items Or [Fewer/Less].”
Convenience stores lost my business a long time ago for this reason. It’s not convenient anymore if I have to wait behind 5 people buying scratch-offs, scratching, then cashing in the winners and starting the cycle over. Clearly the convenience stores make more money on the lottery tickets than they do on milk and snack cakes so they aught to call themselves something different - gambling dens maybe.
That would be jerkish behaviour as well. Here I am trying to buy some lube and cucumbers and some jerk who just purchased a back scratcher is standing there scratching his back he is going to get a Bill Door*
Yup…and then there’s the multiple numbers guy. “OK, I need these numbers here on the Pick 3, these numbers on the Powerball, etc”.
I don’t understand why convenience stores don’t make the lottery purchasers wait instead of everyone else. It should be policy that they need to leave the register with their purchases and do their scratching somewhere else, then get back in line if they win. Or make all scratch offs sold only by a vending machine or something, away from the line.
What about if other people give you $50? I’m sure that you could probably get a lot of people to donate a few bucks each just for the joy of seeing the Big Spender getting kicked in the crotch.
It’s the same people who don’t take their money or checkbook or card out until their order has been rung up, and who don’t move aside for the next customer when they put up their wallet or checkbook.
I thought an oldster buying a backscratcher and was sure they’d be paying with copious change (or an unfilled-out check) and arguing for five minutes about an expired coupon.
Isn’t the person the scratcher, and the ticket the scratchee?
Sometimes at my grocery store, if the “15 or fewer” lane is open, the cashier will wave me over even with more items. Then a few seconds later somebody with fewer items will show up and I jsut know that person is looking at me, wanting to take my 50 bucks and kick me in the crotch.
I ran into a horrible one of those at CVS today. The person in the pharmacy was helping me, I was literally reaching over this clueless wonder to give my credit card to the pharmacy person, and she still didn’t get the message that it might be a good idea to find someplace other than the pharmacy counter to look through her bags. Yes, it is important to make sure the pharmacy gets your prescription right; they do make mistakes sometimes. No, you don’t have to stay there at the pharmacy counter in the way of other customers to do that. Move your ass!
Oh, and stores give you slips of paper with the amount of money you spent on them. They’re called “receipts”. If you need to balance your checkbook after making a purchase, you could use this “receipt” to do that somewhere away from the cash register. Then you wouldn’t have to be in anybody else’s way.
My local supermarket has the cash registers set up so that, after you finish at the register, you make a 90 degree turn to the left. There’s a fairly narrow corridor between the registers and a wall. DON’T STOP in that corridor, people! Keep moving until you get out the door! Then you can do whatever the hell it is you were stopping to do, without being in everybody’s way. One of these days I am going to run into one of your slow, oblivious asses with my shopping cart! I won’t be sorry when I do, either. I might tell you I am, but I’ll be thinking, you got what you deserved for stopping there. And I will be happy when I think about how you won’t be able to sit down comfortably for a couple of days.
I think they can’t do that because then they couldn’t make sure nobody under 18 buys a lottery ticket.
That was my experience as well in New Mexico. To make it worse, the business has to pay the lottery commission up-front for the packs of scratchers. However, the state would only reimburse for the store’s cost or for payouts in a lump sum some time later. So there was a big liquidity dump to the state from the business. There is no money in lottery sales, except for the need to have it to help drive traffic.