A new low

[SpyOne]

A gentleman come up to the sales counter and he wants to play the lottery.
He plays a single ticket for 50 cents, ... and pays in mostly pennies.

Congratulations, sir, I believe that is a new record: the profit on that transaction is less than my pay for the time it took to count your payment.

It always bothers me that the people making our lowest profit transactions seem to want to take the most of the cashier's time, like the folks buying scratchers who then take a full minute or longer to decide which one they want to buy. They always seem to take comically long pauses between choices, too.

I've read that some stores have taken to charging a "transaction fee", both to discourage people from making multiple transactions and to avoid having to raise prices to raise wages, and in my less charitable moments I've thought that customers should be charged directly for the cashier's time (instead of spreading the cost of the time-wasters among all customers hidden within the prices of stuff we sell).

As the old saying goes, time is money. And at minimum wage, five seconds is a penny.

[Dave in MD]

To me it seems that the people that want to complain the most about the length of the line or how long it takes are the same ones that are not prepared when they get to the counter and take the longest time to conduct their transaction.

[mjr]

To me it seems that the people that want to complain the most about the length of the line or how long it takes are the same ones that are not prepared when they get to the counter and take the longest time to conduct their transaction.

You know why, though. Because "It's all about me!"

[telecom_goddess]

They're the same types that bitch and moan about how long it takes to get verified with me over the phone (bank/credit card call center) yet don't cooperate with me in any way, so it takes way longer than it would if they just shut up and answer my questions.

[Pixelated]

When it comes to lottery tickets, I think some people are waiting to see which ticket "speaks" to them.

Me, I just grab and go. I know damn well there's a 99.9999999-into-infinity% chance I've just lost the money I put out for that ticket, so I'm not gonna waste time as well.

[nutraxfornerves]

When it comes to lottery tickets, I think some people are waiting to see which ticket "speaks" to them

Well, there are those 100% true and accurate astrology predictions that tell you what are your lucky numbers today.

[Pixelated]

Well, there are those 100% true and accurate astrology predictions that tell you what are your lucky numbers today.

Somewhere in my wallet I have a collection of 'fortunes' from "Chinese" fortune cookies that have exactly that.

[EricKei]

Several wallets back, I used to carry around my favorite "cookie fortune" of all time -- and, when I first got it, it was incredibly good advice.


The fortune read: "Ignore previous cookie."

[Monterey Jack]

Nothing pisses me off more than when I'm trying to talk to whoever's working at the service desk (either to get a key or my paycheck or whatever), and I'm stuck behind someone dithering over which lottery ticket to buy for minutes on end, or else cashing in their winning stubs which have to be fed into the machine one at a time. And, of course, the winnings are immediately funneled back into MORE fucking lottery tickets.

[nutraxfornerves]

Back in the early days of the California lottery, they ran an ad series where well-known people answered the question "What are your lucky numbers?"

One techie guy (might even have been Steve Jobs) said his favorite numbers were 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, because they are just as likely to be drawn as any others. A lot of people didn't get it.

[earl colby pottinger]

Worse

Nothing pisses me off more than when I'm trying to talk to whoever's working at the service desk (either to get a key or my paycheck or whatever), and I'm stuck behind someone dithering over which lottery ticket to buy for minutes on end, or else cashing in their winning stubs which have to be fed into the machine one at a time. And, of course, the winnings are immediately funneled back into MORE fucking lottery tickets.

Worse, I had both. The guy two customers ahead of me first had a number of winning tickets. It took a lot of time to cash them all in as he had a big handful of them, but did he take the money and run. No, he started that strange habit of running his fingers over the available tickets to find the ones he thought were lucky. He was taking so much time that I went to the Subway store next door to get a sub. I then went back to the store to get a cheaper drink.

He was leaving with a fist full of tickets at the same time I was re-entering the store, so he spent more time on his tickets and had no money to show for it in the time I was able to buy a meal and go back for a drink.

[CyberLurch]

I will admit to having been so tragically broke that I had to resort to paying for things with pennies. Of course, I would at least roll them first, and I sure as hell wasn't buying lottery tickets with them. As far as I'm concerned, lottery tickets are an unlegislated fool's tax.

But then, as I'm sure some people might point out, gambling addiction is a thing. It is a rare instance that someone in my store hits a winning ticket and pockets the money. One or two or five dollars, okay, sure, buy a few more tickets. But... I watched a fellow once hit a $100 prize, and then he spent the next 20 or 30 minutes parlaying that prize money (plus more from his wallet) into... exactly nothing. Oh, sure, he hit a couple of $1 and $2 winners, and even $10, but every single time he'd hit, he'd plough it all back into buying more tickets until there was nothing left. And then he tried to bum money from me and everyone around him for bus fare.