Man skips office pool, loses share of $319 million prize
The man who didn’t chip in $2 to the lottery office pool is being called the “biggest loser” by some, but to me he sounds like a winner.
Mike (not pictured) will learn tears and electronics do not mix.
Why? He’s not whining about it.
Sure, it would be a soul-crushing experience to see your co-workers split up the $319 Mega Millions prize (more than $19 million each after taxes), but at least he’s not bitter or suing.
“I just wasn’t feeling lucky that day,” said Mike, who didn’t want to give his last name, in an ABC News article. Today, he worked on keeping New York state government computers running while his millionaire friends went to pick up their over-sized check. The lucky seven haven’t been showing up to work, and are expected to quit, though they’ve not told their bosses anything.
“I don’t think they’ll cut me in. I don’t think they should. I don’t deserve it,” he said.
His friends had asked twice to see if he wanted to chip in, but he declined.
Maybe he’s looking at the bright side. With his department being reduced to just one person, he’s probably next in line for a promotion.
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41 comments Add your comment
poor bastid
March 31st, 2011
9:41 pm
Anita,
Do you know how many factors went into the timing of the quick picks? They would have to give money to more people than just Mike. What about the nice person in traffic who let them in on their way to buy the tickets?
poor bastid
March 31st, 2011
9:42 pm
Anita,
Guess what…Mike wasn’t in the pool either. He declined.
You’re a loon.
TodayCouldBeTheDay!
March 31st, 2011
10:01 pm
I still buy a GA Lottery ticket every week, have for years.
Never won more’n a few dollars and don’t expect to win anything, I just like the idea of giving a little back to HOPE for all the thousands it forked out to fund my kids’ college educations.
Elliot Garcia
March 31st, 2011
10:04 pm
They should give him a dollar so that he can play next week’s numbers….
Voodoo Chile
March 31st, 2011
10:31 pm
If they have been playing the lottery together for years they should cut him in anyway. Think about it, they probably wouldn’t have gotten the same numbers due to the extra time it would have taken for him to put his hand in his pocket and pull out the 2 bucks. If he had played they all would have lost!
Will
March 31st, 2011
10:33 pm
At least now he knows why he “just wasn’t feeling lucky that day”…
Voodoo Chile
March 31st, 2011
10:34 pm
yes I agree with Anita
Kelvin
March 31st, 2011
11:05 pm
Maybe it would have thrown the whole selection of numbers off if he had entered, and then maybe none of them would have won.
y_p_w
March 31st, 2011
11:51 pm
There seems to be a poor understanding of how these things work. Does the word totally random mean anything to anyone here?
It’s a massive series of coincidences where a lottery terminal cycling through millions of different combinations from its random number generator will select a particular set of numbers for quick pick tickets (like the winning ticket). Press that button to print out the ticket less than a microsecond earlier or later and the terminal is selecting different numbers. If the purchaser is asking for $16 in quick picks instead of $14, maybe the clerk has a minutely different reaction time. If the guy who reportedly cut in front of the purchaser of the winning ticket doesn’t, the eventually winner is buying his tickets earlier with a completely different set of numbers. If the guy who normally joins in doesn’t, maybe the guy collecting the money slows down to ask if he’s sure and buys the tickets at a slightly different time. If a clerk shuts down the terminal and restarts it, maybe the time that’s done makes a different. Or perhaps changes in heat mean the oscillator unit in the terminal is a bit faster or slower.
In the end it’s essentially random chance because there can be billions of different events that lead to selecting the numbers, unless they’re manually selected.
y_p_w
March 31st, 2011
11:57 pm
OK – I noticed there were quite a few posts that mentioned the total randomness of the timing that leads to quick picks getting selected. Yeah – there are literally billions of minute events that would lead to what numbers would be selected by the lottery terminal.
As for the odds, it’s actually not as bad when the jackpot increases, but that’s because previous participants continuously feed into the pool when there’s no jackpot won. It’s supposedly about a 1 in 175,000,000 chance of selecting 5 plus the Mega number, although there’s a chance of multiple jackpot winning tickets splitting a prize.