Aunty Acid by Ged Backland for January 18, 2025

That’s One Lottery You’re Not Gonna Win

worked graveyards at a convenience store. One night, a guy came in and snatched the top couple of rows of $5 scratch tickets out of the counter display while the clerk’s back was turned.

We called the police.

Dispatcher: “We’ll send someone, but it might be a while.”

We called them back half an hour later.

Me: “We just wanted to let you know that our thief is at the lotto self-check machine and wants to cash in his winnings.”

He seemed surprised when the police surrounded him at the lotto machine five minutes later.

It’s A Karma Lottery

A woman came in and asked for a $2 lottery ticket. Without thinking, I printed one that included a bonus lottery for an extra dollar bringing the cost to $3. I realized I made a mistake and asked her if she would still like to buy the ticket. She launched into a tirade about my incompetence, today’s society, lazy youth, etc., and stormed out of the store. A man standing behind her said, “I’ll take that,” put down $3, and walked out.

A few days later, that man walked into the store, checked his ticket, and found out that he’d won $250. That same day, the disgruntled woman came into the store, checked her ticket, saw that she’d won $10, and proceeded to tell me that I almost cost her $10 and that I should make more of an effort to listen and use my brain.

I just nodded and smiled.

Customer Reactions Are A Lottery

(This occurs the night of a drawing for a large-winnings lottery. It’s the highest the payout has been in recent memory, and everyone is buying lottery tickets for it, even those who don’t normally play. All day long, I’ve gotten, “[Number of Plays] of [Game]” in response to my, “How are you?” and I’m getting sick of being seen as a lotto robot instead of a person. I get one too many customers doing this, and finally I snap.)

Me: “Hi! How are you?”

Customer: “[Game].”

Me: irritated “Really? That’s funny, I’m feeling pretty [Other Game] myself; thank you for not asking!”

(The customer gapes at me while the line goes quiet, and I immediately realize I’ve let my customer service go. Before I can even begin to apologize, the customer laughs.)

Customer: “I’m sorry, I deserved that. I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

(I and the line visibly relaxed, and his transaction ran smoothly. Everyone in line after him who heard me made sure to respond to me properly and politely.)

That’s a worthy sentiment.

That is a wonderful wish.!

These days a million bucks doesn’t go very far. I’d want to be a billionaire and then help all the kitties and puppies. And those who want to help children but can’t afford to.

A few years ago I did the math: I divided this supposed million by the months I still had to live until I would supposedly die at age 80. I would have had 650 € per month. I did not add interest.

lol My husband says the very same thing. God Bless.

Aunty’s fortune would have to rival Elon Musk’s — who has figuratively adopted DJT.

By the numbers: According to Adoption Net, there are 113,589 children awaiting adoption in the United States (how they can be so precise, I question) and it costs between $20,000 and $45,000 to adopt a child depending on the state.

This means to adopt them all will take between $2.3 billion and $5.1 billion.

Assuming that the rest of the world has the same percentage of its children who need adoption. The figure could be more due to war, famine and poverty or maybe less since other cultures have better concepts of extended families.

This means there are 27.5 million children worldwide who need families.

By U. S. standards it would cost $552 billion and $1.2 trillion to adopt them.

You don’t have to be rich to help.

I feel the same about dogs…

Aunty, we all know better than that. If you became a millionaire you would buy a fricking distillery and install a direct line to your kitchen.

Grandiose thinking!!!!

What she said!!!

Ah, when a million dollars meant something. Mr. Howel on Gilligan’s Island comes to mind.

Aunty would soon discover how quickly $1M disappears when divvied out across multiple recipients.

Putting aside all the analysis here of how many children are waiting to be adopted and how far (or not) a million dollars would go toward that adoption goal, keep in mind that a millionaire is defined as an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. So Aunty could have $999,999,999.99 in the bank, and she’d still “only” be a millionaire.

A nice pointless gesture.

This is an anachronism. A million dollars is no big deal nowadays thanks to rampant inflation. I can remember when it was a big deal back in the 50’s when there was a popular TV show called ‘The Millionaire’ in which a very wealthy guy would choose an ordinary person at random to give that sum of money. It was always a life changing experience and we poor people could only imagine what it would be like to have what amounted to a fortune back then. Now it’s basically chump change.

amen

we fortunately don’t have any homeless children around these parts, but we’re doing our best to take care of several (formerly) stray cats… ☺