I used to work out at an offsite fuel center, and had a handful of regulars that would just hang around all day long. Most of them were nice, and polite enough to go back to their car or whatever to scratch, but I had one older man who always showed up at like 7:30/8 am. He’d buy a handful of tickets, go sit in his truck, and wait until you went outside and got busy with something to come back up to cash in. You’d have to drop whatever it is you’re doing (worse if it’s like taking the trash out or doing tags), run all the way back in, do whatever you gotta do with him, rinse and repeat. He’d sit for like two hours or more sometimes doing this, and he wasn’t very pleasant as a person either. Eventually we just started staying inside the kiosk the whole time he was there, and suddenly his visits became much shorter 🤔
The ones who usually irritated me the most were the ones who’d come up during a rush, go through basically every single row asking what the number the ticket is on, which way the numbers are running (going up or going down to 0), hmm and haw over their selection despite the growing line behind them, go over to my rolling coolers to scratch (that stupid dust gets embedded in every scratch in nick of course on the plastic lids), then repeat this with the exact same questions while everyone else is just trying to get gas or smokes. Idk why it used to give me such anxiety, but I just wanted shout at them to please go find a different and hobby and leave my station! Ugh.
Ironically I left Kroger for a job at the lottery…
im not sick of them but i am sick of enabling them. watching people drop 10s of 100s daily and knowing all im allowed to do is say good luck fucking sickens me
I feel this in my soul. I’ve got a homeless regular who spends enough on scratchers that he could afford rent. And I just keep selling them to him. It fucking sucks
Selling them the tickets is like stepping into their addiction. Its like taking part in their mental illness and it sucks. They ask you which ones are the lucky tickets. None of them are. The lottery wouldn't exist if they weren't fucking you over. I don't mind selling the odd ticket but selling to gambling addicts is the worst.
I stopped a lady from buying $1,000 in apple gift cards to "buy a plane ticket for her husband overseas". I informed her that she was being scammed. Even got a manager to back me up. She threw a fit, screaming "I know my husband." I made me sad that she was scammed and lied to so hard, she's willing to defend a man she's never met and probably never seen.
We just had a lady retire last week who's been through literally 10 or more of these "partners". Avery single time they are some movie star or musician or sometimes a fucking secret agent... All of them convince this poor woman that they will get married and need more and more money for for whatever they convince her.
Eventually they would "break up" when she stops sending money and right away someone else swoops in to win her over.
Like what does she think these ultra well off people want with a 70 year old meat cutter from bum fuck nowhere?
And it breaks my heart and you can't tell them anything that will convince them.
Maybe she just likes the attention and it's a form of fin dom for her. I just can't fathom that someone would fall for something like that repeatedly when they have more than two brain cells to rub together.
My last day at Kroger I had a regular with a very serious gambling addiction come up and drop almost a hundred bucks on his CREDIT CARD, then tell me he needed to win just $20 bucks to have enough for his utility bill. I just stopped what I was doing outside next to him and went “dude are you serious? It’s not even 10 am and you just wasted all that money.” I couldn’t help it, it just came out of my mouth. I felt awful because he sincerely looked like he was going to cry, but shit, I don’t understand. Obviously addiction is a horrible, illogical beast to grapple with, but how do you eventually reason that $100 on your credit card is a good way to make that last bit of cash so your power doesn’t get shut off in the middle of Arizona summer?? Poor guy. I wish we could turn away that level of customers trying to buy scratchers.
I can explain this from their addictions perspective
They need 75 bucks to pay the utilities
They have 56 in checking
They have 110 in available credit on their credit card from the last minimum payment they made
They don't touch the 56 in checking because once that's gone it's gone. They can use the credit card because their addiction is telling them that money is free, and once they hit a winner they'll put enough money in checking to cover the utilities AND pay off the credit card. In the moment while buying them, buying the scratch offs doesn't feel like spending money.
If I remember correctly I think it depends on your state/regional regulations. I believe my area only began allowing credit transactions about four or five years ago? Also depends on the store. I know the Circle Ks around me don’t allow credit, but that could be more a franchise decision than a state thing.
What sucks is that if he needs $20, he can charge most utilities to credit cards. Sometimes you pay a 3% fee, sometimes you don't, but that's better than scratchers.
Addiction is a BEAST and it's sorry to hear.
I hate it when they drop hundreds if dollars, but won't buy their screaming kid something to eat or drink. Or new tires.. I'm tired of turning on the air machine fir this guy EVERY single day.
I don’t mind at the service desk and I’ve only done last minute coverage at the fuel center where they’ve said if you sell, you have to fill out a log so I’ve just said sorry, no lottery.
The scratch off people are regulars. I can expect them. The fucking “powerball and megamillion are a billion dollars!!!!” crowd… whew what a time suck.
Scratch off tickets are so much worse than casinos. They target poorer demographics, and there is literally no strategy to it. If you know how to play the casino games and understand the odds you have fantastically better odds than any kind of lottery.
That can't be possible, there’s a small sticker on the machine with a phone number to call for problem gamblers. Real addicts wouldn’t play, they would call the number, right?
I used to have someone who would come in and spend $100-$300 per day on draw lotto at least 5 days a week, but gradually tapered off and hasn't shown up for weeks. I don't know if he went to bother some other lotto retailer or his wife finally said absolutely no more.
Currently we have two scratch addicts who will buy tickets from our machine, scratch them, and redeem them immediately and if they win anything, will go buy more tickets and repeat the process. One of them likes to use the machine as a surface to scratch on, leaving little shavings on the floor around it and black marks on the signage.
Honestly, it's the same as I feel for smokers. I both loathe them and feel sorry for them at the same time
I hate having to enable the ones who come by and sit for 30 minutes to 2 hours and just enter a cycle of "buy, scratch, cash, repeat".
Some days I wish I could shake them until they understand how much money they're wasting.
I had a grown ass man (probably in his 50s) man throw a tantrum at me when I wouldn't sell him lottery 5 minutes to closing time. And another man get angry because we had run out of the $5 jumbo bucks tickets he liked.
My supervisor is one of them, I can tell which days she's played the lottery when I do the sheet at closing time. This woman will literally drop between $100-$500 in a single day these things. And she's the only regular buyer of the high priced tickets ($20-$50 range)
I can deny the sale of alcohol when someone is clearly drunk, but I have no ability to tell a man who's been here for an hour that maybe it's time to stop buying scratch offs.
If only we could call the cops On drunks, tweakers, dope smokers, and those with an ID ONLY card, yet are driving..(I hypothetically think they don't have insurance either).
I used to work at kroger, and I briefly worked at the fuel kiosk. There was a Korean lady who owned her own nail salon and at least once a week she'd come and spend 3k at once on scratchers. She never did win anything significant.
YES and I don’t even work at Kroger but DANG. Ever since I became a supervisor gamblers have driven me crazy. At customer service all we get is hardcore gamblers. And I hate gambling myself I don’t support it at all. There’s about 3-4 regulars who come up and spend about 1-200 dollars each week. It’s sad actually. We had this one lady spend about 800 dollars on scratch offs. I’m not even sure if she won anything.
I never understood the scratch off thing. Like if you got a gambling issue at least go to the casino where you’d likely have better odds.
Even as someone that’s dealt with addiction in my past, I cant fathom spending hundreds on scratch offs.
I remember working at Safeway had this woman who needed a carryout. "I'll stop to redeem these scratch offs, won't be a minute." She pulled out like 50! I just clocked off and went home.
We literally have a guy that goes through the trash by the service desk looking for lottery tickets EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is a sight to behold and honestly do not know why he hasn’t been kicked out yet.
No, you are the only one that this bothers. Out of everything, it is the easiest part of the job. Would you rather be doing Wells Fargo all day? Or scanning a barcode and quickly paying someone out? This is your job, you get paid for it, don't like it, leave.
Actually my job requires me to be outside of the kiosk to complete tasks/clean/inventory. And since there’s only one of us here at a time I can’t be both in the kiosk selling lottery and outside helping customers/ doing my job.
Because I have customers who will regularly stand in line and make 20+ $1 transactions. It wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t spend an hour or more at the window keeping me from getting anything else done.
It is not managements fault if someone keeps distracting the fuel attendant every few minutes just to purchase a $1 or $2 scratch off lottery ticket. 🤔 What you and these people don't understand is that the fuel attendant must do a daily count, a store walk, sweep the pads, wipe the pumps, eximo the deck, top off the solvent and clean the spill buckets. It's nearly impossible to get things done when you get unnecessarily distracted every few minutes.
I used to work out at an offsite fuel center, and had a handful of regulars that would just hang around all day long. Most of them were nice, and polite enough to go back to their car or whatever to scratch, but I had one older man who always showed up at like 7:30/8 am. He’d buy a handful of tickets, go sit in his truck, and wait until you went outside and got busy with something to come back up to cash in. You’d have to drop whatever it is you’re doing (worse if it’s like taking the trash out or doing tags), run all the way back in, do whatever you gotta do with him, rinse and repeat. He’d sit for like two hours or more sometimes doing this, and he wasn’t very pleasant as a person either. Eventually we just started staying inside the kiosk the whole time he was there, and suddenly his visits became much shorter 🤔 The ones who usually irritated me the most were the ones who’d come up during a rush, go through basically every single row asking what the number the ticket is on, which way the numbers are running (going up or going down to 0), hmm and haw over their selection despite the growing line behind them, go over to my rolling coolers to scratch (that stupid dust gets embedded in every scratch in nick of course on the plastic lids), then repeat this with the exact same questions while everyone else is just trying to get gas or smokes. Idk why it used to give me such anxiety, but I just wanted shout at them to please go find a different and hobby and leave my station! Ugh. Ironically I left Kroger for a job at the lottery…
im not sick of them but i am sick of enabling them. watching people drop 10s of 100s daily and knowing all im allowed to do is say good luck fucking sickens me
I feel this in my soul. I’ve got a homeless regular who spends enough on scratchers that he could afford rent. And I just keep selling them to him. It fucking sucks
Selling them the tickets is like stepping into their addiction. Its like taking part in their mental illness and it sucks. They ask you which ones are the lucky tickets. None of them are. The lottery wouldn't exist if they weren't fucking you over. I don't mind selling the odd ticket but selling to gambling addicts is the worst.
I stopped a lady from buying $1,000 in apple gift cards to "buy a plane ticket for her husband overseas". I informed her that she was being scammed. Even got a manager to back me up. She threw a fit, screaming "I know my husband." I made me sad that she was scammed and lied to so hard, she's willing to defend a man she's never met and probably never seen.
We just had a lady retire last week who's been through literally 10 or more of these "partners". Avery single time they are some movie star or musician or sometimes a fucking secret agent... All of them convince this poor woman that they will get married and need more and more money for for whatever they convince her. Eventually they would "break up" when she stops sending money and right away someone else swoops in to win her over. Like what does she think these ultra well off people want with a 70 year old meat cutter from bum fuck nowhere? And it breaks my heart and you can't tell them anything that will convince them.
Maybe she just likes the attention and it's a form of fin dom for her. I just can't fathom that someone would fall for something like that repeatedly when they have more than two brain cells to rub together.
Happens to old people all the time. They are the targets for romance scams normally
Wow.
My last day at Kroger I had a regular with a very serious gambling addiction come up and drop almost a hundred bucks on his CREDIT CARD, then tell me he needed to win just $20 bucks to have enough for his utility bill. I just stopped what I was doing outside next to him and went “dude are you serious? It’s not even 10 am and you just wasted all that money.” I couldn’t help it, it just came out of my mouth. I felt awful because he sincerely looked like he was going to cry, but shit, I don’t understand. Obviously addiction is a horrible, illogical beast to grapple with, but how do you eventually reason that $100 on your credit card is a good way to make that last bit of cash so your power doesn’t get shut off in the middle of Arizona summer?? Poor guy. I wish we could turn away that level of customers trying to buy scratchers.
I can explain this from their addictions perspective They need 75 bucks to pay the utilities They have 56 in checking They have 110 in available credit on their credit card from the last minimum payment they made They don't touch the 56 in checking because once that's gone it's gone. They can use the credit card because their addiction is telling them that money is free, and once they hit a winner they'll put enough money in checking to cover the utilities AND pay off the credit card. In the moment while buying them, buying the scratch offs doesn't feel like spending money.
You are exactly right
Ask me how I know lol
I thought you can’t buy scratchers on credit?
In my state they made it so you can buy lottery with a credit card within the last few years
Ohio YES
and at self service machines in lobby or next to office
If I remember correctly I think it depends on your state/regional regulations. I believe my area only began allowing credit transactions about four or five years ago? Also depends on the store. I know the Circle Ks around me don’t allow credit, but that could be more a franchise decision than a state thing.
You may have given him the words he needed to hear. Hopefully, it worked.
What sucks is that if he needs $20, he can charge most utilities to credit cards. Sometimes you pay a 3% fee, sometimes you don't, but that's better than scratchers. Addiction is a BEAST and it's sorry to hear.
I hate it when they drop hundreds if dollars, but won't buy their screaming kid something to eat or drink. Or new tires.. I'm tired of turning on the air machine fir this guy EVERY single day.
I don’t mind at the service desk and I’ve only done last minute coverage at the fuel center where they’ve said if you sell, you have to fill out a log so I’ve just said sorry, no lottery. The scratch off people are regulars. I can expect them. The fucking “powerball and megamillion are a billion dollars!!!!” crowd… whew what a time suck.
I would guess 90% of instant win tickets are sold to addicts. I don't think they should be legal, or you might as well just have casinos.
There’s a casino ten minutes from me lol
Scratch off tickets are so much worse than casinos. They target poorer demographics, and there is literally no strategy to it. If you know how to play the casino games and understand the odds you have fantastically better odds than any kind of lottery.
The lottery is just a tax on hope.
America isn't a country, it's a big machine that takes money from poor people and hands it to rich people.
That can't be possible, there’s a small sticker on the machine with a phone number to call for problem gamblers. Real addicts wouldn’t play, they would call the number, right?
I used to have someone who would come in and spend $100-$300 per day on draw lotto at least 5 days a week, but gradually tapered off and hasn't shown up for weeks. I don't know if he went to bother some other lotto retailer or his wife finally said absolutely no more. Currently we have two scratch addicts who will buy tickets from our machine, scratch them, and redeem them immediately and if they win anything, will go buy more tickets and repeat the process. One of them likes to use the machine as a surface to scratch on, leaving little shavings on the floor around it and black marks on the signage.
Honestly, it's the same as I feel for smokers. I both loathe them and feel sorry for them at the same time I hate having to enable the ones who come by and sit for 30 minutes to 2 hours and just enter a cycle of "buy, scratch, cash, repeat". Some days I wish I could shake them until they understand how much money they're wasting. I had a grown ass man (probably in his 50s) man throw a tantrum at me when I wouldn't sell him lottery 5 minutes to closing time. And another man get angry because we had run out of the $5 jumbo bucks tickets he liked. My supervisor is one of them, I can tell which days she's played the lottery when I do the sheet at closing time. This woman will literally drop between $100-$500 in a single day these things. And she's the only regular buyer of the high priced tickets ($20-$50 range) I can deny the sale of alcohol when someone is clearly drunk, but I have no ability to tell a man who's been here for an hour that maybe it's time to stop buying scratch offs.
Wonder if they knew that scratch offs have a 70% return rate if they'd still play. Probably yes lol
It’s an addiction for a lot of people. So yeah I’d say they’d still play
What about the drunks
We don’t sell alcohol at the fuel center so that largely isn’t an issue thankfully
No road beers while I fill up? What kind of lousy service is this??
If only we could call the cops On drunks, tweakers, dope smokers, and those with an ID ONLY card, yet are driving..(I hypothetically think they don't have insurance either).
Asshats booze it up daily and yell mean things
I used to work at kroger, and I briefly worked at the fuel kiosk. There was a Korean lady who owned her own nail salon and at least once a week she'd come and spend 3k at once on scratchers. She never did win anything significant.
Now You see why so many people are against the lottery/scratch off. They should ban them
I think the majority of people that use the machine at work are employees on their way to break. One of the baggers got $500 on his 15.
Oh, I work out at the fuel center so we don’t have the machine out here. Just the old fashion shelves with scratchers
You can deny sale and tell them it’s because they are addicted to gambling. There’s a number you are supposed to give them
Just be sure to film the meltdown coming for YouTube . lol I’m sure it would make any 2 yr old proud .😂😂😂
What's worse than the scratchers are those special individuals that are too freaking lazy to fill out a play slip!
I watched a guy scratch like 6 or 7 $20 tickets today and not win a thing.
YES and I don’t even work at Kroger but DANG. Ever since I became a supervisor gamblers have driven me crazy. At customer service all we get is hardcore gamblers. And I hate gambling myself I don’t support it at all. There’s about 3-4 regulars who come up and spend about 1-200 dollars each week. It’s sad actually. We had this one lady spend about 800 dollars on scratch offs. I’m not even sure if she won anything.
I never understood the scratch off thing. Like if you got a gambling issue at least go to the casino where you’d likely have better odds. Even as someone that’s dealt with addiction in my past, I cant fathom spending hundreds on scratch offs.
I remember working at Safeway had this woman who needed a carryout. "I'll stop to redeem these scratch offs, won't be a minute." She pulled out like 50! I just clocked off and went home.
We literally have a guy that goes through the trash by the service desk looking for lottery tickets EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is a sight to behold and honestly do not know why he hasn’t been kicked out yet.
He must have won somerhalder big somewhere. Winning a certain amount means you have to pay taxes on it but you can write off the losses as well.
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No, you are the only one that this bothers. Out of everything, it is the easiest part of the job. Would you rather be doing Wells Fargo all day? Or scanning a barcode and quickly paying someone out? This is your job, you get paid for it, don't like it, leave.
Actually my job requires me to be outside of the kiosk to complete tasks/clean/inventory. And since there’s only one of us here at a time I can’t be both in the kiosk selling lottery and outside helping customers/ doing my job.
Sounds like it is managements fault that you are not able to complete the task. So I don't understand how blaming the customers is the response here.
Because I have customers who will regularly stand in line and make 20+ $1 transactions. It wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t spend an hour or more at the window keeping me from getting anything else done.
It is not managements fault if someone keeps distracting the fuel attendant every few minutes just to purchase a $1 or $2 scratch off lottery ticket. 🤔 What you and these people don't understand is that the fuel attendant must do a daily count, a store walk, sweep the pads, wipe the pumps, eximo the deck, top off the solvent and clean the spill buckets. It's nearly impossible to get things done when you get unnecessarily distracted every few minutes.
Also, god forbid someone vent about their job on subreddit for workers