Lotto Trouble

Years ago, I used to work at a 7-Eleven store.  We sold a lot of lottery tickets there, such as Pick 3, Pick 4, and Mega Millions.  I always printed out the tickets with courtesy, and always gave them what they asked for.  For example, when you buy a Mega Millions ticket, you have to choose either Cash or Annuity as your preferred option of getting your jackpot winnings.  Most people choose cash, so it can happen that one prints a Cash ticket out of habit instead of Annuity.  If I did that?  Oops, my mistake, I’ll get you your correct tickets right away.  That seems obvious, but what makes this tricky is that Mega Millions tickets are not cancellable.  Once a Mega Millions (MM) ticket is printed, the vendor will be charged for it.  If I printed a ticket that a customer did not want, I would have to try to sell it to someone else.  This wasn’t really that hard.  You tell regulars that you have an extra ticket, and some of them will buy it anyway.  But the point is that if I made a mistake on your ticket, you would not hear even one second of whining or excuses.

Fast forward a few years to three days ago.  I am now on the other end of lottery transactions.  I collect about $200 from 70 or so co-workers and buy lottery tickets whenever the big multi-state jackpots (MM or Powerball) went over $150.  I buy them from a small convenience store that’s on the first floor of my work.  On Tuesday, I bought $198 worth of PB tickets.  Before I left the store, I counted them, as I always do.  But when I got back to the office, I realized that 50 of the tickets were MM – the vendor had made a mistake.  I had a feeling this won’t be a piece of cake, since that’s $50 extra tickets to sell.  Plus, MM jackpot was reset to $12M so there wouldn’t be a lot of buyers.  But I had to do what I had to do and get the tickets I told the shareholders I would get.

I went down and showed them to the Indian lady who printed the tickets.  If it was me, no questions, you would get your PB tickets.  What did she do?  A sour look on her face, telling me that the tickets cannot be cancelled.  Yes, I’m aware of that, and I’m sorry for the trouble, but this is not what I asked for, and I want my tickets.  She then started talking to her husband/partner/co-worker/boss, who also reminds me that the tickets cannot be cancelled.  I know a lot of grumpy and selfish customers use this line but that really is not my problem.  He said he will give me the correct tickets, but then told me to check them after getting them next time.  This is when I started getting mad.  What would that do? Even if I check them right away, they’ve still already been printed and cannot be cancelled.  His reply?  “It cannot be cancelled.”  No, I say, I mean even if I check them right away, you can’t cancel it right away anyway so why are you telling me that?  His reply? “It cannot be cancelled.”  Wow, “I KNOW they can’t be cancelled!” And that’s when I brought up my lotto experience.

In the end, I got my tickets.  But I did not like the resistence I faced.  I did not like the fact that I did not get one apology for having to come back to the store because of their mistake.  And I did not like them telling me to check my tickets, as if it was my fault and that changes anything.  I left the store fuming and hand shaking.  I thought it over, and decided to give them one last chance, since their English skills may be partly to blame.  The store is also the most convenient for me – if I didn’t go here, I would have to get the tickets outside of work, or walk 5 minutes each way to the nearest lotto retailer.

30 minutes later, on my way home, I stopped by again.  I told them the facts – I’ve been coming here twice a week for the past 3 weeks, $200 each time.  That’s $1200, which equals $60 in commission, not to mention (and I did not mention) 1.5% commission on all winnings and additional 5% commission on the tickets I buy with the winnings.  And if I don’t get an apology for the way I was treated, I’m not coming back.  What do they say?  It’s okay, because they sold those MM tickets.  WHAT THE FUCK???  That’s the last thing on my mind.  I was concerned about that until I was treated like this was my mistake and that you’re doing me a favor.  I’ve been a good customer for 2 years, and relationship with me is worth more than 50 MM tickets.  Not going anywhere, I told them that they won’t be seeing me again.  “Have a nice life” I said as I walked out of the store one last time.

This is not how I treated my customers at 7-Eleven.  I even wrote about accepting the non-refundable $50 golf gift card return and that was 100% customer’s fault.  Having or losing one customer doesn’t make a big difference to the bottom line – my philosophy was to just make customers happy.  These people were so focused on possibly losing that $50 that they forgot it was their fault.

I’ve bought over $100 in lotto tickets elsewhere twice already.  Apparently, lotto printing skill is more rare than I thought because both of them made mistakes and printed nonrefundable tickets worth $4 and $35.  I felt bad but they assured me it’s okay and they’ll deal with it.  See, that’s the proper way of handling this.  Buying these tickets elsewhere does make my life a bit harder, but it is much better than the alternative, going back to that store.  That store was also my closest source to cigarettes, so this could benefit me in more than one way.

Fight for Your Right

I am planning a 2-night ski trip for my wife’s family.  None of the lodging at the Camelback in Pennsylvania fit what I was looking for, so I decided to call them up.  I ended up in a short conversation with a woman who, while I wouldn’t say was exactly rude, but talked as if she was doing me a favor, and did not seemed to want to offer help other than to direct me to the website.  So when I was done, I just said okay and hung up on her.  I’ve shown that type of reaction to bad customer service before, such as when I was talking to an employee at a Verizon store who was very condescending for someone who knew very little about her own company’s products – I just said okay and walked away.

I am a bit bothered by the way I just put up with things like this and not fight back.  In fact, it is not just customer service, but in situations where confrotations arise, I do not fight back.  There are a number of situations where I wish I had fought back and/or caused a scene to make my point and make my stand, and I still think about them to this day.  I am haunted by my natural reaction of avoiding confrontation.  Of course, technically, remaining calm and avoiding confrontation gets me into less trouble, such as when someone instigates a fight at grade school, but I think it does more harm to me in the form of these memories that haunt me.

I do want to fight back, but for me, I have to be mentally prepared.  Most of the time, I live comfortably and let my guard down.  And once a situation arises, I do not react right away, which leads to regret.  I wish I had said something to the woman at a Camelback – I know this isn’t a big deal, and bad customer service happens all the time, and yes, I’ve had many worse situations, but it just exemplifies the way I am.

This bothers me especially more because I’m Asian, and thid type of docile, non-confrontational behavior is the Asian stereotype.  I need to act up, perhaps more so than the average man, to stand up for myself, not just for myself but for Asians.  This may sound racist, but blacks have the exact opposite stereotype of being loud and confrontational.  While this type of behavior may seem obnoxious and unnecessary at times, I think it played a role in black people getting respect from the rest of America.  One comic observed that while people will be wary of black people when telling black jokes, they won’t care when telling Asian jokes.  I got off the track a bit – my desire to change my behavior is not a social message about equality, but just for my own confidence, and not being a stereotype.

I do remember my one shining moment.  While it may be laughable to some that such trivial situation could be someone’s shining moment, it is the best I got.  I was at a bar in NY with my then-girlfriend (and now wife) and my best friend.  Before heading out, I went to the bathroom and my wife was standing in the hallway.  As soon as I walked out of the bathroom and turned the corner, I saw a guy walking towards the bathroom, who stopped for a second to kiss my wife on her cheek.  I stopped him right away.  I don’t remember what I said but it was something like “do you know who she is?” or “what do you think you are doing?”  Well, I guess he had a bit of Asian in him as well (makes sense, since he was Korean), because he stammered a bit and didn’t say much.  Well, this only lasted for a few seconds because his two female friends ran in and apologized for his drunken behavior.  A waiter ran in as well, I guess trying to prevent a fist fight.  I let it go and walked away with my wife and my best friend, but as I got near the front entrance, I heard the dude screaming, seemingly being held back.  At first, I was proud of the way I just reacted, but then I thought maybe I should have punched him.  Can’t feel too bad about how things went down, though.

Overshadowing that moment are many situations where I had to, in a way, get loud and make a scene.  The incredibly rude wedding package vendor, the Nacho thief at Stuff Yer Face (a college bar/eatery), the guy who bumped my car with his on purpose (I was scared by his police license plate)… I can’t think of anything else right now but I guess it’s good that some of my grudges have been forgotten.  I need to change my act before more bad memories get added to this list.