Not A Winner; Wait, Scratch That

(There’s a woman who always comes in at seven in the morning with scratch-lotto tickets. She’s not very friendly.)

Customer: *gives me a ten dollar scratch off and a $20 bill* “I want another one of these and a [twenty dollar ticket].”

(I look at the ticket and notice only the barcode is scratched off on the front. I hand it back to her.)

Me: “Ma’am, this isn’t scratched off.”

Customer: “I don’t scratch them.”

(I know she does because the last time I opened and she got a few tickets from us, I watched her scratch them in her car.)

Customer: “I want another one of these and [$20 ticket].”

Me: “Ma’am, I don’t know how much you’ve won if you haven’t scratched it off.”

Customer: *referring to the lotto machine we have across from the register* “Use the machine.”

(I work mornings alone and I’d only been working there for about three weeks, so I didn’t want to fight her about this, and I couldn’t have my manager do anything about it. I scanned the ticket and entered the security code, and I was just hoping it wasn’t a winner. But by some stroke of luck on her part, it was a $10 winner. I went about ringing her up on it, then for the next ten minutes I was dumbfounded, wondering what witchcraft she used to know that ticket was a winner.)