50 Dollars

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 1 Number 2
50 Dollars

I was going to title this Wayne’s Words entry “The Best $50 Dollars I Ever Made.” That title, however, would be incorrect, because the best $50 I ever made was the first $50 dollars I ever made. I received it for a hard day of lawn mowing when I lived in Germany when I was a kid.

Today’s $50 is definitely, without a doubt, the coolest $50 dollars I ever made, so far.

The people with whom I work are less like colleagues and more like family. We are always ribbin’ each other and… wait I just received a text message from my boss (I hate texts – that will be another entry). Hang on.

OK it was NOT a text - it was a picture message! It was a picture of a note asking me a question! I shouted my response across two offices (a whole twenty feet) and also stated he was an idiot for taking a picture of a note he had hand written. He said he had done that because he couldn’t text all of those words…

AARRRRGGGGHHH!

That last true-to-life paragraph or two (it REALLY DID just happen) should illustrate what kind of work environment this is. It is silly and fun.

Let’s back to the $50 story…

It all started at our meeting Tuesday morning at 8:30. The six of us were settling in to start the day as we usually do with some coffee, current events, joking around and a little business. When all of the sudden - we’ll call him Carl, yeah Carl – starts jumping up and down and hootin’ and hollerin’ like a kid on Christmas Morning…times 100.

He then ran back to his desk in a blur with papers swirling up toward the ceiling in the turbulence caused by his joy-fueled velocity. The rest of us may have glanced up from our coffee for a split second, for this type of behavior, while particularly intense today, was not too far out of the norm for Carl.

After reaching his desk and returning to the table in that cartoon-like Tasmanian turbulence, his sheer Christmas Morning joy turned to bitter rage. Fury, spit and bits of breakfast flew from his mouth as he cursed …himself.

It seems that his pick three lotto numbers came up! Oh Joy! However, he was holding a six-consecutive-play ticket that he bought the previous Tuesday…and had not renewed. Whammy! So he ferociously wadded up the ticket and threw it away. Was he pissed? Oh boy.

Then we all went back to our coffee and subsequently about our day.

At noon I was telling the story to another co-worker who was not around when all of this happened. While we were laughing at our buddy’s stroke of bad luck a few things kept nagging at me. “I’ll be back,” I said.

Tuesday Morning meeting, Tuesday’s newspaper, purchased last Tuesday, 6 consecutive draws. Hmmmm,

I dug the discarded entry out of the trash and in that impact-printer-lottery-font right on the face of the ticket it stated good for 6 consecutive draws, Tuesday August 7^th through Monday August 13^th.

See, Carl was an idiot on several levels: 1) he didn’t read the ticket, 2) he assumed the 6^th draw was on Sunday (they don’t draw on Sunday because of God), 3)he was reading Tuesday’s paper and thinking Tuesday’s numbers (Monday night’s numbers was the set being reported) and 4) his Tasmanian Devil like reaction to things made him lose sight of the facts and shove the proverbial Bugs Bunny in the trash while stuffing the lit dynamite (his anger) right down his gullet

I took the ticket to the nearest lottery retailer and, after pressing as many of the wrinkles out of it as possible, had it scanned and was informed that I was an $80 winner (it was a boxed ticket for any of you players of the game out there)! The clerk, after loudly exclaiming “HELLO MONTANA” (I’m still not sure what that means) counted off 80 bucks to me and I was on my way. Cha-Ching!

Wayne, you won $80 but said it was the coolest 50 DOLLARS you ever made, you may be thinking at this point. You are right I won $80, but in an effort not to receive bad Karma, I gave Carl $30. Giving him any more than that would have been rewarding his foul behavior while giving him any less would have just been mean.

The moral of the story? Hmmm, how about:

Keep control of your emotions because clear thinking is always profitable.
Or
Recycling Pays!

Until Next Time,
Wayne