There once was a man from Quebec / who was always tardy when he bet

That's gotta hurt.

A Queerbec man bought a lotto ticket past the deadline, which a judge has ruled has made him ineligible to win half of the $27 million won using the numbers on the ticket which Loto-Quebec sold to him.

Of course, it isn't quite that simple. If a part of your brain tells you "surely the automated lottery ticket system wouldn't let this happen", you're right. Smack at 9pm, the machine stops selling tickets for that night's lottery win and instead starts selling the following week's.

Ifergan went to the convenience store to buy two lottery tickets on May 23, 2008. The clerk told him he had to act quickly because the 9 p.m. deadline was quickly approaching.

The first quick pick was printed in time, but the second was printed seven seconds after the deadline and indicated it was for next week's draw.

The store employee asked Ifergan if he still wanted to purchase the tickets. He said he did and paid for them.

Unfortunately for Ifergan, the winning numbers for the $27-million jackpot appeared on the second ticket.

Another person had the winning numbers for the May 23 draw, which is why Ifergan sued for half the winnings.

Ifergan claims that once his order for the two tickets was placed in the terminal for the May 23 draw, the lottery provider was obligated to provide them for that date.

Ifergan's story is half "woe is me sob story" made just pathetic by the fact that not only was he told by the clerk that the ticket was no good and bought it anyways, but that he's playing the lottery in the first place. People who waste money on such crap do so at their own peril, and worry me not.

On the other hand, we've all had the dreaded moment in line at McDonald's or Tim Horton's where we are waiting for the slow-as-all-fuck non-TFW^† staff members to slowly shuffle forward the line of people before that horrible 11am sound that says no more breakfast is available. I've once gone toe-to-toe with McDonald's staff about this, especially the time I got into the store at 10:43 and the lazy nigger at the counter couldn't understand anybody's plain English orders, couldn't figure out the console^‡, and felt that leaning down to pick up a handful of ketchup was the sort of thing that required several minutes of intense planning before trying to begin. We don't know what the situation Ifergan found himself in, but it is entirely possible that the clerk in the store was not exactly rushing to get everybody's ticket orders in.

Still, the news that the idiot spent $100,000 on a court battle that was almost certainly going to lose makes it hard to find a lot of sympathy for the man.

^† Anybody who's ever gone to such places know that workers in the TFW program, by virtue of the fact that they can be sent home any millisecond at the slightest provocation, are actually highly efficient. By contrast, the old and lazy (or chubby and black) employees that inevitably replace them if the TFW program goes away certainly fit the bill above.

^‡ I met an engineer once who was a designer and executive in an Alberta-based firm that actually makes those cashier tills in use at fast food restaurants. Making the machines as retarded immigrant proof as possible is actually one of the key elements that they try to reach with these machines. Alas, he told me with a sigh, no matter how retard-proof they make these machines, God is determined to win the arms race by providing the planet with ever-greater retards.