Raffle Ticket: Fill & Download for Free

I can relate two instances.Back about 1980 I bought a raffle ticket (for only 50 cents) from a sorority in Little Rock, Arkansas. The prize was dinner for two at the 6 nicest restaurants in town. Eventually I got a call that I had won and would get my gift certificates soon. No tickets ever arrived. I contacted the sorority and they offered to refund my 50 cents! Unfortunately for the girls who sold me the ticket, I worked with a certain fraud division of the state government. I contacted the restaurants mentioned on the raffle ticket and discovered they knew nothing of the raffle. I then brought some serious heat down on the sorority, and they quickly delivered my prize. As they left my home, one of the girls said “We’ll never sell YOU another ticket.” As if.About a year later my car needed a tune up. The car needed new spark plug wires so I replaced them myself before going in for the tune-up. While I’m waiting for my car to be fixed the technician walks in and announces that I need new spark plug wires. Oh really? I asked to see the wires. They had been cut. I explained to the man that I had just put on that new set of wires not an hour ago, and the only way they got cut was by him cutting them himself. The result of that business’s interaction with the fraud folks? They found themselves closed down. There had been plenty of complaints about that business but now they had defrauded the wrong person for sure.

That every time kids come to my door selling raffle tickets, candy bars, or frozen pizzas to support their organization, I always buy something. Because when I was a kid I did the same thing.

Once when I was a grad student I slept in a field to get cheap tickets to Wimbledon. Totally worth it, we had a fantastic time. As everyone was lining up and getting comfortable for the night, I wondered aloud to my friend what would happen if someone just showed up in the morning and slipped into the line. There were so many people it would be easy to do and how could you prove that they’d cut in line?Later in the evening, some fellow in a safety vest came around handing out what looked like raffle tickets. He was in a hurry and we didn’t get to ask what it was about. I stuck the ticket in my pocket and forgot about it.The next morning, there were people in line in front of us who definitely hadn’t been there the night before in the field, but what were we going to do? They weren’t responding to quiet shaming. They actually seemed pretty pleased with themselves for getting in the queue ahead of the chumps who’d waited all night.Suddenly there was a bobbie in full uniform at my elbow, asking to see my number.“My number? What number?” He got extremely serious and explained that I should have received a number the night before as I waited in the queue. “Oh, THAT number!” I pulled out the raffle ticket thingy and suddenly the bobbie was very pleasant again and wished me a lovely day of tennis.So to the jerks right in front of us who cut a long, long line, the bobbies said, “Where are your numbers?” When they had no numbers, they got marched the length of the queue - oh the public shaming! - to the very end. Never saw them again.