Railgun’s Retirement Plans

“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” – Bo Derek

On Wednesday morning I decided that I have worked long enough and now I wish to retire.
There are simply to many other things I wish to do with my life for me to sit at my job and work my Mandatory 45 hours per week at a wage that is below market value for a company who really does not care about me or my well being.

After this fine epiphany, I made the request of my wife, who was on her way to the store, to purchase the Jackpot winning Powerball ticket. For those of you who do not have Powerball in your area it is a lottery that has an obscene amount of money for the winner. This week’s in particular was slightly over 90 million dollars, which apparently at this time approximates about 30 Euro.

Regardless, after taxes this would still be an adequate amount for me to retire comfortably.

After this, I set about my business of composing my resignation letter, ordering my new 2008 Challenger and making the custom shop appointments for it, Called my broker to make sure all of my finances would be properly invested, Placed calls to Harvard for my twelve year old, and MIT for my five year old. Realized that this was too much work and sent a text over to a friend offering them a job as my personal assistant, and spent the rest of the day planning for our vacation.

(To the Trustee’s of both schools, my five year old will be inventing the light speed drive, and the 12 year old will be her patent lawyer. I’m already working with the five year old on her acceptance speech for the Nobel Academy, and I assure you both schools will get mention.)

All in all a very productive day.

Imagine my shock when I found that nobody had won the jackpot that evening.

This placed a very serious snag in my plans.

I spoke to my wife, and she insisted that she specified with the clerk that she wanted the jackpot winning ticket, and that he did indeed say that he was sure he had sold it to her.

I can only imagine that the clerk must have incorrectly entered our ticket into the system.
So I went down to the grocery store and spoke to the people at the lottery desk and explained to them what had happened and asked them to correct the situation and to please give me my 90 million, and that they could keep the change, after all I did have a schedule to keep and my children were eagerly awaiting our trip to Disney and didn’t really need to be bothered with such things. They were quite unreasonable, and tried to claim that they could not sell me the “guaranteed” winning ticket and that I would have to try again in the next drawing. Now, as I’m sure anyone else would be, this made me rather upset. After all, I had spent my dollar and I expected my winnings. I was even kind enough to offer to by a losing ticket for every drawing for the rest of my life to keep the game going for the rest of the country to get their turn. Clearly this was a plan to make me look like a fool.

When the police arrived, I explained the situation to them as I have lain out here. Again, they were less than understanding and informed me that if I did not leave, they would be forced to “Bring me in.” Then they began talking about the new tasers they had just been issued and how they had yet to try them out. I explained that this was merely a misunderstanding and that I was not asking any politician why they and their party had not kept the promises they had made to get elected and that it would not be necessary for them to go to such lengths.

For the record, the new tasers work perfectly.

After posting my bail, I asked my wife to take me to the state lottery commission to discuss our problem and file a formal complaint. She did not believe that this would benefit our case at all, but I insisted that it really couldn’t hurt any more than being tased so she gave in and off to the commission we went.

After speaking to several people at the commission I was finally brought to see a supervisor (His name was Steve, it was embroidered on his shirt.) and again explained my position.
Steve was far more understanding, and even agreed with the changed I had ordered for my new Challenger, though I found it a bit distracting that he insisted on sweeping up his office while we spoke. He then went on to explain that the folks at the lottery commission had thought I would prefer the larger jackpot of over 100 million dollars (apparently one of you generous Europeans decided to toss four or five more Euro into the pot.) and that I should purchase my ticket for the weekend drawing and he would see to it that I received the proper ticket. This did indeed calm me a bit but I explained that while I appreciated the thought, I really did have a timeline to keep and that I needed the money immediately, and that someone else could win the higher Jackpot. After all, I don’t want to be greedy.

Steve again was very understanding, and placed his broom back on the rolling cart with the rest of his cleaning supplies and overly large garbage can and said he would go get my check and that I should wait for him in his office.

After a few minutes a group of state police officers entered the room where I was waiting.
At the time I assumed they were there to help guard my winnings and went to explain that I really wouldn’t need their assistance as Steve was cutting a check, not giving me cash.

For the record, their tasers also function perfectly.

All this lead to the extremely embarrassing meeting with my boss the following morning.
He was very understanding as I explained what had happened and was gracious enough to let me retract my resignation until I can straighten this problem out, but he did recommend that I wait until after the check has cleared to turn it in, though he did understand my initiative in trying to get a jump on all the things I needed to do.

I plan on calling the Attorney General today. I would go down to his office in person, but as I understand things, he has recently been given a new taser as a gift and I’d like him to have some time alone with it before we speak.