I like playing the pokies. For some reason I seem to have phenomenal luck on them and nine times out of ten I'll walk out a winner. I don't go to the casino to play, just the local pubs and clubs. No huge jackpots but I still manage to pick up a lot of minor ones.
I make it a practice to only have a certain amount on me when I go so that if I lose it I'll know that this isn't my night and quit. Also if I win a jackpot of five hundred or more I quit. Any other winnings may or may not go back in the machines.
I've been told that playing the pokies is a mug's game and you always lose in the long run but I don't go very often. On those occasional nights when I'm bored and by myself I'll have a flutter. I guess I'm not a true gambler at heart as I just hate to see my money going for no return. For an hour or so of entertainment I don't mind investing some coin but more than that? My puritan soul shudders at the thought of losing.
I was playing one night when the machine I was on gave a happy burp and added two hundred to my credit. I played a few more reels, taking the total down to the nearest ten and pressed collect, smiling as the coins dropped into the container.
That's when I realised I didn't have coin bucket on hand and went to look for one. I stepped around the side of my machine, spotted a bucket lying behind it, grabbed it and returned to my machine. I was out of sight of my machine for two seconds, tops. Enough time for the young lady on the machine next to mine to reach out and take a nice handful of coins but not enough time for her to draw her arm back.
"Put them back," I said, and I'll swear my tone lowered the general temperature by five degrees.
"Can't blame a girl for trying," she said, releasing the coins and smirking.
"Actually, I can," I told her, still with a bit of a chill in my voice. "You'll find that if I complain to the management that they will be quite willing to blame you, too. And after they throw you out and ban you from ever coming back and you need to explain why you're banned to your friends, your friends will probably blame you. Want to test this?"
She flushed and looked away from me, refusing to answer. I collected my coins and trotted off to the teller's cage to change them to a series of nice crisp notes. With my total winnings for the night still being under the five hundred mark I wandered around looking for a machine that I felt was waiting for me.
I was passing the machine that had just been so kind to me when the young lady on the next machine swore, slapped the side of her machine and abandoned it. She looked at my old machine, shrugged and sat down and put five into it and pressed the button. She scored twenty and settled down to spend it. Looking at her old machine it just felt right to me. I sat down, put in a note and spun.
Don't you just love it when you spin up a feature? The bells and whistles sounded, the reels spun happily, and my winnings started to mount rapidly to the sound of some very nasty words from the young lady who had just abandoned that machine.
Naturally I hit collect and a printed docket slipped into my hand, authorising the teller to pay me a thousand or so dollars. A nice profit for the night and time for me to go home. I handed the teller the docket, smiling as she counted out a nice wad of notes, which I then slipped into my wallet. Then I turned and started making my way to the exit, ignoring the siren sounds of pokies singing come and play.
They always put the teller's cage as far from the main door as possible. This means that anyone who wants to go home has to fight past all the temptations. I wonder how many people lose their winnings just trying to leave?
I got about half way to the exit when I was accosted rather rudely by a certain young lady.
"That should have been my winnings," she snapped. "I'd been playing that machine. I'd only stepped aside to try another machine for a while and you jumped in."
"Yes? And did you win anything on your new machine?"
From the filthy look I got the answer was no.
"No? Do you have any money left that would have let you start over on the old machine?"