Restaurant Workers Have Winning Lottery Ticket, But for Wrong Drawing
A group of restaurant workers thought they had 900 million reasons to be happy last week when their lottery ticket matched the winning Power Play numbers, NBC New York reports.
A video shows the group of servers, cooks, and bartenders, who work at Grissini’s Restaurant in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., watching the numbers being drawn for the $950 million Power Ball, and shouting “yes!” after each number is a match.
A second video shows everyone in the restaurant hooting and hollering in celebration, and crying tears of joy. A dishwasher threw his apron on the floor and quit, a restaurant rep told Huffington Post.
(Photo: Grissini)
There was only one problem — they were watching the wrong numbers being drawn. Their ticket, which was bought Saturday ahead of the $900 million drawing, had numbers which matched Wednesday’s drawing.
Worker Charlie Poveromo, who organized the pool of tickets, told CBS New York his friend texted him the alleged winning numbers a few minutes after 11 p.m., which is when the drawing occurs. Those numbers matched one of the tickets, and they all went wild.
“I still can’t believe it,” worker Charlie Poveromo told NBC New York of the mistake.
It was only after he called his wife that he double-checked the numbers against the Power Ball’s website.
“It was a feeling of excitement, glory, the adrenaline — it was just an amazing feeling,” server Jimmy Torba said to CBS New York, “Maybe we can buy, open a business; we can donate some money; change our lives; be happy.”
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