Management challenge of the week: The nano-second rich
Like ticket buyers everywhere, the staff of Grissini Ristorante in New Jersey carefully checked their Power Ball numbers last weekend to see if they’d won the nearly $1 billion prize. But no one was likely more excited as the crew realized they’d done it—their numbers matched the six that had been drawn! They were millionaires many times over!
Screw working. A dishwasher quit on the spot. A valet told a customer to go get his own car. Staff and patrons alike burst into tears. Observers used their smart phones to capture the moment for posterity, or at least for YouTube.
And then someone noticed a problem: They’d checked their tickets against the numbers that’d been pulled from a website. And the site hadn’t updated the figures from the prior week. If their tickets had been chosen for the earlier drawing, they’d have won that prize. But the numbers didn’t match the figures drawn for the $900-million-plus pot of the current week.
What they had was merely a curious and particularly agonizing miss. And a very jarring return to earth.
But stay tuned. According to news reports, the staff has already spent more than $400 on tickets for the next drawing, when the prize is expected to be in the $1.5 billion range.