Friday's Mega Millions jackpot worth an estimated $212 million

10:34 AM CST on Friday, February 24, 2006

By KIMBERLY DURNAN / DallasNews.com

Think about it: You’re sitting alone in the office, facing a mountain of mundane tasks, while co-workers giddy on champagne take a limousine to pick up their lottery winnings from an office pool you didn’t join.

“Oh, God, that would be awful,” said Chris Taylor, who works in a Dallas insurance office and fantasizes about calling in “rich” one day. “I would hate to be the one goat that did not give any money and have to show up to work after everyone else called in saying they had won.”

At Taylor’s office, about 10 people combine funds when the jackpot reaches around $150 million. If someone is absent during the collection, another co-worker usually covers the shortfall so they all can quit if they score the winning numbers.

“We’ve all talked about it,” Taylor explained about the group’s fantasy. “Our main office would have to send temps, or it would shut down. I wouldn’t give my two weeks notice. Who cares? You are a multimillionaire on the next jet to the Bahamas.”

With Friday’s Mega Millions lottery jackpot estimated at $212 million, office workers in Texas and 11 other states are confronting a dilemma: toss five or 10 bucks into a pool that inevitably will end up in the government’s hands or risk being the fool who didn’t buy into the pot that miraculously wins.

On Wednesday, eight workers from a Nebraska meat processing plant claimed $365 million in the Powerball game – the biggest lottery jackpot in U.S. history. The workers, who took the lump sum option, will each get about $15.5 million after taxes.

Seven co-workers at the General Motors plant in Arlington won $12 million in Lotto Texas in 2004. But even the windfall hasn’t convinced some co-workers to take up the game.

“Gosh, I thought it was great for them and of course wished it had been me,” said Leslee Covington, who works for United Auto Workers 276. “But the odds against winning are just incredible. Somebody recently tried to get another lottery pool going but we all said no, because when you involve money with business and friendships it can ruin everything.”

Several lawsuits regarding office lottery pools have been filed over years, but legal protections can be put into place, said Steven Camp, a lawyer with the Dallas firm Gardere Wynne Sewell.

APRIL KINSER / DallasNews.com

The person charged with collections should give everyone a photocopy of the tickets and include the participants’ names before the numbers are drawn, Camp said.

Winners should talk to an attorney about minimizing tax liability and finding a professional financial planner with a good track record to help them make the money last.

“People will start coming at them with investment plans and some will be good and some will bad,” he said. “You don’t want to get the money and three years later have blown all the money on stuff. You see that all the time. They buy racehorses, planes and automobiles.”

Lots of them quit their jobs, reportedly including at least four of the Nebraska meat packers.

And even if winners don’t always quit, returning to work is stressful, said H. Roy Kaplan, a sociologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa who has studied lottery winners.

“Their supervisors don’t know how to relate to them because the power has shifted,” he said. “Co-workers are anxious and angry saying, ‘Why are you here? You don’t have to work and you are taking a job from someone else who needs it.’”

Kaplan said he knew the first lottery player to win a million dollars back in the 1970s. The man worked for the telephone company in New Jersey and didn’t quit his job, but never got another raise.

Gina Gerald, 29, says she wouldn’t hang around to find out how her colleagues would treat her. The Dallas woman said she and at least eight lottery-playing co-workers will wave goodbye to their IT jobs at an area hospital if their winning ticket ever comes through.

“There would be some people left to work, just not us,” she said. “We are going to be in Hawaii.”

Each employee kicks in $5 weekly, and any small winnings go back into the pot.

“I get in the pool, no matter the price. Because if it wins, I don’t want to be the only one left at the office that has to work just because I didn’t put in a few dollars,” Gerald said.

When Ed Cullum, 53, of Garland first started playing the lottery, he was part of an office pool at a former business. He regularly buys numbers five weeks in advance.

“When I first saw the list of names of those already participating, I thought, ‘I don’t want to be left here if they win and all quit,’ so I joined,” he said.

Even after Cullum left for another job, he couldn’t stand the idea of being left out. So he continued kicking in money for the pool until the group disbanded.

But not everyone enjoys throwing in a couple of bucks into the pot.

Jack Wilburn, 36, of Carrollton said he doesn’t understand why friends would spend up to $40 a month for tickets. “I don’t enter the office lotto pool because the lotto is a tax on the poor and people who can’t do the math,” he said.

When asked how he would feel if his co-workers won big money, Wilburn said, “I’ll be glad for them.” And then he added, “But they are not going to win.”

Despite the long-shot odds, Taylor reasons that someone must win.

“Those people in the meatpacking plant didn’t think they were going to win,” he said. “It’s fun to daydream ‘What if?’ You get a brief euphoria thinking about that kind of money. It’s possible. That’s why we do it.”

E-mail kdurnan@dallasnews.com