What Are You Doing After You Lose a $1 Million Winning Lottery Ticket in an Auto Parts Store Parking Lot?
New York Post — Nick Slatten of Sparta, brought the ticket at Village Market on March 10 before heading home. The next morning, Slatten said he checked the Tennessee Lottery app and discovered the ticket was worth $1,178,746.
“I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it,” Slatten said, according to a news release by the Tennessee Lottery. “I can’t express it. It was something else.”
Slatten said he rushed to his fiancée Michelle’s workplace to tell. He said he spent the rest of the day running errands, including taking his brother to an O’Reilly Auto Parts store.
But about an hour later, Slatten said he realized he didn’t have the ticket anymore.
“I couldn’t find it anywhere,” he said.
Slatten said he retraced his steps and pulled into the auto parts store parking lot, where he saw the ticket on the ground next to the driver’s side door of another vehicle.
Nick Slatten has to be the luckiest man alive. To not only win $1 million, but then lose the ticket at an O'Reilly Auto Parts and then find it again is some of the craziest shit I've ever heard. But I have several questions as to the events of this whole situation.
Firstly, what in the world are you doing taking your brother to the auto parts store on the day you find out you've won $1 million? I'm all for being dependable and a man of your word, but when a situation like that arises, you call and explain that the most important financial event of your life has occurred and you have to go straighten a couple things out.
But then, if you do still take your brother to the auto parts store, why in the actual hell do you have the ticket on you?! If I have more than $100 in cash in my wallet, I feel a little uneasy going out in public. This dude was galavanting around Sparta, Tennessee with a $1.1 million winning lottery ticket?
But on the opposite end of the luck spectrum from Slatten is this poor fella who parked inches from $1 million and stepped right over it. I honestly hope whoever that was never knows it or puts two and two together from when they were at that O'Reilly, because I don't know how you recover from that. I actually feel way worse for this person than if Slatten had never found the ticket. It was his fault for losing it in the first place.
But in the end, Slatten was reunited with his winning ticket. On the off chance I ever hit a jackpot, the rest of my day is canceled and I'm headed straight to the lottery office. You will not find my ticket in a parking lot.