So Jealous Of These Restaurant Employees Who Thought They Won The Powerball But Looked At The Wrong Numbers

(CBS) — With Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot up to $1.5 billion, co-workers have been pooling their money to buy tickets. But imagine if your office pool won, only to find out it was a mistake. As CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported, that was exactly happened to employees at a Bergen County restaurant. Cellphone video captured the ecstatic moment that employees at Grissini Restaurant in Englewood Cliffs thought they hit the $950 million Powerball jackpot on Saturday night. “It was a feeling of excitement, glory, the adrenaline — it was just an amazing feeling,” server Jimmy Torba said, “Maybe we can buy, open a business; we can donate some money; change our lives; be happy.” That is until the heartbreaking realization that they were looking at the winning numbers from a previous drawing. “I’m sure I would have lost all the employees. The dishwashers were very happy — they didn’t have to wash dishes anymore. Our valet parker told a guy to go get his own car,” owner Anthony DelGatto said.

I feel like whenever a situation such as this is brought up everyone’s reaction is always, “You gotta kill yourself,” but that couldn’t be more wrong. I’m truly envious of these guys. If you don’t think I know what I’m talking about, I do. Four years ago my buddies and I bought a scratchie book. It was a hungover Sunday: October 14, 2012 to be exact. I remember vividly because we watched the Patriots lose to the Seahawks while we scratched. Anyway, at one point one friend stood up and screamed that we’d just won 700k. What transpired next was the best party I’ve ever been a part of, even if it only lasted three minutes.

There was dancing, hugging, beer chugging, screaming, it was magical. Think a Gatsby party but in an apartment and only attended by four hungover schlubs. You know how they say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? It’s the same with wealth. 180 seconds of being rich is better than never being rich. For a moment, I was king of the world. All my problems disappeared. I’ve never taken Ecstasy (I tried once at an MGMT concert but I think it was a sugar pill) but I imagine that’s what the feeling was like. Everything felt beautiful and I was truly happy. It was amazing. I understand that the reaction is “gotta kill yourself because you’ll never be that happy again,” but there’s always the memory. Every day when life sucks, there’s that voice in the back of your mind saying “hey, you never know, we might get there again one day, bud.” It’s a nice little life coach and I’m happy these guys just got one too.

PS – The image of a valet telling some dude to go fuck himself and get his own car is just hysterical. I picture some Latino guy (because I’m kinda racist) doing the “here are your keys… too slow!” pull away about five times before reaching back and throwing them as far as he can. Which is far. Because he’s Latino. And Latinos are good at baseball.