Store owners, discouraged by lottery hassles, quit selling tickets

Bill Poovey

Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. -- After five weeks of selling scratch-off tickets for Tennessee's new lottery, convenience store co-owners Randy and Karen Marsh decided they had had enough.

They were discouraged by the long lines, hassles, and the depressing sight of people spending more money than they could afford on lottery tickets. So they just quit.

"I was born and raised here, and I know a lot of these people," Randy Marsh said. "When they come in and put $100 of their check into playing the lottery it is disheartening. You know, No. 1, they can't afford it. They are hoping for that pot of gold."

The Marshes are certainly in a minority. Lottery chief Rebecca Paul said there are about 3,800 lottery vendors in Tennessee and the number is growing.

But some retailers have decided the hassle isn't worth the reward. Paul said she could not immediately provide a count of how many ticket vendors have quit since the games started almost two months ago.

The Marshes, who own Randy's Raceway Market, said they have had several compliments from happier customers.

"For me, it's better," city employee Dewayne Rackley said as he went out the door with a breakfast snack and a drink. "I've just got 10 minutes."

"We like to see our customers happy, not frustrated," Karen Marsh said.

Callers to a local radio show in McMinnville recently said they would drive out of their way to buy gas at the popular convenience store-eatery just because the lottery was gone.

Ticket vendors receive 6.5 percent of every dollar in lottery sales, but Randy Marsh said "dollar for dollar, you are losing your inside sales."

Marsh said he heard grumbling about standing in long lines and about delays at the gas pumps while drivers stood inside buying tickets.

"They are accustomed to waiting a little bit, but when they get there and there are 20 people in line they are getting very frustrated," said Marsh, who returned his unopened boxes of lottery tickets to Nashville in late February.

"I have seen them almost come to blows" at the gas pumps, Marsh said.

Marsh said he voted against the lottery, but decided to sell the tickets so he wouldn't lose customers.

Carmen Kerr, an employee at a Conoco convenience store in south Chattanooga, said she is confronted daily with people in the store asking for change to help them buy the $1 scratch-off tickets.

"They will come up and say, 'I have 47 cents. Will you loan me 53 cents?"' Kerr said.

Paul said Tennessee lawmakers did not designate any money for a program to deal with customers who have obvious gambling problems. She said ticket vendors are on their own with such customers.

"I don't think we have addressed that," Paul said. "That's a legislative decision."

Paul, who previously directed state lotteries in Florida and Georgia, said her office has not received any requests from ticket vendors for help with such problems. She said the lottery is not a game that attracts gambling addicts.

"The nature of the lottery is people will buy tickets with their change and move on," Paul said. "I've not heard of that in 20 years."

Boomer Brown, a spokesman for the Chattanooga-based Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services, agreed.

He said the state's games of chance are not an entry to addiction but "if there is an existing problem the lottery could exacerbate it. I do not believe a compulsive gambler is going to get started with a lottery."