"Fickle Finger of Fate"

Patience pays.

From the NY Post...

When Mike Barth reached for a Snickers bar as he stood at the counter to buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket, someone reached over his shoulder and bought the next ticket.

"I thought about saying something but decided to just let it slide," Barth said about the Quick Pick ticket sold right before the one he purchased at 2:40 p.m. last Friday.

"I bought the next ticket -- the winning ticket!"

So the "fickle finger of fate," as he called it today, turned Barth, who also purchased a Quick Pick ticket where the computer randomly chooses numbers, and his six fellow state IT workers into millionaires when they won the $319 million Mega Millions jackpot.

And so does perseverance.

From the NY Post...

A hapless state information-technology worker who usually joined his office lottery pool took a pass last week -- only to learn that seven positive-thinking pals nailed a whopping $319 million Mega Millions jackpot, said a deli owner who knows the winners.

"The word is that when they were going around the office asking who wanted in on the pool, one guy said no, that he wasn't feeling lucky," said Jill Cook, who with husband Tom owns Cook's Deli in Albany, where the winners are lunchtime regulars.

"They asked him twice. They said, 'Are you sure?' and he said yeah, he was going to pass this time. I feel horrible for him," Jill said.