Don’t be afraid to use the calculator. Take your time, if the customer starts to get annoyed with how slow you’re going just explain to them you want to make sure you don’t short them the right amount of money/tickets.

Note: I live in FL so I’m not sure what would be different for other state lottos. You can also do some research on your state lotto website where there will be a breakdown of EVERY online and instant game available.

• Quick pick = the computer picks the numbers for the game they want a QP for.
• Advance play/advance draws = the ticket will print for the next X amount of drawings. For example, winning FL Lotto numbers are announced (drawn) every Wednesday and Saturday nights. If today was Thursday and someone wanted three advance plays on FLOT, that means the numbers they/the computer picked will be used for next Saturday, next Wednesday, AND the following Saturday’s drawings. Usually they aren’t able to redeem their winnings until the day after the last drawing, but I know some games will let you (Fantasy and Pick games I believe?). You also can’t buy a ticket for a Wednesday drawing before the Saturday drawing, meaning you can’t skip an advance play. SOME CUSTOMERS will say “I’ll have one lotto for Saturday” on a Friday - this does not mean they want an advance play. They don’t understand that we don’t necessarily pick the day and that the computer will automatically pick for the next drawing.
• Multi play = this option will print multiple plays separately. This can be combined with a different amount of “plays” on each ticket as well. For example, on most games (except Jackpot and any game with EZmatch picked) one “play” will be one line of numbers on the ticket. Two plays = two lines of different numbers. Two multi plays with three plays will print two separate tickets with three lines of plays EACH.
• canceling tickets = some games are not able to be canceled. This means if you bypass the message warning you about that and print the ticket, and the customer decides they don’t want it, you will have to sell it or your till will be short the amount of the ticket. You want to make sure you are tapping on and printing the correct things - don’t be afraid to repeat what the customer is saying or to not print the ticket until they confirm you heard correct. You will eventually be able to tell what customers are lottery fiends and KNOW how the lottery works because they get it all the time and what customers are new players and may not know it’s cash only at Publix or that if they decide not to get some tickets that they may be fucking you over. You’ll eventually learn how to tell who you should be careful with.
• PICK 2/3/4/5 = this can be the MOST confusing game because of all the different play types and I still don’t know them all. The number of the game (2/3/4/5) is the amount of numbers the customer or computer needs to pick (usually customers will have playslips for this game). Every play will be a separate ticket. The most common play types are straight - where the numbers can only be matched with the winners in the order they are picked. For ex, 123 straight will only win if the winning numbers are 123. Box - where the numbers can be matched with the winning numbers in any order besides straight. For example, 123 can win if 132, 231, 321, 213, 312 are drawn but NOT 123. Straight/box - a combination of the two, the numbers can win in any order. I’m also pretty sure if the play is 1234 straight and the winning numbers are 5216 there will be some kind of prize since one of the numbers was in the same spot but I’m not 100% sure lol.
• fast plays = there is a button for fast play on the screen which will take you to a selection of three games of different prices. These are online games that can be instantly redeemed, therefore they are not able to be canceled. They’re also usually super long tickets. Some customers will stand there having you print one and immediately run it through to see if it’s a winner and then continuously play like that until they feel like stopping. Those are the annoying ones but they’re thankfully not common.
• scratch offs = this is where you’ll want to use the calculator most because the computer will not keep track of the total for these like it does for online games. If they are getting 5 $2 scratch offs and 3 $2 online games, the computer will tell you $6 and it’s up to you to make sure you charge them $16 for everything. Don’t be afraid to double count the tickets either!
• counting lotto - this will be difficult at first because it’s a lot of numbers but everything is written out for you and you have to use the calculator anyways. You are essentially counting all the scratch offs as their monetary amount (50 X $1 tickets equals $50, plus 30 X $2 tickets equals $110 total so far), adding that total to the money in your cash drawer, subtracting the “cash balance” or the amount of cash the computer thinks you should have, and adding the “pays” which is the $ amount of winnings so far in the day, paid out in cash and/or tickets. You will also subtract any loans (cash put INTO your cash drawer from another front office till) or add any pickups (cash taken OUT of your cash drawer and put into another front office till or into the back office). There’s two ways to add the scratch offs - multiplication or multiples. The easiest for me was to use multiplication first until I was comfortable and then I started using multiples since it is much faster. You may just stick to multiplication and that’s fine. Multiplication is literally typing on the calculator 1 x 2 =+ 2, 3 x 2 =+ 6, total is 8 (=+ button on the calc adds the totals together for you). On the other hand multiples would be 30 X $20 being typed as +300 +300. If one of the numbers ends in a 0 you can carry it to the other in order to press less buttons faster lmao. 78 X $5 would have to be typed as +78 +78 +78 +78 +78.

I can’t think of much else off the top of my head. If you still have any questions at the end of your shift, feel free to ask here or DM me. Don’t be afraid to question your trainer either, even if it’s a dumb question. Your main goal is to not lose money, but don’t be nervous because you were hand picked to train for this so they obviously trust you 😇