Lottery Workers Can’t Play the Games but Believe They ‘Lucked Out’ on Jobs

Behind the front seat of the blue government sedan, MaryLou Ackerman had stashed $3,000 worth of lottery tickets. They were wrapped in cellophane, in books of 500 each, and stuffed inside white plastic bags, the kind that supermarkets hand out with their lettuce.

Ackerman, a sales representative for the California Lottery, had tried, not entirely successfully, to cover them with lottery posters and a box of promotional literature that were also in the back seat.

“You have to hide the tickets,” she explained, “so someone doesn’t bop you over the head and take them.”

Ackerman, 43, slim and energetic, left an 18-year career with Lucky supermarkets in July to become one of the state lottery’s 200 sales reps.

It is her job to promote ticket sales--explaining lottery rules, handing out promotional material and monitoring lottery ticket sales--at 111 retail stores in a sales territory in southern Orange County that ranges from Silverado Canyon to the bustling shops near Leisure World.

Technically, delivering tickets wasn’t supposed to be part of her job. For security reasons, Purolator, a private courier firm, is under contract with the California Lottery Commission to deliver all tickets.

But when the lottery began Oct. 3, Californians immediately swamped the ticket order system, buying millions more tickets than expected. When orders around the state were seriously delayed, sales reps like Ackerman stepped in.

She didn’t really mind, Ackerman said as she headed toward a Laguna Hills beauty shop with its order. “I want to keep these people happy. I want to keep them selling tickets. And if it takes me all day to keep one retailer happy, then I’ve accomplished what I wanted.”

Ackerman’s enthusiasm and “can-do” attitude are shared by a lot of the lottery’s new employees. But then its 500 staffers are not exactly typical civil servants.

To be sure, a dozen, including executive director Mike Michalko, worked for lotteries in other states. And the 33 members of the lottery security force are all veterans of police agencies. (Thad Dwyer, the lottery’s regional security chief based in Anaheim, used to be in charge of corrections for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.)

But almost the entire sales force came from the private sector--from sales jobs with a national magazine, a soft drink company, cosmetics firms and dozens of other corporations.

Business Backgrounds

The management style of the lottery reflects those business backgrounds. Sales reps say they are marketing lottery tickets the way they would magazines or hot dogs or any other consumer product. And lottery employees say that their new agency is being run more like a business than a government agency--and a service business at that.

“It’s a whole world of its own,” said James Braxton, the lottery’s 32-year-old regional director for Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“We have a product for the consumer (lottery tickets),” he said. “We’re providing a service instead of collecting a tax.”

That the California Lottery was different from most state agencies was evident the day ticket sales began.

For one thing, the scene in the lottery offices around the state was a chaotic one as thousands of retailers showed up to demand more tickets. They were quickly joined by hundreds of “instant winners” who stood in a long line, waiting cheerfully to turn in winning tickets worth from $100 to $5,000.

Long Hours at First

Overnight, the lottery was a hit. But to cope with it, managers, sales reps and secretaries in the lottery’s Anaheim office worked 12-hour days, six days a week, for the lottery’s first three weeks, answering phones, registering winners, delivering tickets.

The mood is more calm now. Lottery employees have settled into an 8-to-5 routine, ticket deliveries have improved and Braxton, who spent the last five years marketing ethnic beauty products, has been applying traditional marketing techniques to running the lottery.

“I started in the beginning focusing on learning lottery,” Braxton said. But after two frustrating weeks, “I thought, ‘This is going to take a while.’ So instead I started instituting normal systems of reporting--management by objective, minimum numbers of sales calls--and it’s easier.”

Using a time-honored sales technique, Braxton and Ulysses Carter, the lottery’s Orange County district director, recently divided their sales staff into two teams--the greens and the reds.

Competition Between Teams

The teams are supposed to compete in making the most sales calls and helping their retailers sell the most lottery tickets.

For all the emphasis on competition and efficiency, lottery sales reps say they haven’t lost their personal touch.

“Everybody knows me,” said sales rep John Mancuso, 52, who until he joined the lottery this summer ran a deli in Laguna Beach. Now Mancuso works with 125 retailers from San Clemente to Irvine. But his personable business style hasn’t changed.

“They call me at home with their orders and their problems,” Mancuso said. “It’s not the bureaucracy people tend to associate with government.”

For all the lottery employees’ enthusiasm about their jobs, there is one irony of their new careers: The lottery seems to them to be the greatest game in the world, but they can’t play.

Barred by Initiative

When California voters approved the lottery in November of 1984, the initiative specifically barred lottery employees, their spouses, children and parents from playing the game.

Lottery employees say they understand the reason for the rule--to avoid conflict-of-interest charges. Still, many of them find it frustrating.

“You itch but you can’t scratch,” a receptionist in the lottery commission’s Anaheim office said.

“I would love to play it,” said Pete Olden, a lottery sales rep for Anaheim who describes himself as “a gambler at heart.” Recently, Olden said, “I got so frustrated I couldn’t stand it. I went to Las Vegas the other weekend and I lost a grand.”

By contrast, Ackerman said she was not much of a gambler. And though she would love to play, “I’m not going to risk getting fired,” she said in a horrified tone.

8,000 Applicants

Besides, she figured, she has already tested her luck by getting hired for this job from more than 8,000 applicants.

A lot of lottery staffers share that view. Braxton, for instance, called himself “very blessed” to have been hired and allowed to help shape this new agency.

The lottery has its frustrations, of course, Braxton said. Ticket deliveries are still late. There are frequent internal audits by the state. And because the lottery is a state agency, “senators, assemblyman, you name it” call frequently to inquire why one of their constituents wasn’t approved as a lottery retailer. Braxton added that so far he has resisted the pressure.

Running the lottery is like being “inside a fishbowl,” Braxton said, describing it as a demanding, high-profile job. Still, Braxton said, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“I’m kind of satisfied right where I am,” he said. “I’m excited about the games.” (The first lottery with a $2-million jackpot is over, a second game with a larger jackpot is under way and Lotto, another numbers game, is still to come.)

Braxton said he would like to stay with the lottery for some years to come. “It’s the kind of job you don’t get bored with,” he said.