Over the summer, I had the pleasure of my first experience working in retail- a charming alternate reality in which you can see the worst of the human race. Make no mistake, there are plenty of worse jobs out there that I am blessed to not be doing, but dealing with irritable people who always seem to know better than you is not up there on my bucket list. I digress. This is not a tale of my experience of customer service, but an attempt to bring your attention to an issue that is constantly overlooked by society.
“Just this and all of your number fives, please darling”, I hear a voice rasp, as I look up to see an elderly man smiling at me, clutching onto a Rustlers quarter pounder. I stare back at him with wide eyes. We had about fifty number fives left. Anyone who knows me will tell you that my facial expressions are not easily controlled. I clear my throat, trying to clear away the blatant judgment along with it. “All of them?” I ask him carefully. He nods agreeably. “Fifty number fives” I mutter underneath my breath while pulling the cards out, thinking how easily I could now justify my overpriced clothing purchases. Also that I should consider another field of work. After I thought I had seen the last of him for today, he returned to my till five minutes later, waving his scratch cards around with the demeanor of a child who had just received his presents on Christmas morning. “Won forty pounds, love!” He exclaimed, slapping them down on the counter. “Just give me all the sixes you can for that, darling”
After my first week at work, I found that this particular gentleman was a regular, and came to pick up all of my number fives every Friday evening, only then to spend the money he had won on more scratch cards. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of a kind, and I racked up a number of customers who had visibly been taken over by the force of a gambling addiction.
I grew up in a household where gambling was a dirty word. Money had to be earned through work, not a luck of the draw. Perhaps growing up in such a sheltered environment elevates my shock towards the situation, but regardless of that, it should be shocking to everyone. Last year, the number of problem gamblers in the UK rose to more than a staggering 400,00. We have squeezed the life out of talking about Brexit, identity politics and Jamie Oliver’s ‘ever so scandalous’ jerk rice. Would it kill us to create a dialogue on adults who still have the childish mentality of being able to get what they want without working for it?
As Comrade Corbyn likes to go on about how people deserve to get everything in life for free, the psychology behind gambling proves that yet again, he is incorrect. People win their money, spend it to win more, and usually end up losing less money than they started with. The idea of gambling resulting in ‘free money’ is foolish, as once you enter this vicious cycle it becomes very hard to break out of it. Don’t be surprised if you’re left with not much more than a hole in your wallet.
I once had a temporary job as a cleaner. One riveting Friday at work, as I was aggressively scrubbing the interior of an oven, I couldn’t help but overhear my two co-workers’ conversation. “Got any plans for tonight then?” My co-worker asked us. “Night out at Paddies. If I win something then I won’t have to work tomorrow!” I don’t know what disturbed me more; the fact that a thirty-year-old woman would skip work because of getting lucky at a casino, or the fact that there are probably many more of her out there.
Thankfully, there are measures being taken in the UK to combat gambling addiction. GambleAware is an organization that has helplines, live online chats, and information on problem gambling addiction. It also funds the UK’s only dedicated gambling addiction clinic in London. It gets around 8 million in funding from the industry per year but has called for this to be increased to 10 million, indicating that they recognize that not enough attention is being brought to this issue.
At the moment, there is not enough dialogue on the issue of gambling in the UK, so I’m starting it. It is a daily activity that has been normalized by society, and the children of parents who slam down a large portion of their salaries to buy their scratch cards are watching and learning from them. We should be teaching the next generation that success will come from hard work, not from the easiest possible route.
Illustration: A Great Collection of Gambling Cartoons by Jerry King
This article was not sponsored by GambleAware or any other parties
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