When Jennifer Maldonado opted out of her office's lottery pool, she figured it was no big deal.
Turns out, she was off by about $1 million.
Having just started working as an administrative assistant at Keller Williams Partner Realty in Plantation, Florida, Maldonado was still waiting on her first paycheck and decided not to chip into the Powerball pool.
Her boss, Laurie Finkelstein Reader, even offered to lend Maldonado the buy-in, but she turned her down.
This past Sunday, Maldonado arrived at the real estate agency to find her 12 coworkers celebrating their heads off.
"I knew I was the only one who hadn't put in the money, so I thought they were pranking me and going out of their way to make me feel something," Maldonado told the Miami Herald.
But Finkelstein Reader soon gave her the good/bad news: The team had won $1 million with five matching numbers.
After tax, that comes out to just over $83,000 a piece.
Maldonado bad luck may have kept her out of the office pool — but her good luck brought her to that particular office in the first place.
Working as a team, the employees of Keller Williams decided to put aside some of their winnings for Maldonado.
"As a team we put together a fat pile of money," said Finkelstein Reader. "If we do the right thing and always care about other people, the right thing will happen to us."
And Finkelstein Reader knows what she's talking about.
While purchasing the tickets, a misunderstanding led to her receiving only half the tickets she requested.
However, before she was able to complete her transaction, an impatient man behind her in line cut ahead and purchased his own batch of Powerball tickets.
It was only afterwards that Finkelstein Reader's second batch of tickets was printed out.
And, wouldn't you know it, the second batch contained the winning ticket.
"We wouldn't have won if it wasn't for that," she said.
[photo via Shutterstock]