[youtalkfunny]

It's not a Christmas party, but it's still an office party, so I'll tell the story:

I'm working at a race/sports book in Vegas. The racebook manager is quitting to take another job, and we're giving him a send-off at a local tavern. We plan this for a Sunday night, since we don't carry any live racing on Sunday nights, and this will give the most people the chance to attend.

Several hours into the party, we start to notice that the assistant manager, who is being promoted to replace the departing guy, hasn't shown up to the party. He was running the racebook that afternoon, and was supposed to come over after the last race, but didn't show. This sparked all sorts of gossip, wondering if there was a rift between these two guys that none of us knew about.

The assistant guy finally showed up, about three hours after we expected him to arrive, and explained where he had been:

After the last race, one of the ticket writers was counting down his draw, and called out, "Hey, Rick, I'm $5000 short! Somebody must've snatched a bundle of $100's out of my drawer!"

That struck Rick as odd. Racebook writers started the day with $5,000 in their drawer, and rarely ended the day with more than $10,000. And it's almost entirely made up of $20's or lower. If anybody in the room was betting that many $100's, Rick would've known about it.

So Rick couldn't come to the party right away. He had to stay late, so he and security could figure out what happened.

It turned out the ticket writer was hammering out a few tickets for himself, and if he got stuck, he'd Martingale the favorites until he got unstuck. Today was Martingale Reckoning Day.