You can win at claw machines
I've never won anything from a claw machine before. In my younger, more naive days, I would get frustrated when the claw would suddenly drop whatever it was carrying. Eventually I came to realise that many machines were rigged and stopped playing.
Yesterday, I was chatting with my ride-share driver whose car was full of soft toys. She said that she had won most of those from claw machines. "How," I asked, "aren't they rigged?".
She shook her head and replied, "You need to choose the right machines." She shared how she looks for those that have a slope for the toys to tumble down. Then she uses the claw machine to knock the toy down this slope, rather than grab it!
I had never thought of that – using a claw machine to push rather than grab. But after our conversation I realised that I had been so fixated on how I should use it, that I hadn't considered how I could use it. It's easy to feel like you have no agency when you're experiencing tunnel vision. If it can happen for something as trivial as an arcade game, it definitely can happen for things of much greater importance.
There's more than one way to win at the claw machines in our lives.