[bhayden]

The lottery comparison would be fair if the organization running the lottery was incentivized to not pay you if you won and could very easily, in both a legal and acceptable-in-the-course-of-businesss way, deny you your winnings. You are basically relying on a huge pool of people who are making the decisions to be a nice guy and true to their word.

I'm not suggesting you consider your employer an enemy, there's obvious a mutual benefit to you working there, but never should anyone assume a business has your best interests at heart because they almost never do.