4 ms·
When I was eleven, three local K-mart stores had a simple drawing to win 1000 dollars worth of Legos. They had these little boxes with stacks of entry forms nex
by iamthepieman 11y ago
When I was eleven, three local K-mart stores had a simple drawing to win 1000 dollars worth of Legos. They had these little boxes with stacks of entry forms next to them and a pencil to fill them out while you were in the store.
Each store was going to give away a thousand dollars worth of legos.
Even though there was a store just a few minutes from us, we drove to the one 20 minutes away in a dilapidated shopping center because inspection of the drawing box indicated that fewer people were submitting entries at that store. We would drive to the stores in the morning, take all the entry forms available except for a few and I would spend my summer mornings filling them out. I believe we dropped close to a thousand entries in the various boxes. I put the majority in the low traffic K-Mart but entered a hundred or so in the other two stores as well.
I got a big manilla envelope in the mail with Lego letterhead congratulating me and 3 different catalogs, lego, duplo and technique.
I spent two glorious weeks poring over the catalogs with my brother carefully tallying up to the 1000 dollar total.
A month after submitting the order we received two giant boxes. Few things have ever made me as happy.
- Betelgeuse90 11y agoI'm supposedly an adult and I'm totally jealous of this 11 year old. :)
- Roritharr 11y agoAs cute as that story sounds... my mother taught me that doing these types of things is unethical. I'm not really judging, just want to hear how other people feel about "cheating" in these types of promotions.
- oqnet 11y agoIf the contest doesn't specify how often you may enter then, I see no problem with it. It may not be exactly ethical, and really shitting thing to do if you were an adult in what appears to be a kids contest. If the contest doesn't specify the number of entries go for it, you've done nothing wrong. If the contest did specify and the kid stuffed the ballot that's pretty low, but at least a kid who was super dedicated and excited got it. I wouldn't do it but I would definitely shrug it off if that were the case. I would be angry as hell if an adult did it, or encouraged a kid to do it.
- chapium 11y agoIts incredibly low to prevent others from entering by taking all the forms.
- somedudethere 11y agoThere is a lot of things in life that aren't explicitly disallowed but make you a selfish asshole if you do them. If a kid was brought up properly by there parent and can assess right or wrong and then sees other kids being unethical and then winning, it only promotes negative behavior.
- betenoire 11y agoAs a privileged human in many ways, I feel guilty when taking advantages I don't need. It doesn't bother me when others do these types of things though, I just won't.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- __abc 11y agoThey didn't cheat. 1 - Based on what was said, multiple entries are allowed. 2 - They didn't remove ALL entry slips, left several These contests are all about having people come back and apply gain, and again, and again. How many little things the the parents pickup at KMart simply because they were there and it was convenient? Probably a fair bit.
- pharke 11y agoIt's saddening to see how much people have lost sight of doing the right thing regardless of whether it is required (or forbidden) by "the rules".
- Shish2k 11y ago> They didn't cheat. Also, use of physical violence isn't explicitly banned by the rules of tic-tac-toe. I think I've just found a new winning strategy that "isn't cheating" :D
- herbig 11y agoThis doesn't hold, since all local, state, and national laws must be adhered to by default. If a contest doesn't limit the number of entries, you're allowed to enter as many times as you'd like. "Cheating" has a specific definition and the definition doesn't apply here. The "spirit" of the contest is subjective. Perhaps the spirit of an easily gamed contest for me is to teach my children a lesson about math and strategy. Maybe it's to teach my kids strange ethical lessons. No one would be down voting or calling it unethical if the state lottery allowed you to enter as many times as you wanted for free and you kept entering.
- japhyr 11y agoMost of the contests I've seen like this in recent years try to avoid this issue by using receipts as entry forms. You can only enter the contest after purchasing something from the store.
- betenoire 11y agoIf you live in the US, this is considered a lottery and is likely illegal. The small print will usually have work-around that does not require a purchase
- mosdave 11y ago"They set up the rules, and lately I've come to realize that I have certain materialistic needs."
- Rooster61 11y agoI don't see this as unethical, nor do I see it as poor reinforcement of behavior. He and his brother had to fill out hundreds of entry forms during their summer break to get this to work. Being awarded for putting in the effort to receive something like this is a good exercise.
- pyrocat 11y agoIt prepares kids for the crushing monotony of bureaucracy.
- robotresearcher 11y agoThe wealthy parent in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" that paid a large staff to open chocolate bars was obviously contemptible.
- sleazebreeze 11y agoYou just described my childhood fantasy scenario - rigging a Lego shopping spree. Lego catalogs were crack for me as a child.
- sharkweek 11y agoThe number of times I fantasized about the Toys R Us 5 minute shopping spree... I remember on numerous occasions trying to map out my route anytime I was lucky enough to be in a store. I always remember making the video game aisle a high priority.
- TheGRS 11y agoThere was something sort of whimsical about that video game aisle and the slips of paper you would have to bring to the register.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoSome caltech students did something like this with a mcdonalds contest back in the seventies, only they did it with a lineprinter in the campus computer center as well as a hydraulic paper cutter at a commercial print shop. Caltech got a lot of really bad press as a result so when they inevitably won most of the prizes they donated them all to charity. It is for this specific reason that these contents now say "one entry per visit".