Henry Gribbohm is a New Hampshire man who was visiting a local carnival. He saw the “Tubs of Fun” was offering an Xbox Kinect as one of its prizes and Henry decided he wanted to win that for his kids.
Henry spent $300 playing the game in an unsuccessful attempt to win with the Xbox. (Coincidentally, $300 is what you’d pay to buy an Xbox Kinect on Amazon.)
Henry apparently hadn’t noticed he really sucked at this game. So he ended up losing all of his money. And I mean that literally. He didn’t just lose the $300 he had in his wallet. Lesser men might have given up at this point but not Henry. He went to the bank and cleaned out his account ($2600) and went back and lost all that too.
Demonstrating he really doesn’t understand how carnival games, or life in general, works, Henry says the booth operator told him that if he lost a lot of money they’d give it all back to him and give him the Xbox. So the next day, Henry went back to the carnival and asked for his money back and his game.
The carnival operators actually gave Henry $600 and a stuffed banana. I’m assuming they figured they’d be telling this story for years and they should give Henry something for all the laughs they’d be getting out of it.
Henry didn’t feel this was enough. He called the police in and they’re currently investigating whether it’s against the law in New Hampshire to take advantage of an idiot.
But on that note, I could sympathize if the operator had been conning money out of some kids. But this guy is thirty years old and has kids of his own. He should have some common sense.
Tangentially: A friend of mine told me he once ran one of those carnival games. The managers told him to play up how easy the game was, but he was always honest. If a customer asked him how hard the game was, he’d say “Pretty hard, we only get one or two winners a day”. Oddly, his booth always ended up getting the most play.
When I was in high school, I watched the very same thing happen to an otherwise very smart friend of mine. Some of these carnival guys are masters of psychology.
My friend lost all of the money he had with him, and the carney let him go home and get more. He lost that too. Then he borrowed some from me. He lost that too. The game was obviously rigged,and I told him that while he was playing. There was some kind of sleight-of-hand going on. It didn’t matter what I said. He just kept playing. This is a guy who later attended Williams College–no dummy. But the carney knew just how to hook him.
Last summer I had a season pass to an amusement park (Canada’s Wonderland), so I got to see rasta-bananas up close and personal.
This story reminds me of that Simpsons episode with the carnies:
Cooder: Hey, you lost your money fair and square! I didn’t scam nobody!
Homer: [laughing] Put down your stick. We’re here to work.
Bart: Starting today, we’re carnies, just like you.
Cooder: Well, in that case, let me show you how I scammed you.
If he manage his infamy properly, he might find that his image has some mass ap-peel, and he could maybe even make a bunch of money by selling the “carnival banana.”
But he’d better work fast, lest his Q-rating slip.
I felt a little sorry for the guy when I read this:
But then I thought, (300/5) * 2 = 120. It took the guy 120 balls just to blow his $300. After 120 balls, he should have figured out that it was pretty tough to win.
It was clearly the banana’s fault. Just look at him. I mean really look. The smirk, the cool, laid-back confidence. He knew all along and he never said a word. He hated the carnival booth, and was just looking for a pad with A/C for the Summer. He stood there in the corner with that grin, alternately goading and beguiling that poor, small-town rube.
Oh, yeah, that banana is the next “Chuckie.” Just remember you heard it here first.
This happened to my grandfather. He lost his entire paycheck trying to win a stuffed animal for his little girl (my mother). He’d been a minor league ball player and it was inconceivable to him that he couldn’t knock down a few milk bottles with a baseball.
My grandmother pleaded with him to stop, but he lost his temper and was determined to win. They finally left the carnival with my mother in tears clutching her consolation prize – a small chalk horse. This was during the Great Depression, so what followed was a month of real hardship until my grandfather got paid again.
