If it’s a free work raffle, I wouldn’t enter either if I wasn’t interested in the item being raffled. However, if they were selling raffle tickets to interested parties only, then by all means try your luck and do as you please should you win.
I was given Cavs tickes once as a Thank You for a special project I worked on with our helpdesk. I have no interest at all in basketball so I gave them to a friend. I saw nothing wrong with it.
They have two types of raffles at work. One is free just because you are an employee and the other is a $5 per ticket raffle for Cleveland Browns tickets. Both come with a disclaimer that tickets are for employees and are not to be sold.
I think it is BS. The first is free so if I win, I win. I should be able to do what I please with the tickets. The second is a pay to play so if I paid and won I should again be able to do what I please with the tickets.
Obviously the company does not agree. They think if I really won’t use the free ones I should opt out and if I won’t use the pay to play I should not pay.
If I enter a car raffle and win but don’t need the car should I not be able to sell the car? I mean maybe there was some poor single mother on welfare that could have won if my ticket had not been entered in the first place which now make me a bad person.
A raffle is just that a raffle. Everyone has a fair shot. What you do with your winnings is your own business. I see nothing ethically wrong with that.
Not a good idea at all.
If it’s anything less than a private box or a sold out game, it reads ‘I think you’re stupid enough to pay me more than you’d pay to see the game if you ordered tickets after work’. If it is a private box/sold out game, it still feels sleazy not to offer them at a steep discount (since, you know, free), but at least it’s a valuable enough commodity not to feel like calling your coworkers idiots.
I’m of the opinion that, it being a free raffle, he shouldn’t enter if he doesn’t want the tickets, but if he does, he certainly shouldn’t try to sell them to his coworkers for more than face value, if he has any intention of maintaining good relations with them.
I think he was looking for an objective, direct response. Though “serious asshole” is pretty direct.
I’d look at it this way.
Say you entered the drawing, and won, but didn’t want to go. What if you gave the tickets away to a family member? Would it still be as heinous?
Or, won them and then gave them to someone at work you liked more so than the office loser who seems to win anything and everything. Would he still be an asshole in this case?
Or, won them, and then said at work, “look, I won these, but really don’t want to go. Anyone want to buy the tickets from me? Cheap!” How much of an asshole then?
Selling them on Ebay would be a faux pas in many peoples eyes, but hey, BFD. You won them. Attend, or don’t.
I would personally enter the free drawing and give them to someone at the office I liked. I don’t need the limited $$ I’d get from selling them.
Then again, if it were a corvette they were giving away, and I didn’t like corvettes, you bet I’d sell it. I’d “enjoy” the cash in lieu of the car. So in that respect, by selling them, you would “enjoy” the tickets, no?
My company sponsors a NASCAR driver. Each year my department raffles off tickets for one of the races, which includes a Pit pass, one of those awful jackets, free food and drinks, etc. I don’t give a whit about car racing. Good friends of mine love NASCAR and I’d score major brownie points giving them the tickets if I won. But I don’t enter because I realize that the intention is for an employee to go and enjoy the day. Giving them away to a non-employee would be rude. Selling them to a stranger would be extremely rude.
I realize it’s a free country and if you win the tickets, you can do with them what you damn well please. However, knowing in advance that you do not give a rats behind about attending the game, and that there are several people in your office that do want to go, I think it is rude for you to enter and deprive them of a chance of winning. I think the purpose of the gift was for someone in your office to enjoy the tickets. I wouldn’t enter a contest for a prize that I had no interest in winning. If I were one of the people in your office who wanted to go to the game, I would be seriously pissed at you if it got back to me that you won and didn’t even go.
I see nothing ethically wrong with selling what you’ve won. Nor do I see a problem with trying to win something for the purpose of selling it.
I think entering the draw in the hopes of making a quick buck is not in the spirit of this particular raffle. Personally, I wouldn’t have entered if I wasn’t interested in using the tickets.
Another vote for shabby behavior. It just sounds like petty greed. If you don’t want them, let those who do have a better chance at them.
Giving them to friends who are rabid fans and would love to go? Fine.
Giving them to a boss who would love to go for brownie-points? Border-line trashy.
If all you are interested in is the monetary value of the gift, it is not a gift.
They’re yours to do with as you want. I’d feel the same way if they were a Christmas gift from your 100 year old great-aunt: sell 'em, use 'em, give 'em away.
Of course one reason I think that is I’ve done the same thing with Auburn football tickets I was given as a gift by a sibling who should have known better. But, if I gave somebody tickets to a premiere at a concert or play that I was interested in and they sold them, I’d have just thought “I should have thought that through”, and if a co-worker won the same tickets in a raffle and I had the money then I’d probably say “I’ll save you the trouble of eBay and give you [fair but bargain price] here and now” and see if they’d accept, and if they didn’t- it’s their property and no hard feelings if they decline.
Anyone who complains is just bitter or hypersensitive.
PS- I just remembered that I got similar flak when I sold a “romantic canoe picnic” I won in a raffle once. I wasn’t dating anybody, I detest eating outdoors on a hot day, and I’m not particularly wild about canoeing on a river filled with water moccasins and the occasional gator, and I sold them at a steal [recommended price was around $60 and I sold it to a student worker who wanted it for his girlfriend for around $10- it was a “token price” so that nobody could accuse me of favoritism later] and a couple of co-workers were irked that I was so “ungrateful”.
Ditto. Rude, rude, rude.
Deleted. Missed an important fact in the story.
Anything offered to the employees based on their employment is a benefit. All employees should have equal access to benefits. If you win them, sell them if you want to.
And that was a generous thing to do, much different from going after something you don’t want for the opportunity to sell it.
Gifts from Great aunts are meant to be sold or exchanged. They want to give something, but don’t know what, and were taught that giving money to an adult is a least tacky, and probably insulting.
I think the fact that the tickets are not a direct gift to HeyHomie is exactly what makes the situation different. The motive behind your 100 year old great-aunt’s gift is most likely that she wanted to do something nice for you. The fact that she may have chosen poorly and the watch that chirps assorted bird songs of North America every hour on the hour ends up on ebay doesn’t distort her motive. Presumably picking up a little cash fulfills her original goal of making you smile.
Since participation in the raffle is optional, and it appears that the tickets were intended as a thank you/reward to someone in the office, signing up with the express intent of selling them doesn’t preserve that intent.
If participation in the raffle were automatic or mandatory I might see it differently.
I’m another vote for ethically challenged and not a good career move. As someone who won great Red Sox tickets in a raffle earlier this year that a client had donated to us, it would have been very badly viewed in my office if I had then sold the tickets. The raffle was for Sox fans who wanted to go to the game – I posted pictures from the game to the company and the client.
To know me is to love me
I’d be cool with that.
No problem there.
That would be lame.
Serious asshole.
I used to work for a subsidiary of DuPont. DuPont apparently is the major sponsor of one of the NASCAR teams. There was a race a couple of hours away and they had a raffle for us. It was two tickets along with passes to get into a special sponsor’s area where most people don’t get to go. It would have gone for huge bucks on eBay but I didn’t even consider entering and left it to the race fans.
Try to remember that the question is whether or not this is ethical, rather than moral. A raffle is open to anyone who wants to buy a ticket; unless there are rules attached to the purchase, it’s nobody’s business what you do with them, and they can all bugger off.
Anything won in a raffle is taxable; it’s the same as winning money. Therefore, if you elect to sell them, you are only replacing the actual value of the ticket with the intrinsic value of the tickets, and possibly increasing your supposed tax burden. People who think this is rude need to either get a life or ask that raffles be done away with.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The intention of the gift (the tickets) to go to someone in your office who wanted to go to the game. Entering the raffle in specifically hopes of getting cash isn’t really keeping in faith with the giver’s intentions. I sinmply wouldn’t enter the raffle to begin with, knowing some of my freinds and co-workers wanted this prize that I did not.
In most other circumstances, I’d totally agree with you. I’ve enetered charity raffles where the grand prize was a TV and there were several other lesser prizes. I don’t watch TV. But the raffle money was going to a good cause and most of the participants were buying tickets more to raise funds for the charity, the prize didn’t matter so much. In that case, I’d sell it to recoup my cost or donate it.
But in the specific case of the OP, I’d beg off and let the people who genuinely want the tickets enter the raffle.
ETA: I also see this as a bad career move. The Powers That Be may not look kindly on an employee who is not a team player and who would take a gift given in good faith for someone who would appreciate it, to turn a personal profit.