I go to various trade shows and, as a way for them to get your phone number, there is always a drawing for prizes. Some have been quite good: I won a copy of XP Pro from Microsoft once.
A few weeks ago, I ended up winning another prize. A one-year subscription to Windows Live OneCare, their online computer protection service. This includes antivirus, firewall, antispyware, Data backup and restore, and performance tuneups. It’s a $50 value. However:
[ul]
[li]Antivirus – I already have McAfee free from my ISP.[/li][li]Antispyware – This is Windows Defender, which they usually just give away. I already have it.[/li][li]Firewall – McAfee has a firewall built in, or I could just get ZoneAlarm.[/li][li]Data Backup – I use Mozy. It’s free.[/li][li]Performance tuneup – I use PC Pitstop[/li][/ul]
So though the elements are all good and useful, I don’t need them at all. Also, since it’s $50 a year, it means I will have to pay $50 a year starting next year for services I already get for free.
So, all right. I’m tech savvy, and the package might be useful to a home computer user who shies away from technical issues: one stop protection for $50 may be worth it to someone. So I decide to give it to my department as a giveaway for someone who might want to use it.
Then I notice: “Card must be activated by 12/31/2006.”
So not only was it useless to me, it wasn’t going to do anything anyway.
What have you won that turned out to be less than a prize?
Years ago there was a team-building exercise at the office wherein the team doing best in a scavenger hunt won prizes. Actually, every team won prizes. My team came in last. We won basketball tickets. The game was scheduled for a week prior.
Last year my GF entered a raffle to win something like 5000 gallons of free gas. She won. But in order to collect, she had to attend a sales pitch for a time share, and the “free” gas was a one year discount of something like $.01 per gallon at a gas station 1000 miles away.
Geez, I thought my worst prize was bad. It was from a radio contest and I won because I was the 7th caller and I knew where Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Richie Valens played their last show.
The prize was a red, white and blue striped metal suitcase – the kind we used to carry our roller skates in – and it was full of jams and jellies. Not something good like Welch’s or Smuckers, but some off brand.
I got them two days before the game so I could’t even get time off in time, I hate the cubs, I won’t go into the city let alone anywhere NEAR Wrigleyville, it was a weekday game on like a Tuesday and the weather forecast called for rain.
I gave them to someone I really didn’t like all that much.
Entered a drawing at a pizza place or sandwich shop or something for a pretty cool grand prize (go-kart, I think it was) but won the 2nd place prize instead - A year at Mademoiselle spa. That was when I lost any and all respect for people who complain about all male institutions. I won that prize fair and square, and they wouldn’t give it to me because the spa didn’t allow men.
The ONLY thing I have ever won in my entire 34 years on this plant is…
<drum roll>
A Fish Horn.
What the hell is a Fish Horn, you ask? It was a small plastic box with a tightly coiled spring coming out of the top. If you put a battery in it and moved the spring, it emanated the most obnoxious howl imaginable.
The idea was that you would attach the spring to your ice fishing line and when a fish bit, it would howl and you could go catch your fish. But I was like 7 years old and ice fishing was a good 12 years away as an interest. So mostly I used it to torment my little sister.
I was closest to the hole on a work golf tournament one day about 12 or 13 years ago. I’d seen people get golf bags and boxes of balls and all kinds of neat stuff previously. My win? A flashlight. And not even a good one either: a plain basic “C” cell flashlight. :smack:
A few years back when I was in the Armed Forces, my unit had a draw for free tickets to the Tragically Hip concert on that weekend. I had just bought my tickets hours before. As they were reaching in to pull the names out I said, “I never win anything. I’ve never won a draw before in my life. Since I don’t need these tickets, I’ll win.” The sergeant major then calls out “And the concert tickets go to… Rick!”
Well, I got to take some extra friends, anyway.
Then a few years ago at the company golf tournament I won the prize for the longest drive (282 yards, if you were wondering.) The prize was a new set of barbeque tools. I had purchased a new set of barbeque tools just a few weeks before.
In August 1994 I won a sports bar trivia contest and won two great tickets to an Indians game at then brand new Jacobs Field. The players’ strike/lockout occurred the day before the game I was supposed to go to.
Not as bad as some of these, (and technically not me, but my mom)–won as a raffle prize
A Bucket of State University Stuff–all in State University Team Color.
We’re talking a 2-3 gallon bucket,
filled with a half dozen t-shirts with the team name,
some of those things you can put on a pop can (or a beer can) to keep it colder (with the team name),
Key chains(" "),
and more.
Mom looked at it, laughed at it, and when she saw a note in the bulliten at our church a few weeks later requesting door prizes for some worthy event, she donated the entire bucket (minus one t-shirt) to the church. Figuring they could either use the bucket intact, or dole out all the smaller prizes as they saw fit.
Both of mine were gag awards, is you will, but they still sucked.
The first is an anual award known as “The Attrocity Belt”, which is given to the guy who committed the single most attrocious act throught the season. When they gave it out at the banquet this year, the emcee said, “Usually we tell a short story about 4-5 people, and then announce the winner. This year, I’m just going to read a list (of all the things I’ve done throughout the year)”.
The second was an “award”, which was given because an opponent bit me in the head during a match. The “prize”? Prehistoric shark teeth. Thanks, guys!
Just a few months ago I (and everyone in my workgroup) won an award for outstanding excellence in major achievement-type dealy. The guy who nominated us was among the winners. A couple of weeks later, he fired every one of us from the project, as we were not doing a good enough job. Some time after that, I got my prizes – A button that I will never wear, and a certificate suitable for framing, were my name not horribly misspelled.
Hmmm…I thought mine was pretty bad…but some of these are mind-blowing.
Several years ago I worked as a Computer Applications Instructor for New Horizons. A computer training center. So that year the front desk/secretaries decided to try and get the company to spring for a Christmas party. I like Christmas parties and enjoy dressing up nice to go out to something like this. So my then-fiance and I get all dressed up and follow the directions to…a biker bar. Underneath an overpass. I kid you not…we’re all in suites and dressed up nice to walk into this dive. But I could have overcome that…except that when my number was called for one of the prizes, it turned out to be a business card case…from another company…that had been given to our sales department as a freebie. Turns out that most of the prizes were something similar. T-shirts from Microsoft…Frisbee from Cisco…all crap. Except the main prize…a radio/CD unit thing…that of course the main secretary won. Imagine that.
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We have a 15% discount membership card to Tawandang German Brewery, which is always a great night out. A good mixture of live performances of Thai and Western music and wonderful beer. Every September, they have a special anniversary night with lots of prizes. Last September, we won a refrigerator. Well, crap! Our current fridge was not even three years old, plus the one we won, while a good size, was smaller than ours. We had no space to put an extra fridge either, but it was considered the top prize. We were hoping for the DVD player or flat-screen TV, even the gold necklace, or the voucher that we’d won before, but no. And how were we going to take it away??? (Why the refrigerator was considered the top prize when the DVD player and TV were both clearly worth more was a mystery to us.)
We ended up leaving it there, promising to pick it up withing a week – left all of our contact info. We thought maybe we could sell it to someone, but no, everyone had a fridge. My sister-in-law has a place outside of Bangkok where she likes to go on weekends, but no fridge there. So I told the wife, hell just give it to her, we can’t charge family money. She had to pay for the pickup to go and get it, though! (But I DID win brownie points with the family for just giving it to her.)
When I was seven or eight, my family went to a Christian retreat for a weekend or something. One of the events was a team-building obstacle course with all sorts of activities–jumping through tire trails, carrying marshmallows in spoons on a relay race, etc. They told us there was a great prize at the end, and man was I excited, so I worked so hard to get that prize.
Our team won! (I’m sure I didn’t have much to do with that, being seven or eight). And they announced the prize: in the spirit of Christ, the team that came in first had the privilege of serving ice cream to the team that came in last.