Offensive? no. A questionable use of company time and/or resources? Most probably. Potentially opeing up the company and participants to legal issues? Quite possibly.
Another cite about the illegality of office pools, from Legal Zoom:
Most reporting on the legality of office pools is incorrect. As an example, the sources cited in this thread all seem to indicate that the pools are illegal in Ohio, but the Ohio Attorney General disagrees.
And to answer the OP, not offensive to me.
No, being asked to participate in a basketball pool is not offensive.
That’s not a coincidence.
This is like unknowingly inviting a vegan to go out to lunch with everyone at Outback Steakhouse.
For completeness’ sake. -and also to help understand the issues involved. OP, did this happen at your workplace? What was the reason for taking offense, if so
FTR, wouldn’t bother me at all.
We are a nation of underground vices. You can generally find a March Madness pool and/or fantasy leagues at just about every police station and courthouse. And more than a few churches.
Are you saying that would be offensive, or offensive specifically to dopers?
There’s a thread going about sushi that suggests the opposite…that it’s perfectly fine to invite someone who claims to hate sushi to a sushi only restaurant.
No, but I’d get it cleared first with the higher ups.
$5-10 per head.
I’m saying that there is nothing at all wrong with inviting someone to participate in a group activity when that person finds the activity offensive. SpoilerVirgin is having trouble coming up with an innocuous activity that strongly offends people because people really shouldn’t be strongly offended by activities that don’t harm anyone.
Once you communicate your abhorrence of all things gambling (or meat), I would hope that those in organizing the activity would attempt to acknowledge that in the future.
Got it, thanks.
I wouldn’t find it offensive. At my office, there’s the official ones, which are not for money, usually offering lunches or other inexpensive freebies.
The $$$ ones wouldn’t be run over office email.
I’m having trouble coming up with an innocuous activity that strongly offends Dopers. I can think of plenty of non-harmful activities that strongly offend people in the real world, but using them as examples would just bring us back to, “I can’t understand why that is offensive.”
Most people recognize that there’s a line between harmless fun and a harmful activity.
Anything less than about 20 bucks is recreational money for most people. My office has people that take part in lottery pools, basketball pools, Fantasy Football pools, as well as groups that meet to play poker. I don’t know of anybody who’s offended by these things because the money involved is so low and the people that take part in these activities are clearly doing so because they enjoy it, not because they hope to make rent. I can’t even begin to fathom people who would take offense at these things. Of course, if the upper management decided to host a poker game with a high buy in and was inviting low paid employees for the sole purpose of taking money, then yes, that would be a different story.
An employee taking offense in a low dollar pool where all money is distributed to the winners is probably a cancer in the workforce. Nobody should be pressured into participating but the fact that it exists and participation is open to all is of no consequence.
Sometimes they can be good for morale if upper management, mid management and hourly employees are all invited into the pool.
Super Bowl box pools and March Madness brackets are a part of American life. They are as close as you can get to something that costs money and is harmless. They are a lot less offensive than someone trying to get you to go to their church.
I’d be offended if people kept pestering me to join after I said no. Or if I were insulted or shunned for not participating. Or if participants used excessive work time and their slacking increased my workload. That sort oof thing would actually be rude and offense-worthy. A simple invitation to a common actvity about as “illlegal” as jaywalking or taking an extra sample at the grocery store? Hells no.
At our company, but not in my group. I actually am the pool manager for our group’s pool. We have about 50 people participate out of a 250 person group. Our buy-in per bracket is $20. Not an issue in our group.
The issue is that a guy at one of our portfolio companies, sent out an invitation to everyone in their company, about 1,000 people. The buy-in he requested was $100 per bracket, with a single winner. Some people complained that it shouldn’t have been sent to the whole company, but to people that he knows well and works with would have been okay. There was also concern that the huge buy-in might attract the attention of authorities if it got out. HR leader at the subsidiary sent out a retraction email and advised the employee that if he wanted to continue his pool he would need to do it using personal emails, and not the company database of emails. I think the HR leader did the right thing.
We’ve always had NCAA brackets everywhere I worked, and Superbowl squares as well, regardless of whether it was frowned upon by HR or not.
Where I work now, they don’t care at all- each department puts their bracket results on whiteboards in their areas.
I don’t know about office pools. When I was younger(I’m not 28 anymore) and hanging out in bars there was always some kind of pools going on. I know these are illegal because they have been raided by excise agents.
When I worked for the film studio in Hollywood, they used to have an office pool for the Oscars. It was fun and made watching the show even more fun if you were doing well on your ballot.
I am not a sports fan by any means, but I know of many non-sports fans who win these kinds of polls and they are basically luck of the draw anyway.
No need to be offended; don’t wanna play? Well, then don’t.
Offensive? Not in the slightest. I’d just decline.
Bad use of company resources? No. Workers who have breaks or something interesting to do in the down time are fresher when they need to do their job. The long-term advantages of allowing it dwarfs whatever time it takes away from their jobs (much of which they wouldn’t be working anyway).