I don’t know if you’ve visited Thinking Things that I have listed in my Blogroll but she had a post from May 16th that will break your heart.
I know a few times when I was in radio over twenty years that station owners I had dealt with pulled the same kind of promotional stunts that led people to believe they’d win a big prize and then when they arrive they’d get something that was next to worthless and not worth the effort to appear at an event. It was a minority of the owners that went to that extreme but I’ve been there when the process of doing this was put together. There was absolutely no concern at all for the people coming in to “win.” They were just cattle.
Now, I know that’s not unique to radio or car sales but it always bothered me at the time and bothers me more now. The thought of her mother staying up all night because she’s so excited that she might get a $100 gift card to Wal*Mart just brings me to tears. Now, I know what that car lot did was legal. I haven’t seen the flyer to see if in really tiny print on a corner somewhere it says “or other prizes.” Honestly, in terms of how it affected this elderly woman, does it matter?
And does anyone really care that an elderly woman is in this situation where the chance of getting a $100 Wal*Mart card gets her so excited she can’t sleep?
Thank you for recognizing what that might have meant–and now will mean– to her. Kindnesses are like pebbles tossed into still water: “splash and they’re gone but there are half a hundred ripples circling on and on, spreading, spreading from the center out to sea and there is no way of knowing where the end is going to be.”
I take care of my 90 year old grandmother, if she’d had that happen, somebody would’ve gone to the hospital and i’d be in jail.
and that’s not a joke.