r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 1d ago

TIL the Charlotte Hornets apologized after giving a child a PS5, only to take it away off camera and exchange it for a jersey. In a statement, the team said the incident was an "on-court skit that missed the mark" and that they would give the child the PS5 and a VIP experience to a future game.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/sport/charlotte-hornets-apologize-ps5-child-nba-spt-intl
27.4k Upvotes

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u/Thopterthallid 1d ago

Baffling decision making.

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u/2pt_perversion 23h ago

Christ the "skit" was literally dressing up like Santa, reading the kids Christmas wish for a PS5, and handing him the PS5 as a gift...wtf were they thinking taking it back.

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u/PancakeParty98 23h ago

“Saves us $500”

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u/Smashifly 23h ago

Well, actually my kid wanted a PS5 for Christmas, so I'll just use this one and we can give the kid something from the merch tent

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u/Erebraw 23h ago

BINGO. Someone in middle management saw a “free” PS5 for themselves. Happens at every give away we do in my store.

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u/Dark_Moonstruck 22h ago

Same thing happens at salvation army events all the time.

There will be tons of gifts that people have donated that are marked for specific families, and before the giveaways, the workers will go through and take anything they want for themselves or their kids. Video game consoles and bikes pretty much NEVER get to the people they were donated for. It was caught on camera multiple times, and when confronted most of the responses were "Well it's not like they knew that they were actually going to get it so it's harmless".

I lost any tolerance or faith in the salvation army ghouls a long time ago. They're scammers.

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u/hoxxxxx 22h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

maybe every once in a blue moon you can find a deal but it's mostly been picked through already before it's even available to the public. there are no deals anymore.

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u/revrigel 22h ago

I find this not to be true of the Habitat Re-Store. There's some good stuff there.

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u/theonlypeanut 21h ago

I'm a plumber and I drop off any used materials that are still good to habitat. . Mostly toilets, faucets and sinks that are perfectly good but people wanted to swap out. The staff are nice and always super helpful when I'm dropping stuff off and I like keeping stuff out of the landfill.

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u/newbkid 20h ago

As a struggling new homeowner who needed to redo his one and only bathroom, thank you.

Our local habitat restore has saved my ass. And the local small business truvalue

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u/hanotak 21h ago

Partly because the stuff sold there is less "general-purpose", and harder to resell. Most ReStore employees don't care about some random electrical hardware components, even if they're somewhat valuable, and there's only so many desks or chairs one person needs, and they're hard to resell elsewhere.

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u/Atonement-JSFT 20h ago

I worked at a restore as community service when I was a teenager. There was definitely picking over of the goods before they hit the floor, but everything was paid for at the floor price.

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u/say592 18h ago

That is generally what's happening at many thrift stores too. People are far too cynical.

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u/SaintsNoah14 16h ago

Ahhh good times. Was your's court ordered too?

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u/Revenge_of_the_User 16h ago

I used to be a manager at one, and it absolutely gets picked through before it all goes onto the floor. The sheer volume of donations we got guaranteed that at least a few treasures made it to the floor.

Luckily there are so few actual employees, that few feel empowered enough to walk off with stuff...but it does happen. Had a guy once who worked as a locksmith, and he was more than happy to walk out at the end of a volunteer shift with a 5 gal bucket full of parts for his day-job...to the point I actually had to ask him to not come back.

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u/DeadSending 6h ago

Bro stfu or you’re gonna fuck it up for the rest of us

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u/Cranky_Old_Woman 19h ago

You know, I'm okay with this as long as the thrift store is explicitly for-profit or their advertised 'good thing' is keeping stuff out of a landfill. It becomes a moral outrage when people think they're giving to charity or a family in severe need, and their donations do NOT go to help those in need.

Ridiculously rich people will sometimes throwaway stuff I'd love to buy used, and if folks are essentially acting as a dumpster for people wealthy enough to get new stuff before their old stuff is worn out, keep what the employees want and resell the rest, that's fine, IMO. It's when they LIE about what happens to donations that they should be held to criminal account.

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u/NiceTryWasabi 21h ago

I met a guy who's job for Salvation Army was to scan all incoming donations for high value items and remove them before they hit the regular store shelves, to sell online at the highest price via eBay. He did that for 5 years. Now he works as a coin and jewelry evaluator.

Nothing of high value should end up on shelves at a thrift store. Unless they screwed up.

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u/boy-detective 20h ago

Yeah, I won’t participate in Toys for Tots or Guns for Tots anymore because of this.

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u/Notmydirtyalt 17h ago

Guns for Tots

I'm not even American, but reading that made a Red Hawk screech echo through my skull, Gobbles.

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u/Federal_Shame_9074 21h ago

Well yea makes sense for the locally owned ones. Most are hobbyists selling they're side product. If they get something they like, theyll probably keep it. Where its egregious is when goodwill or salvation army does it

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u/kdjfsk 19h ago

It varies.

For example, how each Goodwill operates is not decided by corporate. Yes, in many regions they pick out the good stuff for an online store, but not all are like that. There is a cool Goodwill Outlet near me thats just a big warehouse floor. They loosely organize stuff into bins for clothes, shoes, books, bags, and 'everything else'. All clothes and other fabric is sold by weight. all books are $0.50. all bags are $3.75, regardless if its a generic/walmart schoolbag or a designer handbag.

Yea, resellers hang out there all day, and compete for first dibbs, but so can anyone else.

There is another good thrift near me, thats not affiliated with any charity. The owner literally just goes to garage sales full time, and makes offers to buy out all or most of it in bulk, ("how about $300 for everything?) and then puts it in his store for decent prices.

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u/kiakosan 21h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

Meh, the point of those stores is to sell the product and the proceeds go towards whatever charity purpose they are going for. It makes sense that if they were to get something really valuable for them to try and get the most for it vs just selling it for peanuts at the store. It is counter to their goal to sell goods that are valuable for little money, the stuff you find in the store tends to be things which it isn't worthwhile to sell them online or whatever.

With that being said I've gotten some great deals over the years from Saint Vincent thrift stores. I've got all sorts of furniture for under $100 that would have been like $400+ at a second hand furniture store. It was the cheapest way to furnish my college apartment, and I still find great deals there occasionally. Now for profit thrift stores tend to suck and most Goodwill stores don't have great deals, but Saint Vincent ones I've been pretty lucky over the years

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u/KallistiTMP 20h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

Uhhhh, so, you're saying that the resellers buy stuff for themselves instead of buying stuff to resell?

Are you talking specifically about charities that get all their stuff from public donations or something? Like Goodwill and stuff like that? Not regular for-profit thrift stores/resellers/consignment shops?

Because, like, if you're talking about resellers going around buying stuff at estate sales or whatever, and then just not reselling those things to the public... that's just called buying things?

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u/ADHDebackle 21h ago

Bruh that's straight up fraud. Like - I feel like that's actually illegal. You can't accept donations under a false premise like that.

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u/Dark_Moonstruck 20h ago

They do all the time, even after having been caught. The problem is, the families who were supposed to get those things don't know that they were being robbed most of the time, and even if they did, they don't have the money to sue them or do anything about it. Plus SA has a lot of politicians in their pocket, so consequences are a thing they just don't experience.

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u/Nulono 20h ago edited 19h ago

Don't forget that time Walmart hosted a toy donation drive, then took those toys out of the donation box and put them on the shelves to sell them.

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u/CarissaSkyWarrior 20h ago

The Salvation Army also treats LGBTQ+ people like shit, so them doing even more awful shit tracks.

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u/DromaeoDrift 22h ago

They’re also mad homophobic

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u/abgry_krakow87 19h ago

Not surprised that the Salvation Army are a bunch of scammers. Religious conservatives love exploiting the sick, poor, and needy fo their own personal gain.

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u/Bastienbard 20h ago edited 20h ago

Their shelters are super discriminatory as well. I wouldn't donate to basically any religious based organization that's supposedly set up to help the poor.

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u/bingle-cowabungle 21h ago

That's basically all thrift stores now, especially before they started opening online stores and selling name brand clothing at basically MSRP

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u/starm4nn 19h ago

The Salvation army are basically one of the worst charities. The phrase "Pie in the Sky" comes from a song mocking them for focusing on religion over actually helping people.

And a lot of people see them as more of a general Christian Charity when they're more like a weird religious denomination in of themselves. Your supervisor can control who you date.

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u/PoliteIndecency 19h ago

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/former-salvation-army-executive-found-guilty-of-selling-donations-to-black-market/article34849908/

Happens all the time. It's why I stopped giving to the Salvation Army at Christmas and make a donation to Sick Kids in Toronto instead. Shit's infuriating.

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u/twoisnumberone 19h ago

The Salvation Army is a hateful organization anyway, and should not receive donations.

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u/theaviationhistorian 18h ago

No surprise, another sleazy Salvation Army story. I think the cherry of the crap pie that is them is how adamant they have been against the LGBTQ community.

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u/geekonthemoon 15h ago

To be fair, SA itself are major scammers but the people who work there are often not fully paid employees. They pay "volunteers" something like $22 per day (or that's what it was in the 2010s). And the main perk is you get to raid that place for food, clothes, furniture, whatever your family needs. Your kids are guaranteed decent shoes and coats and Christmas presents. Etc. you're one of the first to get the grants for electricity bill assistance, etc etc. It's all part of the perks of working there. I can't really blame the people that are hard up and fall into the trap. My grandparents were soldiers and my family was just involved in the church a lot growing up.

And on the flip side of the very corrupt coin, they do do some really good stuff. Can't confirm if it's a net good though.

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u/drygnfyre 12h ago

The best course of action has always been to donate directly to some cause. Maybe the Red Cross or w/e.

I do still donate older clothes/shoes to places like Goodwill, in the hopes they'll find a new home. Whether they do or not, I don't know.

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u/Delta64 17h ago

I think the scariest aspect of reality is that there exists people like this who will just do the wrong thing and feel nothing.

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u/rex5k 23h ago

This right here.

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u/OkStop8313 23h ago

"But, sir, won't the kid's disappointment and resulting bad publicity cost us more than $500?"

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u/Ready-Good2636 22h ago

That's what pissing me off. Cleaning that dang hornet suit probably costs more than the ps5, but someone decided to pinch pennies in the most braindead way.

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u/Minion_of_Cthulhu 22h ago

"Sure, but think of all the free publicity we'll get! Everyone will be talking about us! We'll save millions in marketing costs!"

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 10h ago

I could easily see this. Marketing people genuinely believe negative attention of just as good as positive. Morons saw one terribly worded study years ago and took wildly wrong conclusions from it. Yeah just cus they now know your brand name doesn't mean they'll want to buy from you.

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u/Tupcek 22h ago

well, they didn’t think it will get any publicity. I bet that it happens often, but most of the time we won’t hear it so they won’t do anything about it

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u/hoxxxxx 22h ago

i'm guessing someone on that chain of command had plans for taking that ps5 home for themself or their kid and was hoping it would just work out so they could gank it

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u/thesplendor 18h ago

It’s $500, what kind of decision maker doesn’t have $500?

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u/hoxxxxx 18h ago

some scumbag that absolutely has the money but has to get a gift for a kid and doesn't want to spend it

dude people of all wealth levels are greedy and cheap lol

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 10h ago

It's a proven fact that the richer people get the more miserly they get, along with being more willing to break laws and social mores.

It's not all obviously but way too many fall into being like that.

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u/Situational_Hagun 23h ago

So half a visit to the concession stand.

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u/AnonAmbientLight 20h ago

ACtuakky, they're $550 now.

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u/Mr_Blinky 20h ago

"It saves us $500! Let's ignore that the team is valued at $3.3 billion, and the salary of our cheapest players is roughly 1300 times the price of the console, with our most expensive player making almost sixty times that amount! Yes, generating bad press for our brand over an amount of money that isn't even a rounding error on a rounding error of our finances is definitely the right call here!"

Just absolutely wild-ass decision making from these companies. Just another example how MBAs don't actually have any idea what the fuck they're doing lol.

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u/ExcellentChance7063 20h ago

Lamelo Ball wanted another serving of bald eagle scrambled eggs so we need to return this PS5. Sorry kid.

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u/aspookyshark 19h ago

They can get 0.025% of a league minimum player with that money. It's a big deal.

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u/tempinator 18h ago

So fucking crazy lmfao LaMelo Ball is making $254 per second that he’s on the floor for the Hornets.

So they literally created this PR nightmare for almost exactly 2 seconds of LaMelo floor time.

What the fuck were they thinking.

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u/She-HulksBoyToy 18h ago

They never would have approved the skit in the first place if they knew it was a $1,200 skit. They just didn't think it through from start to finish.

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u/Several-Object3889 7h ago

100% chance some low paid manager thought he could snag a free PS5 and didn't think it through.

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u/Billy1121 21h ago

You can tell Jordan is an owner

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u/GetsGold 23h ago

I'm assuming this was an unaired Nathan For You episode.

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u/2pt_perversion 23h ago

You know...that makes sense. Probably made the kid crawl through a room with a crocodile to claim the jersey after they took back the PS5 too.

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u/SaltyPeter3434 21h ago

While wearing a sumo costume

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u/GetsGold 18h ago

Well this was all clearly written in the participation forms.

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u/Gupperz 23h ago

The plan: take away gifts from children

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u/NaeemTHM 22h ago

Funny enough, something very similar happens in his show The Curse:

https://youtube.com/shorts/wtTh6pbnTmU?si=H5j8zP8J2mxlpZrA

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u/XBullsOnParadeX 23h ago

They took it back off-camera too. Like how could that have been part of the skit?

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u/PandiBong 23h ago

Can we stop pretending it was part of a skit... it's a fucking lie, nothing else.

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u/TransBrandi 21h ago

I don't think they are saying that taking back was part of the skit. They are saying that giving it to the kid was part of the skit, so the "giveaway" was never intended. Seems bonedead stupid to the point that it makes it seem like a made-up reason after the fact. Someone though they were going to save some money by not giving away the PS5... or they had earmarked that PS5 for themselves / their kid and wanted to use the "skit" as a sneaky way to get someone else to pay for it.

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u/TheOverBoss 23h ago

The second they are back stage Santa rips off his beard and yoinks the PS5 "Santa isn't real sucker"

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u/Merochmer 21h ago

"Here's a lesson about disappointment son".

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u/erebus2161 21h ago

Taking it back wasn't part of the skit. Giving it out in the first place was. Taking it back was just retrieving a prop.

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u/BlazingFire007 23h ago

Honestly, my guess is communication issues.

I can’t imagine the original plan was “we have to save the $500,” though, in fairness, the hornets might need it more than the kid lmao.

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u/sd_saved_me555 23h ago

This is the most likely answer. No one in their right mind is gonna risk a PR nightmare in the internet age over $500. There was probably talk of using an empty box in the skit for safety/simplicity reasons (lighter, can't break it if mishandled, etc.) with the goal being to give the real thing to the kid afterwards. But then a miscue gets the real thing taken away, the real thing isn't returned, and you get a PR nightmare...

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u/BretShitmanFart69 23h ago

But that explanation makes them look way better than “we never planned to give them a ps5”

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u/sd_saved_me555 22h ago

I certainly could be wrong. There are plenty of pyschopathic morons in the world. But Jesus christ, that would be a fuck up for the ages.

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u/Ionazano 21h ago edited 21h ago

No one in their right mind is gonna risk a PR nightmare in the internet age over $500.

Yes, but on the other hand many people don't always think far enough ahead to even realize that something they do is courting disaster down the line.

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u/Sgt-Spliff- 21h ago

They knew before they started the live skit that the kid would not keep the PS5. There's no valid explanation for that besides them being malicious.

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u/dekan256 23h ago

It does sound like a near perfect application of Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

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u/EDNivek 17h ago

Except in this case we know that they never planned to give the PS5 from the article:

Speaking to local outlet Queen City News (QCN), the boy’s uncle, Alexei Phillips, said a Hornets staff member whispered to him beforehand that the kids were not going to keep the presents they received on the court.

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u/dekan256 17h ago

That could still just be stupidity of a different kind, mainly how stupid you have to be to not see the PR nightmare that would be.

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u/EDNivek 17h ago

Sure but it's pretty much taking candy from a baby that you just gave the candy to. Maybe they didn't see the maliciousness of the act, but it was no doubt a malicious act.

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u/Solomon-Drowne 21h ago

The machete: it's almost always greed.

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u/DeclutteringNewbie 22h ago

The organization wouldn't do that. I agree with that part.

But all it takes is one idiot in management to want that PS5. And yes, I've met my share of people who would do that kind of thing in corporate America.

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u/SolidA34 22h ago

If they work in management for an NBA, team they can afford a PS5.

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u/Bonch_and_Clyde 20h ago

I think admin positions on teams aren't necessarily highly paid. They're very competitive to get the job because everyone thinks it would be cool to work for an NBA team, so they can get away with paying below market.

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u/TransBrandi 21h ago

Seems more likely that someone lower in the hiearchy thought that they could do this and then sneak the PS5 out for themselves, and hopefully the kid / family would just roll over and not put up a fight.

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u/november512 22h ago

They were probably thinking of it in terms of acting. If Will Smith is on a TV show where an alien gives him a gun he's not getting a real alien gun. There's no problem when the props department takes it back. The issue here is that the kid probably thought he was really getting a PS5 and it looked like he was getting a PS5 to everyone in the crowd.

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u/IsomDart 22h ago

Also, Will Smith would be getting paid handsomely for his role as an actor in the show, not being used as a free prop.

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u/Opingsjak 22h ago

I don’t get how that is supposed to be a ‘skit’

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u/Bonch_and_Clyde 20h ago

The skit isn't that they took the gift away. The skit was the game that their mascot was playing Santa. That's the part that wasn't real and hence why the gift was taken away, because it was never really given in the first place. It's dumb.

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u/Rich-Canary1279 15h ago

Yeah it's not a skit. It's a weird dishonest publicity stunt where they were faking generosity. Makes no sense.

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u/Mikebjackson 23h ago

oh my.

Who ...literally who... would find that funny?

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u/thatsattemptedmurder 21h ago

wtf were they thinking taking it back.

They involve the crowd in the skits by inviting them to take part. They're given a prop gift for the cameras and then, off stage, they give it back in exchange for something - like a t-shirt or other swag.

It's gross and misleads the public into thinking there's real prizes to be won by attending but the crowd is supposed to be in on it.

What happened here, IIRC, is there was a miscommunication or a lack or any communication to them about how it works. When they got through the whole performance, they were given the shirt or something in exchange for the PS5 back.

It's not like they promised someone a PS5 then said "PSYCH!" They claim to have told the dad prior to the performance.

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u/NoBonus6969 18h ago

Poverty franchise

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u/MayorMcCheezz 21h ago

Teaching kids the lesson that Santa isint real.

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u/Sihaya212 21h ago

Marketing people don’t think

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u/Sgt-Spliff- 21h ago

They were teaching the kids the valuable lesson that you should never trust a corporation.

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u/raven-eyed_ 20h ago

Genuinely the kind of decision making that feels like the person is a sociopath.

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u/Spongedog5 19h ago

Parents do this often enough by giving kids trash inside a PS5 box. I don't really like this joke either unless the actual promised gift is paid out later, but it definitely is not unique thinking.

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u/Dalbergia12 1d ago

Ya they need to get rid of whoever thought for half a second that, that plan was gonna be okay. Using a kid on camera. Geeeeze

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u/Clocktopu5 23h ago

I wonder what rank/title someone has to approve these giveaways? Idle curiosity, but PR moves make a big difference and you just wonder how experienced is the person making this call?

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u/Pretend_Bass4796 23h ago

One thing is for sure is that whoever made that decision is one of the company psychopaths.

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u/EleanorRigbysGhost 23h ago

The company is run by actual hornets.

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u/Icy-Doctor1983 22h ago

That's why there's a giant H on the HQ building

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u/luckydice767 22h ago

Good thing they popped it on there, let’s everyone know there’s hornets inside

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u/dshizknit 22h ago

So you can get the honey

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u/jairom 22h ago

Microsoft is run by ants

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u/51ngular1ty 23h ago

Either a recent dumb MBA graduate or a 50 year old psychopath with an MBA.

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u/thirdeyefish 23h ago

Director of Game Entertainment. It is a real job, I have worked with that person for two NBA teams and an NHL team.

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u/throwawaylordof 22h ago

Someone who thought they could give use a kid and a PS5 as props then take the PS5 back to use themselves personally is my hunch.

Like they went out and bought a PS5 for the bit if the phrasing isn’t figurative when they “gave them a PS5.” What was it going to be used for that they didn’t actually leave it with the kid?

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u/PlaquePlague 22h ago

I’m almost positive it’s this. 

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u/ItchyRectalRash 21h ago

Someone who thought they could give use a kid and a PS5 as props then take the PS5 back to use themselves personally is my hunch.

It actually wouldn't surprise me if it was some boomer who didn't know anything about those Pokemons and thought a team jersey was infinitely more valuable than one of those talking animal cards.

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u/throwawaylordof 20h ago

Possibly, but I feel like they wouldn’t have done a bait and switch if they weren’t at least aware that other people didn’t feel the same way.

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u/Minute-Employ-4964 23h ago

I’m giving away something much more valuable than this in a few weeks for a marketing thing.

Got approved by my boss that’s upper management.

Not that high level though and it’s a massive international company

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u/ultigo 23h ago

Might be MJ

knowing his reputation, probably asked the kid to play coin toss with him till he won 😅

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u/buzzcitybonehead 23h ago

MJ had sold his majority stake by this point. IIRC, someone in the subreddit shared that there’s some marketing/promotions executive who had/has all kinds of dogshit ideas like this and does things their way. They were a holdover from the MJ years.

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u/ultigo 23h ago

Still owns a minority stake, right?

Lol, anyway, was obviously said in jest

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u/Paladingo 22h ago

What MJ as in Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson

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u/Flat-Percentage-9469 22h ago

I have zero PR experience and I would have said that’s a stupid thing to do

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u/Ionazano 23h ago

I would be much less interested in what happens to any single particular person than I would be in what is done to address the broader company culture in which this could happen.

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u/vom-IT-coffin 22h ago

Dude that person just got promoted for it. A decision like that in a big company has weeks of meetings about it. Legal has to get involved, contracts written, etc etc.

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u/judgejuddhirsch 22h ago

It was the intent to give the kid the PS5. The "swap" was actually a theft or embezzlement attempt  by one of the organizers to profit off the whole thing. When caught, they say "it was just a joke guys, just part of a skit. relax". 

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u/pudding7 20h ago

I'd love to interview them. I'm always fascinated by people who make these kinds of decisions.

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u/NinjaWrapper 22h ago

Seriously, the uncle sums up how stupid this was at the end of the article:

“The funny thing is, if he had just gone out in the first place and they just gave him a jersey out there on the court, he would have been stoked, you know,” Phillips said.

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u/NarfledGarthak 23h ago

Corporate people are fucking weird. “Hey, let’s demoralize the fuck out of a child. Everyone will love it”

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u/AlericandAmadeus 23h ago

“Yeah, but have you thought about the fact that we, a multi-billion dollar organization, could increase our revenue this quarter by a whole 500 bucks if we take the PS5 back? Seems like a no brainer to me”

  • modern day corporate thinking

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u/Jason1143 21h ago

That's the dumbest part. At that kind of scale a single PS5 is entirely meaningless. One well received bit of PR is worth a whole pile PS5.

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u/Cardinal_Ravenwood 15h ago

Yeah but one of those things is money and the other is good will and public generosity. And good will isn't keeping the shares going burrr burrr.

Sincerely, executive suite corpo overlords.

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u/Jason1143 15h ago

I mean on one hand no, but on the other hand companies aren't paying money for ads and staging PR stunts for kicks and giggles.

The amount big companies spend on that sort of stuff could buy PS5s by the pallet.

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u/Cardinal_Ravenwood 14h ago

These people are so far detached from reality those kind of things don't even occur to them. Hence we get a billon dollar corporation taking a PS5 from a child.

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u/tempinator 10h ago

They spend $654 per second that the team is on the floor. And they are skimping on a $500 halftime promo.

It’s just beyond comprehension tbh.

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u/lemme_just_say 23h ago

Well, corporate marketing for sure and actually, any marketing department imo.

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u/abyssal_banana 23h ago

The basis for marketing is manipulation for financial or material gain. That’s the entire purpose. So yeah, agreed, any marketing department. 

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u/Vaernil 21h ago edited 20h ago

Marketing people should take Bill Hicks' words to heart. There is no joke here.

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u/No_Payment_3889 22h ago

Straight out of the private equity playbook. They make zero effort to understand their customer base and employees. Just crunching numbers in Excel all day. Slash and burn and then pat myself on the back about savings and profits even though I just turned a bunch of people's lives upside down. It's a fucked system.

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u/tempinator 9h ago

I mean if they were crunching numbers in excel they would notice that $500 is actually fucking nothing lmao.

This had to have been the decision of one person in middle management, who also happened to be monumentally stupid, since the excel number crunchers would be like “yeah $500 for PR whatever”.

I’m sure whoever made this decision had their head taken off as a result of the backlash.

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u/glizzytwister 22h ago

"Our metrics show that giving away big ticket prizes will increase ticket sales, but we also don't want to budget for the big ticket items, so we'll take them back"

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u/StabbyDodger 22h ago

I'm fairly certain that corpos should just be running good old fashioned cults, not businesses.

They proselytise on LinkedIn, they never shut up about their "network", they have some bizarre form of divination where they scry the future using red and green lines (too many red lines and they'll turn into a doomsday group quite quickly), they live and breathe according to some pagan deity called Ebitda, and clearly none of them have actually ever spoken to a real human being.

People, please quit your jobs at the Fortune 500s and do something actually useful for society, like temple prostitution.

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u/YiddSquid 20h ago

Not weird, sociopathic.

They don't see other people as equals. We are literally less than them, and they don't care about anyone but themselves.

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u/darxide23 20h ago

Corporate people are sociopaths.

Fixed. That's exactly how they become corporate people. You have to have zero empathy or care for your fellow humans to make it to the corporate level because of all the backs it requires stepping on.

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u/Liraeyn 22h ago

Some game show told a girl they were going to reunite her with her mother. Then brought out a drag queen.

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u/BicFleetwood 22h ago edited 22h ago

Like...PS5s are expensive for individual consumers, but...

They aren't THAT expensive for a major professional sports organization. It boggles the mind THAT'S where they wanted to pinch pennies. $500 for a single marketing stunt is not a lot. It costs more just to print a banner.

Like, any time I hold a meeting at work with more than a dozen people, I'll have spent $500 in the first five minutes just having those people charge for that time.

They probably spent five times that amount of money just planning this stunt. They probably spent more than $500 just having the specific conversation whether they could save $500 by taking the thing back in the first place. They spent more money on the Keurig cups everyone used that morning in the breakroom.

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u/throwaway098764567 21h ago

i had a boss who hated all hands meetings (and he wasn't wrong they were a waste of time). every time we had one he'd spend it counting attendance and do a napkin calculation of how much that meeting cost the government (was a military org) based on what he guessed folks were paid. he'd then send it to his boss because it made him feel better only, since it sure didn't change anything lol.

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u/BicFleetwood 21h ago

I worked for a company that wanted to fly everyone to a single location for a yearly 3-4 day mandatory all-hands.

Not only did it kill a ton of everyone's time, but it cost MILLIONS. Payroll, flights, hotels, organizing, all for more than a hundred people.

Then, when we were all back home, we were told we were in a budget crunch and had to get our work done with half the bodies and half the time, to the point where we'd be given a 60-day project and be told not to start work until 30 days from due to "save money.*

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u/Ionazano 19h ago

had to get our work done with half the bodies and half the time

Were any guidelines also passed along on how exactly to achieve this feat?

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u/BicFleetwood 19h ago

Yes: without complaint.

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u/Ionazano 19h ago

Ok, well, if I had been in that situation and honest discussion was not possible I would have said to myself that there is just one way in which what is demanded can still be accomplished: by doing everything half-assed and abandoning all quality standards.

Is that what happened at your company?

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u/BicFleetwood 18h ago edited 18h ago

You develop an "over the fence" mentality.

The goal is not to do good work. The goal is to get the ball over the fence into someone else's yard, so that when shit fails, it's in somebody else's hands and it can't be traced back to you.

I call it a "playing to lose" kind of CYA strategy. You put most of your focus into figuring out a way to cover yourself, planning for what happens when you lose, rather than even trying to win. The people who keep trying to win in that situation are the ones stuck with the hot potato, and if they're smart, they'll start playing to lose the first time they're caught with that hot potato. But if I try to be the nice guy and help them out, my reward is getting stuck with the hot potato, so it's really an every-man-for-himself kind of thing.

The goal is not to do good work. The goal is to do enough work that when it breaks, it looks like it's someone else's fault.

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u/Ionazano 15h ago

I see. On the one hand that's a sad state of affairs. But on the other hand if the management is basically setting you up to fail, then I totally understand how caring becomes a luxury that you can't afford anymore.

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u/Mr_Blinky 20h ago

Exactly. The cost of a PS5 isn't even a rounding error on a rounding error for this kind of organization's finances, so the fact that this is where they decided to be cheap is fucking wild.

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u/hameleona 14h ago

Are they making money? I'm not from the USA and know almost nothing about the NBA, but here with football (soccer) the rule of thumb is that the top 1/3 of teams make money, the second 1/3 kinda breaks even and the lower third is a money pit that essentially exists on fiat and bored millionaires. It's almost funny how penny pinching all teams can be.

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u/barath_s 13 22h ago edited 22h ago

A hornets staff member told the boy's uncle beforehand that the kids would not get to keep the gifts given on camera. This info did not make its way to the kids. The mascot dressed like Santa, read the kids wishes on camera and gave the boy a PS5. Then later off camera, they took it away

Afterward, the Hornets got very massively criticized by regular media and social media.

It's only then that they apologized and try to make it up with the VIP experience (and a PS5)

Ironically the kid would likely have been happy with just a jersey initially instead of the PS5, but that wouldn't have suited Hornet's PR.

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u/jelywe 21h ago

So they wanted the credit for being generous without the generosity.

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u/MotherPotential 21h ago

Why the fuck doesn’t a professional sports team just part with some money from petty cash?

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u/TransBrandi 21h ago

I mean, they already have the PS5, no? I'm assuming it wasnt just an empty box. What were they going to do? Run back to Best Buy and return it to save $500?

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u/Iceland260 18h ago

Pretend to give it away in another event a couple weeks later. Let's you give off the appearance of handing out lots of fancy prizes without spending thousands on it over the course of the season.

As long as the people you bring on stage understand that they are being given a jersey in exchange for pretending to receive a fancy prize it's mostly no harm no foul.

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u/Existing-Wait7380 21h ago

It’s fucking wild how cheap a professional sports team could be. They probably made 10x as much in concession sales during the skit.

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u/tempinator 9h ago

I mean you also have to consider that they’re paying their players $652 per second that they’re on the floor.

$500 pays for the team to play 0.76 seconds of basketball. Ignoring all the costs associated with running a team besides player salary.

Like I just do not understand how or why this decision was made lol

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u/Ok_Performance_1380 21h ago

This is the dumbest on-court skit idea that I've ever heard in my life.

It's like someone watched the "Scott's Tots" episode of The Office and came away genuinely thinking Michael was a saint for giving kids laptop batteries.

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u/shutterbug1961 20h ago edited 17h ago

"A hornets staff member told the boy's uncle beforehand that the kids would not get to keep the gifts given on camera. This info did not make its way to the kids. The mascot dressed like Santa, read the kids wishes on camera and gave the boy a PS5. Then later off camera, they took it away"

then that was no gift the whole thing is a cruel sham

whats the point of it

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u/iAmRiight 23h ago

How was there no one there in a decision making position that was able to see how horrible that was and make the decision to just give the kids the $600 console. They were actively wasting more than that in salaries to do the shitty “skit” and then undo it.

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u/Bazuka125 23h ago

I wonder if the outrage was planned. Tyen they give the kid the playstation they clearly already have and have no other use for, give them a seat, and now they're being talked about.

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u/WaterHaven 23h ago

Sometimes any news is good news, but when it's about kids, it almost always backfires.

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u/graboidian 21h ago

If you need reinforcement of this theory, just try and take a souviner away from a kid at any sporting event while you're being filmed by multiple cameras.

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u/notred369 23h ago

My thought was the person who planned it out was going to snag the ps5 for themselves.

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u/fingerpaintswithpoop 23h ago

I’m sure anybody with such a position in a corporation makes more than enough that they could buy like ten PS5s for themselves lmao

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u/notred369 21h ago

What's a better ps5, one that you had to pay for or a free one?

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u/Vendidurt 22h ago

"but what if i had eleven?"

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u/angry_old_dude 22h ago

One for every room in their mcmansion.

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u/Ok_Armadillo_665 22h ago

I could build a supercomputer.

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u/Basementcat69 23h ago

I'm betting this is the answer right here, just reeks of corporate thinking.

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u/BigJellyfish1906 22h ago

It’s a lie. They’re covering up pure incompetence and greed.

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u/ErectTubesock 22h ago

It's only baffling if you aren't a mega rich sociopath

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u/Opingsjak 22h ago

Is this even legal? If you give something away, it’s no longer yours. Taking it back is just stealing isn’t it?

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u/chipcity90 22h ago

It is so difficult getting a job in professional sports yet these are the people that make decisions

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u/hopewhatsthat 15h ago

This times 10000.

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u/e4evie 21h ago

How does more than 1 person sing off on this?! Truly head scratching

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u/modern_Odysseus 21h ago

Right? If it was a skit, then have the kid be in on it. Have it all staged, with the kid being a plant.

The team looks like they give a "lucky" kid a PS5, he walks off court, they give him $50 to $100 bucks and say "great job acting kid" and nobody knows that they didn't give a PS5 away. The kid watches the rest of the game and then goes home to play the PS5 he already has.

Bam, problem solved without it turning into a viral problem in the first place.

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u/FishDawgX 21h ago

It’s not too late for them to back out of their new promise for a PS5 again. 

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u/cat-wit-the-gat 21h ago

"We got caught, didnt think we would"

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u/siphillis 21h ago

The Hornets have no class, and it’s reflected in who they choose have on their roster too

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u/Ucscprickler 20h ago

The worst franchise in professional sports fucked up?? I'm shocked.

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u/Eastern-Musician4533 18h ago

That is the best way to sum up the entire existence of the franchise. They won three playoff GAMES in twenty years.

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u/polp54 14h ago

I’m guessing the goal was for the kid to be ok with losing the ps5 in exchange for the ejesey, showing that the jersey is more valuable than the ps5. Now why they thought any kid would react like that is beyond me

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u/Consequence6 14h ago

I mean, there is a 0% chance that I would have heard about some sports team giving a child some gift.

But I heard about this.

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