hehehe, yeah bitch of a day. Nothing to do with friday 13th though I reckon, just the incompetent fools that uni likes to employ. I'm a student, and one of the courses I'm studying this semester is engineering management, for this course we have to start a very small business make and market a product, do a business plan, annual report etc. Anyway we decided to make a poker kit, and to boost our sales we recently decided to run a not for profit poker tournament night where all entry fee's went towards running the night and prizes for the winners. (which we would buy from ourselves, just to boost profits a little bit) All gambling to be done with chips with no monetary value etc. Our marketing man sought legal advice from the uni legal advice people as to whether this would be legal, they said it was cool and it was party time.
A few weeks later and we had sold 48 tickets, max capacity, a few hiccups along the way but all were resolved. All looking awesome. Then today at 1.15PM, five hours before the tournament, the aformentioned marketing man gets a call from our course lecturer saying that he'd been contacted by all manner of freaky legal types saying that our plans were in contravention of an entire section of the ACT gaming act. A quick chat with the original legal "advisor"/numbnuts quickly revealed that he had missed that entire section of the act and if we went ahead we would indeed be facing the possiblity of twelve months in the slammer apiece.
Not particularly liking the idea of legal proceedings, we did the only thing we could. As people turned up we told them the bad news, refunded their cash and offered them a place at a table to have a game just for fun. Net result:
-Our company makes a loss on the running of the tourney.
-Our company is denied any profits that may have indirectly resulted from the tourney.
-The company as a whole and members as individuals lose face in the eyes of the consumer.
-Our shareholders lose part of their projected return and hence the company suffers.
If this were a real life situation, the legal numbnuts would be facing a lawsuit under the tort of negligence for the cost of organising the evening and possibly lost earnings, but under the fake business framework that we are bound to there is no provision for dealing properly with such incompetence. It may seem like a small and insignificant issue (in real terms we only lost $52), but it makes me see red that we have been treated in such a shabby fashion. In the words of Rodney Dangerfield "I don't get no respect!", all too true unfortunately.
Other than that it's been a friggin fantastic week, weathers warming up, nothing's on fire in my local region (yet), and the seatcovers have well and truly taken off their dustjackets. (the people who invented tank tops and miniskirts have my sincere gratitude) LOL, thats my rant, hope y'all had a better day than me.
