Well, tomorrow is Black Tuesday, or perhaps Green Light Tuesday, depending on how you look at it. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people will plunk down their (or their parent's) hard-earned green in hope for some MS green in the form of lights on their new Xbox 360.
Wal-mart, being one of the vendors preparing for the onslaught, has taken steps to ensure that the few machines they receive are distributed
fairly, or so they say. The employees here in Charlotte weren't allowed to pre-purchase, and the boxes would be be distributed on a first-come, first-saved basis. To me, this IS the fairest way. The person who wants it the most will call in sick, take vacation, sell a kidney, whatever to get the first one.
Now me, I am not that terribly interested, but I've not been interested in console games in ages. I guess I grew outta them for the most part. Games like SWG and WoW (btw, there is a free trial available on Fileplanet for WoW at present) tend to do that to you, maybe. I dunno.
But, anyway, back to the story. My buddy from work and her husband have been there this evening since about 7 PM. They were told that the "tickets" representing your option to purchase one at 12:01 AM Tuesday would be distributed at 10 PM. Some people have been in line since
noon. I don't get that, but hey, whatever; to each his/her own.
At 10 PM, she called to inform me that Wal-mart has decided to be
fair. In order to be
fair, EVERYONE will get a ticket and they will have a lottery. Nah, we're not going to do what's on our website; why do that? We need to be
fair. So what if some of you invested your entire day into this event. We wouldn't want to exclude the guy who showed up 5 minutes before midnight, would we? After all, why should your personal sacrifice and investment be reason to exclude someone who is only a fraction as interested. Heck, someone might wander through the electronics section to find a copy of "Ishtar"; they deserve a chance, too, right?
Needless to say, she's livid. While discussing this on the phone with me, she points out something additional she had just heard. Did you know that the ticket gets you right to buy an XBox, but not select which kind? That's right....you may be stuck with the non-emulator model even if you really wanted the emulator (more expensive model). It just gets better and better.
My friend used very unlady-like words to describe her state of displeasure, and it's so offensive that I can't post it here. Suffice to say it's the word that people say to women to get them really angry. She described herself as one of those. Wow.
And this is, in a nutshell, is why I don't participate in stuff like Green Tuesday.