The Subway restaurant chain is running a
story contest for kids with the grand prize being $5,000 in athletic equipment. Their official rules state:
Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. Home schools not eligible.
In response to a storm of protest from homeschoolers, Subway issued the following non-apology apology, couched in some of the most ridiculous post-modern marketing-speak I've ever seen:
We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education, regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and fitness.
We sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness equipment.
To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!
Did you get that? No? Well, I happen to be an expert at deciphering post-modern marketing-ese. Here's the translation.
We at Subway are sincerely sorry you annoying cretins found out about our contest. We didn't intend to exclude you — honest — even though our promotional copy specifically said "no home schools will be accepted". The reason we didn't include you is because there's a good chance you'll win — given all the time you spend studying and not attending diversity/sex ed/global warming alarmism classes — and we just can't have that. Oh, and by the way, you're still excluded from this contest, but we swear on our mother's grave that we'll include you in future contests. Trust us!
Well, the only good thing about this is that I don't have to boycott something I like. As I come from the land of cheesesteaks and hoagies, I have always found Subway sandwiches to be utterly tasteless and vile.
2 comments:
Or maybe it is just like they said--their intention was to give playground equipment to schools, not to families.
Weak response.
I don't remember them saying "playground equipment". The official contest stated "sports equipment." Homeschoolers are very often part of sports leagues and such equipment could have been donated to their teams.
Even if it was playground equipment, it could have been donated to the winner's local community.
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