Complaint of the Week
October 30th, 2012 at 11:00 am by David FarrarAlready had some good idiotic complaints come in to me. This week’s winner is about a Lotto Ad.
The background:
The television advertisement for Lotto promoted the $27 Million dollar draw and featured a woman sitting in a café. When she realised her table was wobbling, she pulled out a wad of notes from her bag and put it under one of the table legs to stabilise it.
The complaint:
Complainant, H. Malhotra, said: putting the money under the leg of the table was “very, very disrespectful and insensitive towards people not only on the poverty line but some cultures like Hindu’s, as we do not touch money with our feet as it is always so hard to earn.” The Complainant also said that the advertisement sent a “bad” message to younger people about the value of money.
The lack of both a sense of humour, and also the appreciation of the context of someone having just won $27 million is staggering.
The sad thing with this stuff, is that it ends up taking up time – both the ASA’s, but often organisations complained about have to send hours or hire lawyers to deal with such stupidities.
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- Labour is promising a new house every 13 minutes of the working week!
October 30th, 2012 at 11:10 am
A moron, an aresehole, a dimwit, an accomplished imbecile, H. Malhotra is.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 11:14 am
What pisses me off, is that H. Malhotra’s vote counts for the same as mine. WTF?
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 11:22 am
I didn’t realise the Hindu culture was so disrespectful to feet.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 11:42 am
I have a theory that some complaints are laid by rival businesses as a means of irritating their competition. This however, must surely be a troll.
Please let it be a troll.
Or someone on an intellectual disability benefit.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 11:51 am
@Grant MM
Alas your desperate pleas for an ounce of sanity are all in vain.
Vote:This is where some members of the public are at. Lets face it, a big chunk of people actually vote for Winston First.
I had an uncle who worked as a tour bus operator. The endless tales of stupidity knew no limits;
E.g. When travelling through the Homer tunnel one tourist commented “it’s lucky you found this hole through the mountain”
October 30th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Sigh… our species is truly doomed.
I think I need to start stocking up on canned goods.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 12:08 pm
This is why people of these weird cultures shouldnt be allowed into the country – we have enough weirdos of our own without these people of diminished brain power.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
They might have just been notes printed by Russel Norman.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Well you all want a complaints dept. so you should not be surprised that you get people like this.
Its the pomme syndrome all over.
Remove the wasteful overhead and four hundred public troughers. Lower our taxes.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Wow, disrespectful to people on the poverty line.
Because TV ads are full of stuff you can buy when you can barely afford food.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Offensive to people in poverty? They should sell their TV then.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
This post is one of DPF’s masterpieces.
A whole thread full of hidebound little curmudgeons, complaining about a complaint by a hidebound little curmudgeon, with not even a glimmer of recognition of the beautiful, awful circularity of the whole thing.
Magnificent!
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Viking2 “Well you all want a complaints dept. so you should not be surprised that you get people like this.
Its the pomme syndrome all over. Remove the wasteful overhead and four hundred public troughers. Lower our taxes”
Never fair. Not one dollar of public $ goes into dealing with adverting complaints. System is entirely funded by advertisers and media. It is a fine example of self-regulation to keep government out of our lives. Dealing with idiots like this complainant are part of the cost of self-reg but better than the alternative of expensive legal process
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
These people exist you only have to read any post by redbaiter to know this.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 2:00 pm
The sad thing with this stuff, is that it ends up taking up time – both the ASA’s, but often organisations complained about have to send hours or hire lawyers to deal with such stupidities.
Why don’t they just ask the Wellington Rubber Stamp company to make a stamp with “Wacko” written around the border and a picture of the biggest der you can imagine in the centre.
Simple. You don’t need a lawyer for that, you could get one of those minimum wage people for 90 days to stamp away furiously and then fire them for no reason at the end of day 89.
If anyone complains their response wasn’t “official” enough, we could probably add a decoration or two to bring the stamp up to scratch.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
I purchased some new shoes at lunchtime. I sat them, in their shoebox, on my desk.
Vote:A lady in my office (who I have spoken about in previous posts) asked me to take them off the desk- as footware on desks is “Culturally Insensitive”…
True fucking story.
October 30th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
You obviously work in some bloated, troughing gubermint department full of petty little civil servants Longknives
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
RRM- Frighteningly I dont! (There is just one wowser like that in my office- but man is she something else!)
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
footware on desks is “Culturally Insensitive”…
I wonder why? What could possibly explain why anyone wouldn’t want to do something like that, let alone make it a “cultural tradition” amongst an entire race? Maybe something bad happened to a lot of Maori deep in history while they were sitting at their desks, in the forest, as they used to do. Wow. I wonder what it is and why footwear triggers it? Fascinating stuff.
Maybe a whole tribe got wiped out because they were considered insensitive barbarians by a rampant hooligan sect who objected to shoes on desks and everyone decided to change their position from then on. I mean, who knows.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Mind you- She was the same person who accused me of being “racist” in front of the whole lunchroom when I casually remarked that I thought John McCain had better credentials to be President than Obama…
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
I have also spoken before about our experience when my kids were in primary school over 25 years ago. The school felt it was unable to do anything about the headlice problem because in the spirti of the treaty of waitangi it would be culturally insensitive. (my children are part Maori BTW).
When we made a fuss, to cane us the school sent a couple of public health nurses round to our house to ask us what are WE going to do about OUR headlice problem!
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Mind you- She was the same person who accused me of being “racist” in front of the whole lunchroom when I casually remarked that I thought John McCain had better credentials to be President than Obama…
I love working with people like that Longknives. It’s such fun winding them up. Sometimes I lead them to think I’m such a monster they don’t even shake my hand when I leave.
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Longknives
just take a PG against your employer because they are allowing your mental health to be affected by their failing to ensure that your workplace is safe .. You are now living in fear that what ever you do may be misconstrued as racist and may put your current and any future employment at risk. At the very least they will have to talk with this “thing” and all her behaviour will be noted.
After you have done this and she continues, just tell her to fuck off in a loud voice , adding ,”I didn’t want this to happen but they did nothing to help me.”
You already drink and gamble so we can’t throw that in but something along the lines of- you now hate the All Blacks because of her -may give your plan extra merit a personal greivance an excellent way of bringing atention to gooses like her.
Ka ching and bingo some coin for the Spring carnivals
Vote:October 30th, 2012 at 9:17 pm
shoreboy57 (46) Says:
October 30th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Viking2 “Well you all want a complaints dept. so you should not be surprised that you get people like this.
Its the pomme syndrome all over. Remove the wasteful overhead and four hundred public troughers. Lower our taxes”
Never fair. Not one dollar of public $ goes into dealing with adverting complaints. System is entirely funded by advertisers and media. It is a fine example of self-regulation to keep government out of our lives. Dealing with idiots like this complainant are part of the cost of self-reg but better than the alternative of expensive legal process
———————————–
Perhaps but in the end the customer pays because you people pandy to these abusive nuts. And if the consumer pays then so by implication does the taxpayer becuase somewhere in the system there is a public servant and public troughers et al.
All becuase as wimps you allowed the Govt. (taxpayers cash), to bully you into this inane arrangement to deal with thederangement syndrome of some moaning people.
Vote: