[DRAFT] The Name of the Game

[Frieden-und Freudenland]

Before you think I am going crazy, here is the backstory: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/taiw ... index.html

[description]As part of their latest advertising gimmick, famous restaurant chain Olive Orchard announced that they would give unlimited free salad, soup and breadsticks for a month to any customer whose name was phonetically similar to the word 'olive'. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of citizens applying to family courts to legally change their names to Oliver or Olivia, and exasperated public officials have now come to you to plead for mercy.

[validity]capitalist, has courts

1. [option]"I can't take it anymore, @@LEADER@@," wails @@RANDOMNAME@@, a family court judge from @@CAPITAL@@, dabbing @@HIS@@ sweaty forehead with the sleeve of @@HIS@@ robe. "Every morning I find a mountain of name change applications on my desk and the pile keeps growing. This is just ridiculous! People shouldn't be allowed to change their name at will, this is not a children's game! If you don't stop this madness, every @@DEMONYM@@ will be called Oliver or Olivia soon and chaos will ensue!"

[effect]children have to pay the price of their parents' idiocy for a lifetime

2. [option]"Woah, woah, woah; who is this @@MAN@@ to tell me what to do with my name?" interjects Olivia Rice, your secretary, mixing her to-go lettuce salad with a fork. "Besides, it's just for a month. Once the special offer ends, I'll change my name back to Jasmine... or maybe not. Point is, it's none of anyone else's business, amirite?"

[effect]serial offenders routinely change their names

3. [option]"Well, think about all the money this unbridled back-and-forth name-changing will cost us!" exclaims Oliver Warm, your Minister of Treasury, whom you recall was called 'Luke' until only a few days ago. "The thing is, we should just regulate how many times a given person can change their name in a certain time period. For example, only once per year at most and not more than ten times in a lifetime. What do you think?"

[effect]losing count of how many times one has changed one's name can have terrible consequences

[Trotterdam]

Shouldn't someone try to ban or restrict this kind of promotional stunt? I mean, it's either unfairly discriminating people based on a factor beyond their control, or rife for blatant abuse if they actually are able to control it. That sounds like lose-lose to me.

[Frieden-und Freudenland]

Shouldn't someone try to ban or restrict this kind of promotional stunt? I mean, it's either unfairly discriminating people based on a factor beyond their control, or rife for blatant abuse if they actually are able to control it. That sounds like lose-lose to me.

Not sure about that. This is not like refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. You would be hard pressed to argue that this restaurant chain is discriminating against people who are not named Oliver or Olivia. The criteria chosen to decide who gets the prize are so arbitrary and funny to require a prohibition. Also, this kind of thing is not uncommon at all. To give an example from Boston, USA; there is a museum called Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here, named after its owner who was a rich lady who spent her money collecting fine art. There is an entry fee for this museum, but any woman whose name is Isabel, Isabelle, or Isabella (or some other variant thereof) gets to visit the museum for free. I haven't heard anyone complaining about this practice discriminating against all the women who are not named Isabella. It is recognized as a nice amusing rule, I bet. (At least that's how I see it.)

Nor do I think it invites 'blatant abuse'. I wouldn't go into the trouble of changing my name to Isabella to visit this museum free of charge. To be fair, I also wouldn't change my name to 'salmon' to get free sushi, so I am totally astonished that some people have actually been doing that in Taiwan. But you can't argue, based on hindsight, that the promotional stunt was rife for abuse. Nobody could have predicted this silly public response.

Let's be honest. If I had written this issue without there being a real-life precedent, you would probably be arguing that my issue was too unrealistic and nobody would be stupid enough to change their name to get some free food.

[Australian rePublic]

Why is this a leader issue? Why should leader care?

[USS Monitor]

Why is this a leader issue? Why should leader care?

We have an issue about people changing their names so it'll look nicer on ballots. So asking about the ability to change one's name is fair game.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Agree with Monitor.

Having said that, it doesn't seem likely that the people complaining would be public officials, are these things are invariably set up to have admin fees charged that are significantly higher than the man hours involved. In fact, the filling out of paid-for paperwork tends to be a major source of income for most organisations, and something that is very welcome, as so much of public sector work is essentially done for a fixed cost for a variable amount of work, and the presence of per-item chargeables is basically what subsidises and funds most of the public sector.

Rather, historically, its been the companies themselves who get caught off guard by the number of people who will do things for a freebie. For example, Dominos offered free pizza to anyone who got a Domino's pizza in Russia, but vastly underestimated the take up on this, turning a seemingly quirky "people will talk about this" advertising promotion into "wait, HOW MUCH is this going to cost us?"

That's not the only instance either, corporations issue these promotions, then hastily backtrack when there's too much response, changing terms and conditions to things like "uh... first hundred customers only".

So actually, I think the real issue probably ought not be "how do we stop people changing their names" but rather "how do we make corporation honour their misjudged promises?"

I'd expect options to be more along the lines of:

1) promotions should be legally binding, even if the misjudged promise leads to bankruptcy.
2) T&C apply, dumbasses.
3) crazy option banning name changes