Last Updated on: 4th May 2016, 12:55 pm
The Cool Cash lottery game has been pulled from stores in the UK after a number of complaints from angry customers who
failed to grasp how it worked.
The game, unveiled late last month, required players to scratch off a window to reveal a temperature. If that temperature was lower than another figure shown on the ticket, the player would win a cash prize.
However, problems with the winter-themed game cropped up almost immediately when it became apparent that many players were too stupid to grasp even the most basic of mathematical concepts and didn’t understand negative numbers, leading to a rash of calls right from day one from people who couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t won.
“On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8,” said Tina Farrell, a complete fucking nitwit quoted in the Manchester Evening News. “The numbersI uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.”
“I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.
“I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression – the card doesn’t say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled.”
Oh believe me, I’m imagining it, and I’m dumbfounded.
“Poor numeracy” or not, I’m sure these people have at least seen or heard a weather forecast at some point. It makes me wonder how many people have called their local radio station to complain that the temperature going from -10 to -15 means that they can put the coats away, not break out the warm ones.
And just picture the confusion in the bank lines.
“I’m sorry Nigel, you’ve bounced another cheque.”
“The hell I have! I’ve got -20 dollars where before I had -10! I’ve got more money now, ya bloody tosser!”
I have horrible math skills, to the point where I have to count off simple addition and subtraction with my fingers. But even I, at my most retarded, had no trouble with the minus sign. Once the first teacher explained to me that 0 was the intersection between positive and negative, I was set. For some reason that was one of the few math-related things that totally got through.
But right now, I seem to be having trouble with another equasion. How is it that these imbeciles + day to day life = survival? That one I don’t think I’ll ever quite figure out.
