A Tale of Teaspoons

by ShakerTS

I play our State's lottery somewhat regularly, and the MN Lottery sends the winning numbers to my email each day. This message always contains adverts about their latest games or promotions, and today's featured a new Texas Hold-em style of scratch off game, and an invitation to play in their free online card room to gain entries into drawings for poker tables, chip sets, and the grand prize, a trip to Vegas!

I had some time to kill this morning before work, so I clicked the advert, logged on and played a few hands. Not a bad interface—all browser-based so there are no icky programs to install. It's just you along with 5 virtual players (not real ones), and if you win the table you gain an entry into the drawing. The card playing of the virtual players is fairly soft, but this was probably designed as an "intro to Hold-em" game and does pretty well for that. There are dialog balloons that appear when the virtual players "speak" what they are doing (raise, fold, big blind $20, etc.) as well as other random table talk chatter comments like "I think I should raise" or "too rich for my blood."

And then there was the one I saw right before a player would fold a weak hand—"These cards are LAME!"

LAME? Cringe. Oh, my. I couldn't possibly let that one slide.

So I took action. There was a handy feedback link at the bottom of the poker room table page, and I composed a sternly worded (yet Minnesota Nice) message letting the Powers That Be know exactly what they were doing wrong:

Hi, I really enjoy the Hold-em game and am very grateful for the opportunity to play, however I am extremely disappointed in the derogatory usage of the word 'lame' in the table chatter. It is ablist language and has no place in polite conversation. Those who are physically disabled (and therefore 'lame') do not appreciate their conditions being referred to as a negative or a 'less-than'. Please consider removing that particular statement from the virtual players' vocabulary.

Thank you.
-[ShakerTS]

Not really expecting a reply—but feeling better for having vented—I was both shocked and very impressed when this hit my inbox just a few hours later:

Hi [ShakerTS],

Thank you for your feedback. We will have this phrase removed from the player's vocabulary altogether. We apologize for any negative feelings this may have created. Thank you for playing and once again we appreciate the feedback.

-MN Lottery

Rock the fuck on, Minnesota State Lottery Association! Major kudos for not only having the insight to not dismiss the claim, but for acting on it correctly the very same day.

Teaspoons, Shakers. It works!

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Further note: I tried to capture the offending balloon, however when I logged on to play this evening, they had indeed removed that phrase so I could not get a screen cap of it. WOOT!!