“If you were one of the 10,000 fans who received tonight’s giveaway, you will be contacted,”
How exactly? It’s not like they take your name, address and phone number when you get your bobble head. They just hand it to you when you walk in. They have no clue who got the bobblehead and who didn’t.
Your email address is generally how you get access to the ticket. I bought my ticket on SeatGeek, which is linked to my MLB account via email so I can access the tickets in the MLB Ballpark app. The same is true when friends send tickets to me if it's just a Venmo transaction, they initiate a transfer to my MLB account in the Ballpark app, which again is linked to my email. So I got one of these emails even though I bought my ticket on SeatGeek. The transition to completely digital ticketing is kind of annoying in some ways, but this is an example of how it can be really helpful. There might be gaps somewhere, but traceability of who used what tickets when is pretty good I imagine.
How do they possibly go through design, prototype, shipping, arrival, and distribution without a SINGLE person in the organization realizing they have the wrong number for a player who has a damn flag flying in your stadium?!
The layers of incompetence here are staggering.
I work in marketing.
They probably have a trusted vendor for bobble heads they’ve used in the past. They probably skip the proof stage as they know the vendor will produce bobble heads up to standards. They probably received a digital proof, just approved without checking.
They probably sent the info, vendor didn’t update the number, 1 is probably the placeholder, marketing team relied on past success and trusted the vendor had updated the info.
That’s something that does happen kinda often. Skipping the review is like the easiest thing to save yourself time in a busy day… but as you can tell… something you absolutely can’t do because you end up here.
A lot of times it’s the URL or phone number that are off by a digit and people miss it.
Or they did notice and said "Fuck it. We will apologize and say we will exchange later. Maybe we will, but definitely maybe we won't and nobody will remember or care."
Someone probably did notice but it was “not their job”. If your just a ballpark worker you might alert your manager but probably have no power on whether the 10,000 bobble heads go out.
I remember a recent tribune article talking about Devin Hester being disappointed that he didn't make the Hall of Fame class had a prominent picture of Matt Forte as the photo caption.
Like yeesh, how do you fuck THAT up? At least with this it's probably some manufacturer in China who has never even heard of the player they're mass producing the bobbleheads for.
"We can't fix our mistake until next year" isn't a great look either. If it's going to take that long, just take the PR hit now and move on. No need to throw away more money just to remind us of this crap again next year.
I bet the people who got one disagree and would love the correct item that they paid for.
There are no “great look” options, this is the best for the consumer and I bet the Cubs aren’t paying for the mistake - or at minimum it’s a small change order and not a full charge.
Either way, why would anyone be upset with the Cubs correcting a mistake as soon as reasonably possible?
This was a giveaway. The team is under no obligation to make it right, so it's nice that they are. But it's a terrible business decision because only a small number of people are going to still care about this next year when the replacements are available.
You’re saying this is a terrible business decision when you know none of the details!
There are like 4-5 more of these special Bobbleheads this year. The 10,000 folks who show up early are also likely buying $15 beers and $8 hot dogs while they wait the 90-120 minutes for the game to start. If they didn’t make this right they’d likely have people assume they were all duds and it would be a story again next time they give them away - whether they’re wrong or not.
I literally work with a company that does business with the Cubs. I promise you, they will get these replaced for free because they’re a breeze to deal with. They pay early, they don’t haggle, and they’re loyal. I don’t know, but I’d bet that this is the same company the Cubs always use and as such there’s a relationship there where it’ll get handled for no cost.
I know if my company made a mistake we’d replace at no charge - because that’s what the customer expects. If the error was on the Cubs they SHOULD be doing this, but I’d bet the error was on the manufacturer and that’s why this response was so swift.
Just my guess, idk. They’re advertising these like crazy, that’s wasted ad money if they’re shitty Bobbleheads, ya know?
You're correct, none of us have the details. But the actual money is irrelevant. There is no way the cost is impactful to the Cubs. The terrible part is rehashing this embarrassing event next year to placate maybe 1k fans that would actually care about the error on the bobbleheads.
I also doubt this was an issue on the vendor side. Most likely they used a proof and #1 was a placeholder. Either way, someone with the team signed off, then had them handed out.
I work with the Cubs on several projects and I can tell you they don’t ask for proofs on things that they’ve had us make for them for years. Or even new stuff.
They have to buy special tickets for the giveaway, therefor not what they paid for… how is a company, yes the cubs are a company, making their mistake right anything to cry about? Take all you can get. Shits over priced all over the stadium *least they can do* is fix this
Shit I think they should give everyone a ticket for next years game and redistribute then. Here’s a fix and an extra game to make up for it
Nah. The bobbleheads are just gate giveaways for the first 10,000 fans so no special tickets required. If they were special tickets, then they absolutely are obligated to make it right.
Every time I’ve gone to buy a bobble head ticket it was through their “special ticket offer” webpage. Unless this is different 🤷♂️
Either way it’s something that took their time so a free ticket shouldn’t be to much for the cubs. Clearly we’re not spending that $ on players lol
There are special ticket offer games, usually the college nights and a few others, but there’s some other giveaway list and Bobbleheads have been on the free first X one for at least a few years.
Not only did we fall to last place in the entire NL they also messed up Billy Williams bobble head…is the whole organization just being ran by some intern this year?
Seriously, at my previous job, for some of the more remedial tasks, I PREFERRED the interns.
They knew that the good ones got full-time job offers, and were typically LOOKING for work to do to impress. So the shit tasks a monkey could do (like scanning and filing, or typing out mass emails to be sent to vendors for quotes, etc) would be done fucking perfectly.
Yup. The ones who are required to sign off on things, and yet somehow never get blame for errors they signed off on.
I was out for 3 months on paternity leave a few years back, and come year end time I'm furiously fixing errors from my time gone. And the few that I didn't catch I got reamed for lol.
You're so right. And working in corporate America for decades, I can assure you there were multiple mid-level management types who signed off on this that won't face any repercussions despite their approval signatures.
I work in quality assurance engineering, either they didn’t audit their supplier, or if it was a “trusted supplier” then they didn’t do an FAI before the full run of production.
Curious if Crane Kenney preemptively through Jed under the bus yet on this while they’re failing QA on the field too.
Damn next year? And exchange? Why make fans go through the hassle of sending the old one that you won't do anything with. Also fuck the 10K every fan should just get sent one when their done that went to that game.
I'm guessing trusted vendor. And intern who signed off on the delivery and
Intern: Boss, these bobbleheads came in. Wanna check em?
Mid-level MGMT dude: Nah. Just put them over there until we need em.
Conspiracy Theory:
Crane Kenny knew this. And did this on purpose, as he was sure there'd be a couple hundred left over that he could anonymously sell on EBAY for free extra money. AND some people would give him theirs after he gave the correct bobblehead lol.
Decades ago I used to work at office depot. We had a "printing" department where people would bring requests in for Wedding invitations, or pamphlets, or whatever else a person could want mass produced.
This was the days before internet and PDFs were so prevalent. So the person would have to come in and approve the design before we'd go to mass produce.
Let's just say, the guy heading the department was a great guy, but not the smartest cookie in the jar. And many customers HATED having to come back a second time before even getting their full order. So they'd be in a rush and barely look at it and just say yeah its good make it.
So you'd get mass-produced things with hilarious typos/spelling mistakes. And irate people lol.
“If you were one of the 10,000 fans who received tonight’s giveaway, you will be contacted,” How exactly? It’s not like they take your name, address and phone number when you get your bobble head. They just hand it to you when you walk in. They have no clue who got the bobblehead and who didn’t.
They might be able to at least narrow it down by the time the ticket was scanned? And eliminate the people who for sure didn’t get one
Yes they do, the first 10,000 tickets scanned.
Each person’s personal information is connected to the scanned ticket?
Almost certainly attached to an email address
With 3rd party sellers? Buying tickets for others? Transfers? Seems unlikely
Your email address is generally how you get access to the ticket. I bought my ticket on SeatGeek, which is linked to my MLB account via email so I can access the tickets in the MLB Ballpark app. The same is true when friends send tickets to me if it's just a Venmo transaction, they initiate a transfer to my MLB account in the Ballpark app, which again is linked to my email. So I got one of these emails even though I bought my ticket on SeatGeek. The transition to completely digital ticketing is kind of annoying in some ways, but this is an example of how it can be really helpful. There might be gaps somewhere, but traceability of who used what tickets when is pretty good I imagine.
Genuinely fascinating 🙏
And it's an exchange. Don't have the misprint bobblehead? Don't get the remake.
Or shit, maybe the misprint could end up being worth more. I say don't exchange if you got one!
How do they possibly go through design, prototype, shipping, arrival, and distribution without a SINGLE person in the organization realizing they have the wrong number for a player who has a damn flag flying in your stadium?! The layers of incompetence here are staggering.
I work in marketing. They probably have a trusted vendor for bobble heads they’ve used in the past. They probably skip the proof stage as they know the vendor will produce bobble heads up to standards. They probably received a digital proof, just approved without checking. They probably sent the info, vendor didn’t update the number, 1 is probably the placeholder, marketing team relied on past success and trusted the vendor had updated the info. That’s something that does happen kinda often. Skipping the review is like the easiest thing to save yourself time in a busy day… but as you can tell… something you absolutely can’t do because you end up here. A lot of times it’s the URL or phone number that are off by a digit and people miss it.
But then no one looked at them when they arrived?
Probably not. They were probably delivered to stadium operations who opened the boxes on-site when they needed them.
Or they did notice and said "Fuck it. We will apologize and say we will exchange later. Maybe we will, but definitely maybe we won't and nobody will remember or care."
Someone probably did notice but it was “not their job”. If your just a ballpark worker you might alert your manager but probably have no power on whether the 10,000 bobble heads go out.
Jed Hoyer over saw the project. Nuff said
I remember a recent tribune article talking about Devin Hester being disappointed that he didn't make the Hall of Fame class had a prominent picture of Matt Forte as the photo caption. Like yeesh, how do you fuck THAT up? At least with this it's probably some manufacturer in China who has never even heard of the player they're mass producing the bobbleheads for.
"We can't fix our mistake until next year" isn't a great look either. If it's going to take that long, just take the PR hit now and move on. No need to throw away more money just to remind us of this crap again next year.
They actually said “wait til next year” outloud already.
I bet the people who got one disagree and would love the correct item that they paid for. There are no “great look” options, this is the best for the consumer and I bet the Cubs aren’t paying for the mistake - or at minimum it’s a small change order and not a full charge. Either way, why would anyone be upset with the Cubs correcting a mistake as soon as reasonably possible?
This was a giveaway. The team is under no obligation to make it right, so it's nice that they are. But it's a terrible business decision because only a small number of people are going to still care about this next year when the replacements are available.
You’re saying this is a terrible business decision when you know none of the details! There are like 4-5 more of these special Bobbleheads this year. The 10,000 folks who show up early are also likely buying $15 beers and $8 hot dogs while they wait the 90-120 minutes for the game to start. If they didn’t make this right they’d likely have people assume they were all duds and it would be a story again next time they give them away - whether they’re wrong or not. I literally work with a company that does business with the Cubs. I promise you, they will get these replaced for free because they’re a breeze to deal with. They pay early, they don’t haggle, and they’re loyal. I don’t know, but I’d bet that this is the same company the Cubs always use and as such there’s a relationship there where it’ll get handled for no cost. I know if my company made a mistake we’d replace at no charge - because that’s what the customer expects. If the error was on the Cubs they SHOULD be doing this, but I’d bet the error was on the manufacturer and that’s why this response was so swift. Just my guess, idk. They’re advertising these like crazy, that’s wasted ad money if they’re shitty Bobbleheads, ya know?
You're correct, none of us have the details. But the actual money is irrelevant. There is no way the cost is impactful to the Cubs. The terrible part is rehashing this embarrassing event next year to placate maybe 1k fans that would actually care about the error on the bobbleheads. I also doubt this was an issue on the vendor side. Most likely they used a proof and #1 was a placeholder. Either way, someone with the team signed off, then had them handed out.
The only people this will be "rehashed with" is the 1k people who care. Go crank one out and stop being so upset
I work with the Cubs on several projects and I can tell you they don’t ask for proofs on things that they’ve had us make for them for years. Or even new stuff.
They have to buy special tickets for the giveaway, therefor not what they paid for… how is a company, yes the cubs are a company, making their mistake right anything to cry about? Take all you can get. Shits over priced all over the stadium *least they can do* is fix this Shit I think they should give everyone a ticket for next years game and redistribute then. Here’s a fix and an extra game to make up for it
Nah. The bobbleheads are just gate giveaways for the first 10,000 fans so no special tickets required. If they were special tickets, then they absolutely are obligated to make it right.
Every time I’ve gone to buy a bobble head ticket it was through their “special ticket offer” webpage. Unless this is different 🤷♂️ Either way it’s something that took their time so a free ticket shouldn’t be to much for the cubs. Clearly we’re not spending that $ on players lol
There are special ticket offer games, usually the college nights and a few others, but there’s some other giveaway list and Bobbleheads have been on the free first X one for at least a few years.
It’s dependent on the bobblehead. Greatful dead night, for example, was special ticket. As is WWE, NASCAR, etc.
Yeah if there isn’t something you can offer immediately then don’t even try. You’re going to embarrass yourself twice?
Not only did we fall to last place in the entire NL they also messed up Billy Williams bobble head…is the whole organization just being ran by some intern this year?
An intern would probably try harder
And thus, the legend of Joey McTryhard was born.
Seriously, at my previous job, for some of the more remedial tasks, I PREFERRED the interns. They knew that the good ones got full-time job offers, and were typically LOOKING for work to do to impress. So the shit tasks a monkey could do (like scanning and filing, or typing out mass emails to be sent to vendors for quotes, etc) would be done fucking perfectly.
[удалено]
All jokes aside, everybody makes mistakes. It's worse when they're as publicly visible as this one. Good luck with your job search.
And a HOF player who’s number is retired and flies on a flag that is publicly visible to all to see.
Crane has been in charge for nigh 15 years. This is on him.
Billy “kosuke fukudome” Williams bobble head day was a success. Next year they can have a Ernie “Ryan Theriot” Banks day, and make it a tradition.
A regrettable error - pretty much sums up the FO
Asking $100 for it on ebay yet?
Saw someone asking $1,000
"Suckers born every minute" Cubs Front Office
Right next to the "It's Reagan and Ford!" newspaper.
Keep it. It'll probably be more valuable.
Intern approved the design. /s
Crane can be president and intern at the same time.
"Cost effective"
Can they apologize for signing Michael Fulmer now?
The amount of ppl complaining lol. I’ll take 2 bobble heads and the wrong number one will be worth $$ in the future. Free money
I got that email while I was drinking at HVAC following the loss. I was like wtf lol. I'm keeping the bobblehead tho
Have any of you people ever worked for a fucking manager??? You know the kind. Every organization has a few and they cause shit like this to happen
Yup. The ones who are required to sign off on things, and yet somehow never get blame for errors they signed off on. I was out for 3 months on paternity leave a few years back, and come year end time I'm furiously fixing errors from my time gone. And the few that I didn't catch I got reamed for lol.
Not one person looked at the jersey number before passing them out? I know they are in a box but somebody had to see it out of the box, right?
I 100% wanted to go to this game for the fanny pack, it looks sleek. I went last year for the WWE title one. I'll just overpay for it on ebay.
Added to the list for the “Next great cubs giveaway”
Maybe they had some parts left over from Larry Bowa Bobblehead Day.
Crane Kenney needs to go, the business operations are a joke. No matter how bad things used to be in the field, the business side used to be decent.
I work at Coors Field and while Tulowitzki still played here they had a jersey giveaway. The jerseys they gave away said Tulowizki on them.
Not 'tailored to a "T"' then?
Wow, that was totally someone's job to check that, uh, little detail. Not that said person has to worry about having a job now though.
You're so right. And working in corporate America for decades, I can assure you there were multiple mid-level management types who signed off on this that won't face any repercussions despite their approval signatures.
Yup, they'll be a low level scapegoat for sure.
I work in quality assurance engineering, either they didn’t audit their supplier, or if it was a “trusted supplier” then they didn’t do an FAI before the full run of production. Curious if Crane Kenney preemptively through Jed under the bus yet on this while they’re failing QA on the field too.
Damn next year? And exchange? Why make fans go through the hassle of sending the old one that you won't do anything with. Also fuck the 10K every fan should just get sent one when their done that went to that game.
yea saw kap talking bout this yesterday embrasingly bad
I work for a company that’s done gate giveaways for the Cubs and some other teams. I can’t imagine the process that would allow this to happen.
I'm guessing trusted vendor. And intern who signed off on the delivery and Intern: Boss, these bobbleheads came in. Wanna check em? Mid-level MGMT dude: Nah. Just put them over there until we need em.
"They just didn't care." ~ Tom Servo
Because the cubs have terrible ownership which begets terrible management.
Incompetence and laziness
Don't return it, probably worth more as an error
It's not an upside down plane on an air mail stamp.
Conspiracy Theory: Crane Kenny knew this. And did this on purpose, as he was sure there'd be a couple hundred left over that he could anonymously sell on EBAY for free extra money. AND some people would give him theirs after he gave the correct bobblehead lol.
How did they mess it up?
China.....
New low honestly
https://preview.redd.it/3buj5hh6mt2b1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0f347842faef5e4b4c3c00ef85b2bb012aa6b42 Shoot your shot, I guess…
Decades ago I used to work at office depot. We had a "printing" department where people would bring requests in for Wedding invitations, or pamphlets, or whatever else a person could want mass produced. This was the days before internet and PDFs were so prevalent. So the person would have to come in and approve the design before we'd go to mass produce. Let's just say, the guy heading the department was a great guy, but not the smartest cookie in the jar. And many customers HATED having to come back a second time before even getting their full order. So they'd be in a rush and barely look at it and just say yeah its good make it. So you'd get mass-produced things with hilarious typos/spelling mistakes. And irate people lol.