T-Shirts 15: Fill & Download for Free

I always ordered from Flipkart.Until this one day , I installed the Amazon app just for trying.So a few days after I installed the app,was just checking the offers and deals on the app where I got to know about the Amazon Treasure Hunt contest(for people who don't know,its an offer where they provide a clue whose answer is a product and that product's price is ₹ 1)They uploaded a new clue every 15 mins and you have to think at the speed of light as the stock finishes in 15-30 seconds.I was addicted to this contest and the whole day I was trying to get something at ₹ 1.That moment finally came when I ordered a Breaking Bad DVD set for just ₹ 1 which also had a DIARY and a T SHIRT included whose actual price was around ₹ 5000 :)​​The order was delivered the next day only ,but when I opened the package I was surprised that DIARY N T SHIRT were not included.Being an ardent follower of Breaking Bad, I was very disappointed that the T SHIRT was missingSo I called the customer service and told them about the problem.The lady was very kind and said that they will compensate for it by giving me a gift card of ₹ 300 and hung up and I received it within 1 hour :)​The next thing I did was check out the Breaking Bad T shirts on Amazon.And again I was disappointed to find that all T shirts cost more than ₹ 500.So I emailed them once more saying that you compensated very less for the missing items.So this was what I received​I received ₹ 600 more.And this was within 5 minutes of writing my email.I was astonished to see such a rapid and considerate action.I was the happiest person that day .It goes to show how Amazon treats its customers, not just a source of earning money but with gratitude and respect.They didn't need to do that as the product was sold for just ₹ 1 and they could have said that you have got enough for the price you paid but they didn't :)Sorry Flipkart, you lost a loyal customer that day ;-)​

I never had to send a student home, but I once almost got sent home from high school because of a t-shirt I was wearing.See, it was a Nirvana t-shirt. The front had the classic Nirvana face and the back said this: Flower sniffin, kitty pettin, baby kissin, corporate rock whores.I would cover up the word “whores” with masking tape.I remember it was 10th grade and I was at lunch. And a male teacher walked up to me to complain about my attire.Mr. K: Miss Lewis. I think your t-shirt is inappropriate.Me, blinking with innocence: But Mr. K, I covered up the word “whores.” What else could be wrong?Mr. K: Molly, it says “kitty pettin”.Me: I like kitties, Mr. K. Don’t you like to pet kittens?Mr. K: Miss Lewis, don’t play games. You know it’s inappropriate.Me: I don’t understand Mr. K. What’s wrong with petting kittens?Mr. K, getting visibly distressed: Don’t play games, Miss Lewis. You know what it means!Me: No, Mr, K, I don’t know what it means. Could you please explain it to me?Mr. K: No. No, I won’t. Just don’t wear it again. And be glad I’m not sending you home to change your clothes.Me: But Mr. K, if you could just explain it to me, I’ll be sure to listen… like a good girl.But he was already gone. Too embarrassed to continue the conversation. Walking away, unsure how to deal with a sassy 15-year old Molly.

I don’t know.6–7 years ago winning a t-shirt was something special to me. Back then I was a beginner, and also there were not so many contests to win t-shirts, compared to what we have nowadays. I remember how happy I was when I received one of my very first t-shirts; as I recall, it was from TopCoder, for some TCHS event. It was a big deal - see, I actually won something in an international competition, online, competing against people from all over the world!Nowadays I don’t track it at all. First of all - I already have enough such t-shirts from different competitions and training camps. Some of my t-shirts ended as a present to father/mother/girlfriend/relative, and I still have a few which I haven’t even unpacked. Also, I don’t care much about my looks, but there are lots of t-shirts which even I wouldn’t wear - it seems like in a lot of cases organizers intentionally make their t-shirts look like total shit :) Maybe I’m not nerdy enough for these t-shirts… You know, some of them literally make me think “I’m not going to wear this one even at home, even when nobody could see it… And I’m a bit ashamed simply by the fact that I own such t-shirt…”. Contests like Google Code Jam are making nice t-shirts each year - but there are only few of these.At present point there are lots of competitions, a lot of them are giving huge number of t-shirts or have low overall level of contestants (or both), so winning one isn’t too hard. It is usually harder to actually get your prize, in case you care about it. I just got used to the fact that most of the t-shirts that I’m winning are not really going to reach me, and some random t-shirts arrive from time to time.A lot of competitions work this way - people can’t receive much more serious prizes. You can check this topic for some nice stories about FHC prize money, or this topic for some stories about HackerRank.Talking about HackerEarth, I only won a few t-shirts there (I’m rarely participating in their contests and they don’t give out too many t-shirts), and I think I received most (if not all) of them.HackerRank is a different story. In past I was taking part in a lot of contests there. Today both I’m not a very active contestant and number of contests at HackerRank decreased. I have no idea about exact number of t-shirts I won there. Back in 2014–15 they were delivering them rather well, so I got quite a few over half a year. Then they stopped to deliver them first - up to the point when one day in 2016 I contacted them with a list of 31 t-shirts I won over the time after the day I got their last t-shirt delivered. They proposed to send me money instead, but then I simply didn’t get any response to one of my follow-up messages and I decided to leave it as it is. And currently official list of countries they don’t deliver t-shirts to got much bigger, and Ukraine is also on it. I think the biggest effort I may put on it in future would be changing address in my profile once I move to a different country :)I also had similar story with CodeChef, back when they were giving t-shirts and pen drives instead of laddus which you can spend in any way you want. Once I counted that I should get enough t-shirts for whole football team (and a few reserve players) but I didn’t receive any yet, I pinged them about it - they said they weren’t aware of the fact that I didn’t receive any prize so far (and it turned out I was not the only one), and all they send to me was a package with 4 or 5 t-shirts and pen drives.So if you want to count how many t-shirts I won - first we need to agree if this number is about all t-shirts or only about t-shirts which actually reached me :)P.S. Just in case some person from one of the mentioned sites will read this answer and think “Damn, we should reach out this guy and resolve it!” - I don’t think it is worth it. I’m not really into spending my time and effort on it, taking into account that my native town isn’t covered by FedEx/UPS so I’ll have to go to a different city just to pick it up, and also knowing that I’m likely going to move to a different country in a month or two so the address will change… You’d better focus on handling it in a right way for other people - I believe that these prizes could be really motivating for some beginners, and they’d be glad to get their t-shirt or souvenir no matter how nerdy/ugly it is; just like I was happy receiving my TCHS t-shirt long time ago (and it was a nice t-shirt!). When it doesn’t work out well and they have to spend a lot of time and effort to make organizers deliver this prize, and sometimes they end up with nothing anyway - it doesn’t sound like a good thing for promoting competitive programming.