I have to say MLH I hope you will stick around in these forums... Because I quite admire your dogged pursuit of your point.
Actually, the marketing department might care if the tacky parents ate the ice cream. The intent is to encourage families to eat at the restaurant, but they might also hope and/or expect to sell dessert to the adults. If they eat the kids free ice cream, that could lose revenue. These greedy corporations don't like that.
Southwest may have calculated that say 50% of the woman would take up the offer, but if the "onward gifters" were too prolific it becomes a double whammy. They give out more free beer than anticipated and they lose sales to some of the men who received the beer. Bear in mind that this promotion didn't increase sales.. The ticket was sold without anyone knowing a free beer was included. It was pure PR. Anyway, I think the FA managed to take away any PR benefit by her silly intervention, but on the bright side... It gave you hours of fun debating the ethics of the whole thing on an airline forum...
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