Intern quits after company pressures him to surrender NVIDIA graphics card he won in raffle

An intern at a Shanghai-based corporation quit his job after his company pressured him to give up an NVIDIA graphics card he’d won in a raffle.

All good things come with a price, as one intern discovered after his company sent him on an all-expenses-paid business trip to an NVIDIA roadshow in Suzhou, China, on November 14.

The intern, whose company was not mentioned in local news reports, took part in a raffle at the event, and ended up winning an NVIDIA RTX 5060 graphics card worth 3,000 yuan ($422 USD).

That same day, one of the intern’s colleagues told him that their business’s finance department had been made aware of his raffle win and demanded that he turn over the graphics card, seeing as they paid for the trip and all.

However, he later discovered that they hadn’t actually been notified, assuming that his coworker was simply jealous… but it wouldn’t remain that way for long.

Tech intern’s NVIDIA raffle win turns into corporate controversy

Eventually, his company got wind of the graphics card and asked him to hand it in. News outlets state that he was pulled into numerous meetings with upper management, who continued to ask him to hand over the card.

Despite repeated attempts to pressure him into giving up his prize, the intern refused, and his employers started hinting that he should look for other work elsewhere.

Not wanting to give in to their demands, the intern quit, taking the graphics card with him.

The story went viral on Chinese social media platforms and even made its way over to the West, sparking a viral debate on the ethics of companies demanding that their employees give them prizes won on trips funded by their business.

China-based news outlet Fast Technology included statements from lawyers in the country, who determined the ownership of such items depends on whether they were won out of “luck” or by “performing official duties” for the company.

One lawyer argued that, since the lottery was only for “individual audience members” and winning the prize was completely random, the card would be considered the property of the individual, not the business, unless a contract stated that entering the raffle was part of obligatory work duties.

This is the latest story to go viral out of China after a man in Mongolia won $422 USD by laying down on a mattress for 33 hours straight earlier this month.