Award Winning Company Waterboards Employee
A motivational coaching company in Utah is being sued by a former employee for using waterboarding as a performance improvement technique. No word yet on whether snarling dogs, loud music, or pictures of Dick Cheney were also being used to properly inspire the employees.
So, you think you have a crappy job?
This is what happens when torture becomes acceptable in the mainstream. It’s also quite a stark commentary on the state of corporate employee / employer relationships:
A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe. In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.” …
I’ve heard of some extreme motivational techniques in the workplace, but this just seems a bit over the top to me. No word yet whether or not the company endorses electrodes clamped to employee’s genitalia as an additional incentive not to slack off on the job.
Is this how Prosper, Inc. won the E&Y Utah Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005?
There’s a Dick Cheney joke in here someplace, but I’m too tired from traveling today to develop it right now.
Just amazing.
How long did the employee hold out before confessing to slacking off?
From what Olberman said Thursday night, the waterboarded employee was actually the best salesman. Which seems quite odd to me. Wouldn’t you reward the best? The manager said ” If you don’t want to end up like this, sell more, he sells the most, do better.” And that seems to defeat the entire purpose of being rewarded for hard work.
But hell, let’s be honest. In this day, in this Bush-it day, competence is not rewarded or even wanted. Legality is anathema to these folks. If the people at the top can’t be honest or legal or reward honest work given for an honest days pay, why the hell would we expect any private company to reward ?
The fish rots from the head, down.
maybe the guy liked it, and it was his reward.
This from a firm that teaches other companies how to motivate their employees? A company I once worked for must have been a client of theirs. They once suspended someone for putting up a note at his desk that read “The flogging will end when morale improves”.