Workplace waterboarding?

[Dope Nose]

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/414237

Workplace waterboarding?
Sales rep launches lawsuit after 'team-building' exercise at Utah company leaves him traumatized

Karl Vick
Washington Post

PROVO, Utah–No one really disputes that Chad Hudgens was waterboarded outside a Provo office park last May 29, right before lunch, by his boss.

There is also general agreement that Hudgens volunteered for the "team-building exercise," that he lay on his back with his head downhill, and that co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a jug over his nose and mouth.

And it's widely acknowledged that the supervisor, Joshua Christopherson, then told the assembled sales team, whose numbers had been lagging: "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales."

What's at issue in the lawsuit Hudgens filed against his former employers – just as in the ongoing global debate over the CIA's waterboarding of terrorism suspects – is the question of intent.

Prosper Inc. maintains that what the supervisor did, while unauthorized, overzealous and misguided, falls far short of torture, and in fact was not nearly as bad as Hudgens makes out in his quest for damages.

"We're not the mean waterboarding company that people think we are," said George Brunt, general counsel for the firm, which sells online and personalized instruction packaged as "coaching" and running $3,000 to $15,000 – to customers solicited by telephone.

Hudgens alleged that if the 10-person sales team went a day without a sale, members had to work the next day standing up; Christopherson took away their chairs. The team leader also threatened to draw a moustache in permanent marker on the face of sales people for "negativity," Hudgens said.

Brunt disputes this, calling Christopherson a "nice, sensitive guy."

Christopherson called the all-male sales team into the break room last May and announced, "We're going to do an exercise." He asked for a volunteer.

Hudgens raised his hand. "Keep in mind," Hudgens said, "the last time we did a team-building exercise outside, we did an egg toss."

"So they held me down," Hudgens said, "and the next thing I know, Josh has a gallon jug of water and he's pouring it on my face. I can't scream because the water's going down my throat.

"I'm not getting any air," Hudgens said. "Toward the end, I'm starting to black out ... The sensation that's going through my head is, `I'm going to drown.'"

Brunt said Christopherson told the executives he was inspired by reading about the Greek philosopher Socrates, who is said to have once held a student's head under water, then told him he must want to learn as badly as he wanted air.

"We don't know what he was thinking, but we know that he wasn't thinking waterboarding, or torture," Brunt said. Christopherson, suspended for two weeks while the company investigated the incident, is back on the job.

After his experience, what's Hudgens' view of the debate on the waterboarding of terrorism suspects?

"I don't know if the government should do it or not," he said. "But I can tell you firsthand, because it happened to me, it definitely works. They didn't tell me it was going to happen, but if they did, holy cow, I would've told them whatever they wanted me to tell them."

 

[Lighthouse]

Man, I swear to God that reads exactly like an article from the Onion. Is it sadder or more hilarious that it's real?