Hide the Doritos! Here comes HR
in [Weight Watchers]
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From: ricok987 on 22 May 2008 06:52 "Shelly" <shelly(a)nowhere.com> wrote in message news:20080522020906.537EB4E4DA(a)outpost.zedz.net... > http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/Advice/HideTheDoritosHereCom > esHR.aspx?page=1 > > Hide the Doritos! Here comes HR > With an eye on soaring health care costs, companies are becoming more > proactive about what their employees eat. > > By BusinessWeek > The lawyers at boutique law firm Littler Mendelson have always liked their > carbs. For years the firm's sumptuous San Francisco headquarters > overflowed > with endless trays of Krispy Kremes, gooey sweet rolls and gigantic > muffins. > > Then one day the attorneys showed up for a firm breakfast and found > hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, mini-quiches, cottage cheese and fresh fruit. > "Where's the doughnuts?" ranted the associates. > > Littler Mendelson's human-resources chief, Suzanne Perez, feared mass > sugar > withdrawal, but she yanked the junk anyway. And though she's not too > popular at the office right now, she's in good company. Google, Yamaha of > America, Caterpillar and others are putting health food in corporate break > rooms, cafeterias and vending machines, dumping doughnuts in favor of > organic fresh fruit and slapping "calorie taxes" on fatty foods. > > For several years the company wellness police -- the folks obsessed with > bringing down exploding health insurance costs -- have confined themselves > to targeting chunky cube dwellers with subsidized cholesterol drugs, free > gym memberships and New Age-spouting health coaches. But what good is all > that if the office vending machine is filled with candy, cola and chips, > or > if cookies and cake are served at every meeting? > > "I didn't think we were being aggressive enough," says Carol Baker, the HR > boss at Yamaha. > > But getting junkies to detox isn't easy. "People aren't ready to give up > everything," Baker says. > > Don't let them eat cake > Google, the company famously committed to doing no evil, is a case in > point. Yes, the Googleplex swarms with svelte 20-somethings in snug tops > and low-slung denim. But even these workers aren't immune to the so-called > Google 15 -- the number of pounds Googlers say they typically gain after > joining the company and partaking of its famous gratis grub. > > As one blogger put it, "I fully expect a Google Infarct Room to be opened > within two years." > > Google's "micro-kitchens" -- the snack stations within 200 feet of every > worker's desk -- were like small 7-Elevens. > > "We kept adding things and adding things and adding things," says Google's > former food-services chief, John Dickman. Like 20 kinds of sugared cereal. > Or, in the cafeteria, the Luther Burger, a bacon-cheese number with Krispy > Kreme doughnuts as the bun. > > It wasn't long before some Googlers were pondering the philosophical > implications on the company's in-house message boards. Wretched excess > with > stock options was one thing. But wasn't free junk food kind of, ahem, > evil? > > Yet when Dickman ditched the M&M's, employees argued that the measure was > about costs, not calories. (That was a hard case to make given Google's > valet parking, free massages and bidet-equipped restrooms.) > > "There were certain things they couldn't live without," Dickman says. So > the M&M's returned. But the junk-healthful ratio is now 50-50, with > agave-sweetened beverages, roasted nuts, sulfate-free dried fruit and > platters of organic crudit�s. > > At Yamaha, Baker has done away with the "zillions" of pies in favor of > regular shipments of organic fruit from San Francisco's Fruit Guys, whose > business in providing workplaces across the U.S. with pesticide-free, > locally grown fruit is exploding. (It turns out that fruit is cheaper than > the pies.) > > Lunchtime is another battle. Yamaha's Buena Park, Calif., headquarters is > situated near a thoroughfare chockablock with fast-food joints. So Baker > brought in a catering company offering healthful salads and sandwiches. > > "We're trying to change people's behaviors," she says. > > The 'calorie tax' > Baker soon found out that employees were not the only resisters. > > "The vending machine people were not very supportive," she says. At first, > she says, they grudgingly tossed in some trail mix and stuck a little > heart > sticker next to those fluorescent orange crackers with peanut butter. > > But within weeks, the potato chips and candy bars were back. Junk moves. > > That's why some companies are getting to employees' stomachs through their > wallets. After Caterpillar offered garden burgers in its cafeteria for a > buck last year, sales soared fivefold, to 2,500 a month. At mortgage giant > Freddie Mac, workers who order six healthful meals in the cafeteria get > the > seventh free. > > Florida Power & Light, Dow Corning and Sprint Nextel all charge more for > unhealthful food (the so-called calorie tax) and less for more healthful > fare. At Pitney Bowes, they moved the desserts away from the cash register > to curb impulse buys > > Some companies feel like a re-education camp. Microsoft's food honcho, > Mark > Freeman, created a color-coded system of icons to help make the healthful > stuff as recognizable as a Snickers bar. (Microsoft is the publisher of > MSN > Money). > > In each of Microsoft's 31 cafeterias, there are icons for vegan, > gluten-free, organic, sustainable, sugar-free, carb control and nondairy. > Freeman has also made the company's metropolislike headquarters a > trans-fat-free zone. > > At first, "everybody was yelling and screaming about the healthy food," > Freeman says. But the Microserfs are coming around. > > For those who don't, there is always tough love. HR types swarmed the New > York Marriott Marquis hotel in February to learn how to implement > lean-worker campaigns, biggest-loser contests and strategic-eating > seminars. During breaks over yogurt and fruit, the attendees swapped war > stories about how overweight workers eat up health-care dollars. > > As one executive from a major software company quipped: "We're waging a > war > on fat people." > > Junk food lovers, beware. These people are serious. > > This article was reported and written by Michelle Conlin for BusinessWeek. > Hey why not require dna testing, and full body scans as part of the interview process in the first place. If you can tell if someone will be sick 5, 10, 20 years down the road, well that's grounds for passing over that job candidate right there! Also, implant microchips in employees like owners do to their dogs. Just replacing junk food in offices with healthy stuff will not be enough. Employees can just buy and consume their own junk food. A microchip that monitors vital signs of employees will enable employers to make sure their employees are eating healthy-all the time!
From: The Master on 23 May 2008 11:05 On Thu, 22 May 2008, ricok987 wrote: > I was being sarcastic but think of this: Ok... Good. The scarry part is, however, that some people would agree with your sarcastic comment, and see nothing wrong with it... Anyhow, your new point... > if I told you 5 years ago oil > would be $135 a barrel, and gas $4.00+ per gallon you would think I was > nuts. Maybe 5, 10 years from now after we have to pay a $1.00 tax to eat a > McDonalds Hamburger-microchips in people will start to be a reality. I > think the police have the right to get dna samples of people for minor > crimes now, who knows, in 10 years they might get samples of every American > in order to maintain citizenship. It may very well be a "reality" in 10 years... Just look at what rights have been limited since 9/11, in the name of "national security"? Presidential orders are a violation of the constitution, but they are followed anyhow without question. National security was even used as an excuse for the FBI to obtain information on US citizens without search warrents. When the story broke on Yahoo news, I wrote my US rep, asking him how the FBI's powers will be limited to prevent such a violation of constitutional rights from happening again. My snail mail reply was "support our troops". Who's to say the "mark of the beast" won't be a manditory implant within the USA, to store identifying data. Drivers license, social security number, credit cards, can all be carried in "virtual vaults" stored in an EPROM based IC under the skin. And when that occures, the ability to store biometric data would be trivial. All in the name of "national security". One of my favorite saying is "I love this nation, it's the government that scares me..."
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