waterboarded at work

"You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales."

haha until i read the article i thought dan was making a custos joke

but that is an ACTUAL QUOTE

This story is perfect. I can't imagine we can even come up with anything to say about it.

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/070718/smallroles/baldwin_l.jpg

Life: Resembling an Onion story more and more every day

Life: Resembling a George Saunders story more and more every day.

This story is perfect. I can't imagine we can even come up with anything to say about it.

-- Hurting 2, Monday, April 14, 2008 3:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

totally. amazing lede

can we just quote from it?

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

i thought this was going to be about seven second delay.

s1ocki that is totally the money line

Indeed, Hudgens's lawsuit, filed Jan. 17 in Provo, suggests the testosterone-poisoned setting of the David Mamet play "Glengarry Glen Ross."

^^ journo unable to help himself

The team leader also threatened to draw a mustache in permanent marker on the face of sales people for "negativity,"

http://bp1.blogger.com/_J3LnIizLcn0/R_s5LeeDIYI/AAAAAAAAAk8/hRYARpiY_3Q/s320/P1110082.1.jpg

Only later, after describing the experience to a former employer, was he told: "You've just been waterboarded." "I said, 'What's waterboarding?' And the only difference was, instead of lying on a board, I was lying on a grassy hill."

Christopherson did not know the term, either, Brunt said: "He thought it had something to do with water skiing."

"How many times did the CIA even do waterboarding? Three times?" added Dave Ellis, the company president.

"But look at the damage it did to America's reputation," Brunt pointed out. "And it's going to hurt our image."

Couldn't you just revive the annoying co-workers thread instead?

Having worked many years as a phone-sales/survey jockey, this hardly surprises me at all.

i hate everything

s1ocki yr killin me

waterboarding us with lols

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

The morning Hudgens said he thought he was going to drown, his team was calling on behalf of "Trump University,"

This sounds like a short story opening line.

in every new yorker short story ever...

...a guy gets waterboarded at work.

He said that what he told a friend in the human relations office two hours later, after "coughing, choking, mucus" was: "My team just tried to kill me."

I mean fuck, every line in this story.

in the human relations office!

He said Christopherson told the executives that 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.

the unsung hero here is karl vick, the reporter

I mean fuck, every line in this story.

for me it is extra-special because at my old workplace we had a teambuilding exercise that involved being taken out to a horse stable at 7 in the fucking morning and were told to get the horses to into individual stalls without touching them, only when a member of my team finally located a bucket of oats and led the horse to the stable the people doing the training got upset because that wasn't what they had in mind, and in protest I waterboarded myself and everybody got upset the end

Yeah, I was just thinking that. Details like this don't juxtapose they'selves. (xpost)

karl vick would have told that story much better j0hn

whatever John's post just made me laugh

karl vick would have told that story much better j0hn

he declined my offer of a 60-40 split on the ghostwrite tho

i think this must be one of the happiest events in karl vick's journalistic career.

i mean you don't get handed this shit every day

fantastic. the only thing that could improve it is if a telesales operator were waterboarded by someone they'd woken at the weekend with an insurance offer.

at my old workplace we had a teambuilding exercise that involved being taken out to a horse stable at 7 in the fucking morning and were told to get the horses to into individual stalls without touching them, only when a member of my team finally located a bucket of oats and led the horse to the stable the people doing the training got upset because that wasn't what they had in mind

????? What the fuck did they want you to do? Stand behind the horses and scream?

hahhahahaha

"MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASSES YOU FUCKING RECALCITRANT HORSES!"
"... 'Recalcitrant'?"
"I panicked, okay?"

john worked with alex in nyc?

hahahaha the horses weren't properly honouring the fire

i think the joke was funnier before the elaborations.

I had to honor the Custos.

"I can't say he wasn't held down, but anybody holding him would have let him up if he'd held his hand up."

Nice.

is that in reference to the horse?

nnnno...

why are you called "oilyrags" anyway?

it's my blog name

I chose it while I was studying painting

it's not because someone tied you up and stuffed oilyrags in your mouth????

as a motivational technique, perhaps?

Just that one time, for a team-building excercize.

haha, xp

oilyrags was given a "code red" a la "a few good men" Guantanamo stylee?

tuomas will be mad if no-one explains to him that there isn't a secret 'water board'.

I bet the guys who got waterboarded in Iraq are better team players for the DownWithUSA team now.

Hahaha this is in PROVO, home of Brigham Young Uninversity and one drive-thru coffee place. Mormons are all about that crazy 'team-bulding' or 'trust-building' volatile shit. Too many dumb managerial books all encouraging them. On my first day of seminary in ninth grade, the teacher asked us all to fall backwards off this tall desk and everyone would catch you!!! Come on, it'll make you trust people! And I refused to do it and got hell of chided. Peer pressure is ripe, my friends! It is real!

Ha, Que got to a Saunders post before me. The people quoted in this story are actually seriously talking in Saunders corporate-motivator talk about doing absurd Saunders-style things to employees! It's incredible.

The important thing is, did the team improve? It did. Was Chad injured in any way? No. Chad showed leadership and we all thought it was really really helpful. As an illustration of the importance of closing those leads.

PROVO, Utah --