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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.”
The suit claims that Hudgens’ team leader, Joshua Christopherson, asked for volunteers in May for “a new motivational exercise,” which he did not describe. Hudgens, who was 26 at the time, volunteered in order to “prove his loyalty and determination,” the suit claims. Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs. Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’ mouth and nostrils – like the interrogation strategy known as “waterboarding” – and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges. “At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded,” the suit alleges. Hudgens left Prosper because of sleeplessness, anxiety and depression he experienced after the waterboarding, the suit claims. He required psychological counseling for emotional trauma, the suit claims.
The suit accuses Christopherson and Prosper of assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and wrongful termination. It also accuses Christopherson of interfering with Hudgens employment relationship with Prosper.
Joshua, I have a van for sale, and I know a nice campsite, next to a river.
Utah, eh ??? Mormons you suppose ???
What would YOU have done?–as a program participant? Would you hold him down, pour the water, be allowed to be waterboarded?
Always fun to see how much of one’s self you are willing to give up to get along.
I was at a team building conference wherein boys and girls were to move that orange around in a circle without moving the hands. I declined to participate to the dismay of my boss. 3 months later, he apologized to me after his wife had an unpleasant experience at her own seminar doing the same thing.
In my mind, this requirement to conform starts when you show up for work on time.
Bobbo, could you clarify what you had to do with this orange? I didn’t follow why you wouldn’t participate and why it was unpleasent.
Thanks!
#4–Carl==its a popular team building exercise. You stand in a circle alternating boy/girl. Teams compete against one another. You put your hands behind your back and one person has an orange under their chin. You then pass the orange around the circle back to the starting person. This involves all kinds of face in the boobs contact.
I enjoy the game very much as foreplay to something real, but not as history with my co-workers. I was concerned that any woman in the group could later complain of anything inappropriate and thats just what my bosses wife did–regardless of what really happened.
Forewarned is forearmed.
The matter probably won’t, but if it goes to trial, weeeee. Now we get the arguments of whether or not water boarding is torture into court.
Actually, there is already prior convictions of war crimes against the Japanese for using waterboarding against US soldiers.
It is sickening to think that our current “leaders” think its perfectly OK to use it against our enemy when our grandfathers were so outraged when it happened to them.
It is even more sickening to think that some manager out there thinks he should use it on his/her workers to motivate them. If that happened to me, I’m not sure if they’d send police to come arrest the people that did it or paramedics to save the ones that made it back to the office alive.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/rj9rd
And we thought that the characters from “The Office” could never exist in real life…
#7, Daniel,
Good point. But they were “Nips” and in the post WWII scene, effen Japs didn’t count. Fer nuttin !!!
We are now in the civilized time and world of the Twentieth Century.
Rush Limbaugh attributed all the torture in Abu Ghraib to “college pranksterism”. We should listen to fine war heroes like him on such important topics.
From what I understand this Prosper company is part of Trump University and is the Coaching side of Robert G. Allen, and a bunch of other “get-rich-quick” motivational guru’s. I wonder what Donald Trump has to say about this kind of practice…I don’t think this is the last we will hear of this.
Are you kidding me?
1) This supervisor and whoever else was in on this brilliant idea- should be forced to run while simulatingly being shot at, of course simulating how much they’d be running/fighting for their lives.
I take that back, the shooting shouldn’t be simulated.
2) Why would a group ever need training in aggressive selling tactics? I buy, and encourage others to, only products that work, not what I’m being talked into.
I guess that’s what helping make America so great, right? Quantity over Quality…
Why sue? Go to the cops and charge the guy with assault. I don’t think even a written consent would be upheld unless it spelled out in detail what kind of stuff the company could do to you.
I’m not quite clear what kind of permanent injury the guy claimed. Is he traumatized against taking a shower now? If it’s just that momentary fear and humiliation, I don’t think his damages amount to much.
All that being said, I don’t think I’d want to work for a company that puts its employees under such pressure.