Waterboarding Hits the Private Sector

Used to be, when you needed to motivate a sales force, it went something like this:



But this is the 21st Century, the era of the War on Terra, when the top members of the Government meet in the White House to give an Ebert & Roper thumps up/thumbs down to various methods of torture. Is anybody surprise that waterboarding has made its way from Iraq and Gitmo to the private sector? In Utah, no less:

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 gallon 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.'

The main contention in his suit, apparently, is whether Hudgens knew what was really going to happen or not (the last exercise, he said was "an egg toss"). It seems fairly obvious he wouldn't have agreed to it knowing what it was.

On the other hand, those tedious "team building" things are pretty awful, anyway. Maybe waterboarding is a step up?