BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis and we're playing this week with Roy Blount Jr., Amy Dickinson and Brian Babylon. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you so much. You shocked me. Right now it is time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
PAUL BASKEN: Yeah, hi, it's Paul in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Chevy Chase?
BASKEN: Well, we're inside the Beltway so we don't know what the real world is like, but it's pretty good in here.
SAGAL: Well, thanks for calling in, Paul. It's great to have you with us. You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Paul's topic?
KURTIS: Two kinds of people in this company - the go-getters and the got-goners.
SAGAL: Not having a job is tough, but it's not nearly as bad sometimes as having a job. This week we heard about one workplace that is making things pretty tough for its employees. Our panelists are going to tell you about a particularly bad workplace initiative. Guess the true story, you'll win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. You ready to play?
BASKEN: Yeah.
SAGAL: All right. Your first story comes from Amy Dickinson.
AMY DICKINSON: Like many workplace nightmares, this one started when the boss went on vacation. Sherry Duval, CEO of an Internet startup in Brooklyn came back from Thailand 35 pounds lighter, so she decided to create a weight loss challenge for her employees. Duval removed the cronuts from the commissary and secretly had the milkshake machines contents filled with Slim-Fast.
The workers liked their treadmill desks at first, but then the boss installed overhead tickertape screens to post each employees mileage and weight as it fluctuated through the day and the fat shaming began. Duval started a thigh-high club featuring the heftiest workers. Desk phones were mounted onto hand weights - all the better to curl your biceps with.
Grumbling started and some fainting happened when the office heat was pumped up Bikram Yoga style to 105 degrees. But the first HR complaints didn't really come in until Duval insisted that employees do jumping jacks during conference calls.
I'm a customer service rep, I shouldn't really get shin splints at work, grumbled employee Jesse Chapman. Duval said anyone who didn't like it could drop down and give me 50. Ultimately, the company did lose weight overall - a hundred pounds of pure gristle when Duval was escorted from the premises.
SAGAL: A fitness program with a strong shaming element. Next up, a story of hard work made harder from Brian Babylon.
BRIAN BABYLON: A comedy club in Barcelona, Spain has started charging audience members by the laugh. Instead of buying a ticket to get into the club, people pay 50 cents for each laugh picked up by facial recognition devices mounted on the back of chairs. You don't laugh, you don't pay. This means comedians have to perform to a room full of people not trying to laugh, while simultaneously staring at themselves on tiny screens. However, comedians have stopped telling jokes and started to straight tickling customers.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A comedy club in Barcelona makes things harder for the comedians by charging the audience members by how much they laughed. Your last story of even tougher days at the office comes from Roy Blount Jr.
ROY BLOUNT JR.: When a local minister caused a stir in Pascagoula, Mississippi by denouncing health food as satanic, local organic grocer Bronwyn Loomis saw green. Business has been slow, Loomis said last week. And I thought this would be a fun attraction for our progressive art centric community. By this, she meant her promotional Healthy As Hell Week...
(LAUGHTER)
BLOUNT: ...Which featured everything from little red pitchforks in the apples to hellish shrieks issuing from the leaks. And most notably, on all the employees, vegetable costumes from Hell.
I was supposed to be a possessed a beat, said a produce specialist who preferred not to be identified by name. People would ask me, what are you now? And I'd have to say over and over, a possessed beat.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOUNT: And they'd say a what, what? Or they'd just back away. What I want to know is what possessed Bronwyn to come up with this. After just two days, Healthy As Hell Week fizzled out.
SAGAL: So here are the stories to choose from. From Amy Dickinson, a company in New York that introduced a fitness program that was a little extreme with your weight broadcast on screens during the day. From Brian Babylon, a comedy club in Spain that charges audience members by how much they laugh, giving them an incentive not to laugh for the comedians to work through. Or from Roy Blount Jr., the story of an organic grocery that went with a satanic vegetable promotion, requiring the workers to dress up in vegetable costumes. Which of these is the real story of workplace troubles that we found in the week's news?
BASKEN: Yeah, I have no idea, so I'm going to go with Roy's. I'll go with Roy's.
SAGAL: You're going to go with Roy's story of the satanic vegetables?
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right, that is your choice - Roy's story. Well, we spoke to someone involved with the real story.
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ORIOL BOMBI: Through facial recognition system, it allows people to attend the show and only pay at the very end for the amount of times you've laughed.
SAGAL: That was Oriol Bombi who came up with a pay per laugh idea for the comedy club in Spain. I am so sorry Paul, but Brian had the real answer, the comedy club. You did not win, but you earned a point for Roy...
BLOUNT: I'm sorry.
SAGAL: ...For a satanic vegetable story. Thank you so much for playing with us.
BASKEN: Thank you.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) Don't laugh at me. Baby, please don't make fun of me. Don't laugh at me. Mama, please don't make fun of me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.