Wednesday, January 18, 2006
What a rip-off
The corporation I work for likes to take care of its employees (or at least give an impression that it does). From time to time they’ll have special programs or activities for us to participate in. The last one they had was health and fitness related, called “10K a Day”. The premise was that, in order to maintain optimal health, you needed to walked about 10,000 steps a day. For a nominal fee of $5 they were going to provide participants with a pedometer, a tracking spreadsheet, inspiring articles and incentive prizes.
I thought to myself, “That seems like a good deal. I’ll get a pedometer (to measure our steps) and some prizes too. Oh and some exercise as well.” So I sent in my five bucks to the third party company that is running it. The program starts and I find out that, of the 300 employees that work in my building, only 5 are participating. Perhaps that should have been a warning to me. I also find out that we are supposed to self-monitor ourselves and write down how many steps we take every day. Right, like that’s going to happen.
The basic pedometer we recieve is totally cheap. I saw pedometers on Amazon.com with more features for only $2.50. The first few days I write down the numbers. After that I’m just making them up. They don’t care. I get a prize for turning in my spreadsheet at the halfway point and at the end. Well the halfway point comes and goes and there are no prizes. *grumble* Fine. We’ll get them at the end. The articles they send are useless common sense that anybody could have come up with. There is nothing inspirational or helpful about them.
Finally the program ends and I turn in my final spreadsheet. Weeks later the receptionist buzzes me and tells me to come pick up my prize for participating. Finally! I love prizes and gifts, even if I did pay for it myself. I go over to her desk and she hands me this hand towel. No, not even a hand towel, it’s smaller, like a face towel. It has “10K a Day” printed on it. WTF? All that effort and their idea of “prizes” (and yes, they did pluralize it) is a frickin face towel??
What a scam. Yes I missed the whole point of the program, but I was already going for walks. I thought it was a company-subsidized program with cool prizes (the other activities they sponsored included prizes like $25 gift certificates and movie tickets and stuff). Little did I know it was actually a money-making ploy by the third party company. Stupid me. Lesson learned: steer clear of programs that require an entry fee!
(Oh yeah, you know what I did with that stupid little towel? I immediately used it to scrub off that yogurt stain that’s been on my office chair for the past several months. It now sits carelessly discarded in one corner of my desk, having served its purpose in life.)