We have a winner in the “Best Euphemism of the Year” competition. It goes to the folks at the Mayo Clinic, who built a desk fitted over a standard treadmill, which they are calling a “vertical workstation.” The idea is that obese people can walk while they work, thus burning calories at a rapid rate until they disappear altogether.
Maybe there’s a good idea here, but we at this blog tested one of these things for a week, and we found a number of problems which the Mayo Clinic people need to address:
- If you drop a slice of pepperoni pizza, it takes exactly six seconds before it comes back around and you can pick it up again
- It’s difficult to light a cigarette on the treadmill, and there’s no place to attach an ashtray
- It makes a bad hangover seem a whole lot worse
- It’s hazardous if you wear flip-flops to work in the summer
- The noise of the treadmill motor is so loud, you can’t even hear what David Hasselhoff is saying on that video…
There you have it, Mayo Clinic. Back to the old drawing board.
A lab assistant demonstrates a vertical workstation from the Mayo Clinic. REUTERS/Mayo Clinic/Handout
Trackback
2 comments so far
Why doesn’t anyone ever think “Hey, maybe fat people WANT to be fat.” or even “You know what…why don’t we just leave fat people alone?”
Maybe we don’t WANT to walk in place while we work at our desks. Like fat people don’t have enough stress. Do we really want to add physical exhaustion to our work day? Do we really want to show up at the important meeting with sweat running down our faces and our shirts drenched in perspiration?
I THINK NOT!
- Posted by KIn other news, the Mayo Clinic reported that usage of employee ’sick days’ has increased by 210% in the past 4 months….
- Posted by Melly