CHINESE COMPANY FORCES EMPLOYEES TO EAT LIVE WORMS FOR NOT MEETING SALES TARGET
Chinese
companies have been known to subject their employees to some of the most
unusual and degrading punishments imaginable, but this latest one takes the
cake. According to recent new reports, a company Hanzhong, Shaanxi
province, decided to punish who failed to meet their sales targets by feeding
them a disgusting cocktail of baijou liquor and live mealworms.
The degrading
punishment was reportedly carried out in in a plaza in downtown Hanzhong,
where 60 company employees were summoned for an outdoor meeting. Witnesses
took to the internet to report that the group of young workers was approached
by a a man carrying bags of live mealworms, who proceeded to pick various
numbers of them with chopsticks and drop them in plastic cups full of baijou.
Employees who had failed to reach their sales quota were asked to step forward
and drink the gag-inducing cocktail.
Five or
six poor-performing employees were reportedly asked to drink the
worm-infested baijou in front of their colleagues. One of the employees, who
chose to remain anonymous, later told the Huashang Daily newspaper that
each of the “offending” workers had to swallow four worms for every client they
lost.
One of the recipients
of the brutal punishment was a pregnant woman, who refused to drink the
cocktail for fear of losing the pregnancy. “I can’t eat worms now, I can’t
drink either, unless I don’t want my baby,” she reportedly told the sales
manager. Eventually, a male colleague received the cruel punishment on her
behalf.
Photos of the bizarre
event taken by passers-by quickly went viral on the Chinese social media, and
sparked the anger of millions of users. The company that staged the punishment
was soon identified as Ai Jia, a sales group formed by 10 construction
companies. A man surnamed Cao, the owner of a bathroom equipment company
part of Ai Jia group acknowledged the punishment, but added that the
employees were ‘willing to receive it’.
Emboldened by the
media coverage and the outrage of the general public, another employee of Ai
Jia came forward and reported that Every morning, employees of the group
set a business target for the day, and if they fail to hit it, they receive
various punishments the following day. “Other than worms, we have also eaten
live squid and ants before,” he said.
Despite the huge
backlash, another Ai Jia company owner maintained that the punishment was
actually just “a special form of encouragement”.
According to the
article 88 of China’s employment contract law, employers are not allowed to
humiliate or physically harm their workers, and the labor inspection
bureau of Hanzhong city told the Huashang Daily that forcing people to eat live
worms definitely counts as a violation of the law. They also urged employees
subjected to the cruel punishment to report the incident to the local labor
department.
I’m
thinking that the offending company doesn’t risk more than a small fin, if
that, because this is the latest in a long series of disturbing Chinese
employee punishments by their employers, and things don’t appear to be changing for the better.READ MORE
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