Comments | smurasaki: Should Weight Watchers be a work activity?

smurasaki

Should Weight Watchers be a work activity?

May 23, 2012 19:01

I hate it when things bother me and I can't quite put my finger on why. This is one of those things. Weight Watchers has some kind of thingy with workplaces, wherein people who work at a specific company/organization get discounted membership and meetings on site. The library is offering this. And allowing people to flex their meetings - which ( Read more... )

work, weight watchers, health, fail, weight, war on food

Comments 8

marag May 24 2012, 02:21:25 UTC

Ugh, I have a strong dislike of offices that make anything like this work time. Okay, throw a party for the whole office, that can be work time, but anything that's just for a smaller portion of the office should be done on personal time.

Avi's office is the *worst*. They have (I kid you not) a gardening club that meets during work time.

smurasaki May 24 2012, 03:54:34 UTC

Yeah, that's part of my "wait...this doesn't seem quite right." Or, like I said to Nenena, if this was one option. But...

nenena May 24 2012, 02:58:31 UTC

Eh, some of the teachers at my middle school started a Weight Watchers program, and it's offered as an option when we do "fun shit for the hell of it" time during PD days. Other options include things like massages or a cooking class. These things do happen on PD days, which means that yes technically we get paid for them, but in the case of Weight Watchers I'm not really bothered because:

1. It's something that a group of employees have to decide to start, not something that an employer decides to do. The core group is going to be people who choose to be in Weight Watchers because they want to be in Weight Watchers anyway. I see nothing wrong with those people taking advantage of a discount and gathering a larger support group in the process.

2. It's offered as one among several options for PD time.

3. In the grand scheme of things, Weight Watchers is a lot better than a lot of commercial weight loss programs. I really don't think it's fair to characterize WW as "not a health program" because it IS actually a health program ( ... )

smurasaki May 24 2012, 03:53:22 UTC

Actually, that makes me feel a little better. I know very little about various weight loss programs, having never had any reason to find out about them. I'm still iffy about work-sponsored weight loss programs, but it sounds like they picked a (or the) good one.

If the library had a non-weight loss health program as well, I wouldn't care. Or if the meetings weren't something people have to flex for. (That is, because it's paid time, they have to be scheduled off for some hours that they would ordinarily be at work. We're not, for the most part, salaried. PD days - is that like inservice? - sound a bit different from that.)

nenena May 24 2012, 04:48:12 UTC

Yep, PD is inservice. It's a regular work day except that we get a full hour for lunch (as opposed to the 27 minutes we get during a regular school day). During that lunch hour we usually have several fun, non-work-related activities to choose from. This happens to be the time that the WW group at my school meets, since it's a time that's convenient for everyone (they HAVE to be there) and there are no conflicts with other school-related activities. I've also heard of other WW groups at schools in the district just having regular meetings after school, usually after a faculty meeting ( ... )

smurasaki May 25 2012, 01:07:03 UTC

The whole thing seems to originate in HR. I have some question as to whether the flexing for it business is really okay, legally speaking, since it is paying people for completely non-work activities at the expense of people putting in their normal hours of work.

At least it sounds like an okay program.

cmcmck May 24 2012, 07:05:34 UTC

This bugs the hell out of me! I'm a non smoker and I used to get really riled when still employed by others that 'cig breaks' seemed to be an okay thing on the firm's time!

smurasaki May 25 2012, 01:02:55 UTC

Yeah, the sensible option there would be to allow mini-breaks for all, smokers or not. Which, in fact, we did at the bookstore that fired (thankfully) its management right before the Christmas season (not the best timing). Since the employees were now running that location, we just decreed that anybody who needed to take five could, well, take five. They just had to let whoever they were working with know.