Last Updated on 2017-05-27 , 4:12 pm

Think you’ve got a bad boss? You haven’t seen the worst of it yet. In yet another bizarre workplace practice in China, a company in Chongqing has decided to engage in a new type of punishment – forcing their employees to choke down bitter gourd in front of their co-workers.

40 of Leshang Decorations Corporation’s employees were humiliated at a staff meeting by being made to stand up and bite pieces out of the raw, bad-tasting vegetable.

 

The rationale? It “motivates” unproductive employees to hit sales targets – or at least, that’s what the higher-ups claim it does.

 

The company is said to make bulk orders of bitter gourds at 2.5 yuan per kg, and reserves them for employees only. But they don’t just get regular, everyday squashes – they pick out the largest and most bitter ones available on the market to bring about the most suffering to the “lazy” employees.

Apparently, this isn’t the first time the corporation has imposed mandatory punishments on staff who fail to meet targets. They were previously forced into doing rounds of squats, push-ups, and sprints around the office, before some of the bosses complained that employees had grown too accustomed to these punishments.

Which led them to come up with something more gruelling – this.

The punishment may have pushed some employees to work harder, but it’s also driven many of them out the door, with half of the new recruits deciding to quit. An employee gave a list of reasons for why people made the decision to leave: incapability to meet expectations, high pressure, low pay, and shame due to being punished in front of co-workers.

Many Chinese employees are proud of their ability to chi ku (吃苦), a Chinese expression that directly translates to “eating bitterness”, but perhaps the guys over at Leshang Corporation took it a little too seriously.

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This post was first published on goodyfeed.com