Job opportunity. This is a win-win, folks. It’s good for your health, good for your wallet. GymBird is offering $10,000 to walk 10,000 steps a day for a month. And yes, I know that the idea of 10,000 being the optimal number of steps needed in a day was a marketing gimmick. But there is evidence that it can reduce dementia, heart disease, and even certain cancers. I regularly get that many steps or more. But as much as I like the idea of the cash, I have no interest in documenting my wellness journey, insert eye-roll here, on social media. But you might. Send me a fruit basket if you get the gig.
Ah shit. You need to be a US citizen… otherwise I’d almost be a shoe in…
I have my step counter running on my phone and I average 15k steps a day at work.
I walk Fanny for an hour almost every day and get most of mine then.
My watch has a GPS function which lets you map out your exact route, measures changes in elevation, pace, etc.
It’s neat, but I’ve only used it a couple of times because turning on the GPS function hits the battery really hard, and most of the time I’m going over an area I already know, so there just isn’t much point.
I like having the step count on the main display, though. I agree that 10,000 is an arbitrary but useful goal and it’s nice having a reminder that I might want to walk more.
It can be shocking to see how little you walk sometimes.
I think I have a much better chance of getting this job…
https://www.foodandwine.com/van-leeuwen-ice-cream-taster-job-7551780
I’ve seen enough corporate thrillers to know how this goes.
A bright young true believer gets hired to taste ice cream. Three months later, they’re on the run after blowing the whistle when an unscrupulous CEO entangles them in a plot to dispose of bodies of nosy investigators in vats of Rocky Road.
😂
“TUTTI FRUITI IS PEOPLE!!!”
Comment of the day!
I’m on record as not really enjoying ice cream. That said, the first time I tried that brand it blew me away. I’ll fight you for that job!
Years ago (maybe 15?) the company I was working for had a fitness program that had cash rewards. It was sponsored by Richard Branson, oddly enough. They issued you pedometers and if you made your step requirements for a year you got like $1,000. You had to upload your steps from the pedometers to their website at least once a week. Seemed pretty straightforward, so I did it.
I got my thousand bucks, but it was MUCH more stressful than fun or interesting. I don’t remember the step requirement, but it was at the upper limit of what was reasonable to expect someone to do. And if you missed a day, you had some serious catching up to do. If you missed a week or more, you might as well quit (that’s not exactly true — there was a $500 level, if I recall correctly — but at that point you’re doing the math and going, nah, this ain’t worth it).
People were miserable. Folks worked out all sorts of boondoggles, like putting it on your kid at soccer practice or clipping it to your dog’s collar or just plain sitting and shaking it. I definitely did that last one — I’d just shake it during my commute each way and sometimes at my desk. I also wore it on my ankle — keeping it on your belt cost you steps. People would get upset and freak out if they forgot or lost the stupid pedometer.
Most people quit after a couple months (this was a software company –$1K wasn’t that much motivation, even back then). Of everyone that made it to the full one-year goal (and there weren’t a ton of us — mostly hard-core runners), I don’t think a single person signed up for year two.
My daughter works for the state and they used to have a similar program. But they discontinued it when they realized that all the people with outdoor jobs like hers were racking up what office workers did in a month.
Yeah, we were all cube-dwellers so it was roughly equivalent. The one advantage I did have was tradeshows and user groups — you cover a LOT of ground with those. But while they’d give me a boost during a particular week, the program was set up so you had to submit steps regularly. Getting 50 miles in during one week didn’t help you hit the goals for the other weeks.
Like I said, it really became very stressful. I had a hard time letting go because I’d spent so much time doing it for a solid year, but dumping it was a HUGE relief, at least once I got used to not strapping it on every day.
So many companies did various and sundry versions of this, and very few do it now. Mostly because of a combination of the research showing that these programs increased stress for workers, and also that people were just going through the motions (or outright cheating) and not making long term lifestyle changes–which eventually translated into a steep drop in participation. My company had switched from giving every non-smoker a $400/year break on their health insurance premium to a super convoluted “wellness” program that wasn’t worth nearly as much and was a total pain in the ass. Eventually they dumped it. Good riddance.
Yeah, they dropped it for us too after that second year. I’ve always been a fairly regular exerciser (prefer biking) and like I mentioned, the people who were already runners didn’t have much trouble keeping up. But nobody seemed to make any long-term changes as a result. Those that were already inclined to exercise kept exercising. I’ve got ruptured disks in my spine so I have a VERY strong incentive to keep my weight down. Excruciating pain will absolutely motivate you.
We have a program that compensates you for gym memberships, but it only covers generic gyms like Planet Fitness or whatnot, and not the boxing club I was attending pre-pandemic.
My brother-in-law’s company gave Fitbits & incentives to lower their insurance rates. My sister didn’t like to walk but wanted the lower insurance rate so attached it to her dog and went out and played ball with him. Not sure how that worked out for them, seemed like a short lived program as it was a pretty invasive program but then again, this was in Texas and an oil company.
If I put the fitbit on the horse and ride him around the farm does it count?
How would they know? 🤷🏻♀️
My watch needs a height and weight entered to work right.
I think companies would be suspicious when they see an entry for 14 hands and 1200 pounds.
Yeah, my Fitbit does too. It would probably count me riding on a horse, though.
The reason people could cheat the program I described above was that it was literally a pedometer, that essentially counted bounces. As long as whatever you put it on went up and down, it counted as a step. Rotation didn’t work, so you couldn’t strap it to a bike spoke or something like that. It had to be an up-and-down motion that was solid enough to trigger a step.
Fuck that gymbird thing. I’ve been walking more than 10k steps a day for years and I’m still fat. They want some inspirational weightless shame content for their social media site.
I guarantee the person who lands the job will be mid 20s, thin, blonde, and above all, white.
Oh hard disagree.
She’ll be white, mid 20s, and blonde for sure.
She’ll also be the body type of the Hollywood fat girl, also known as 10 lbs overweight and totally normal to thin by the rest of our standards. That way she can amazingly drop some weight now that she’s walking more!
Oh yeah, Hollywood Fat is what I think of as thin. But yep, she’ll drop that just by walking! Not starving herself, no. 🙄
I would pay $10,000 if someone could find a way to allow me to walk 10,000 steps a day for a month.
I used to walk EVERYWHERE. I liked it because Manhattan is filled to the brim with freaks, mostly harmless, and I used to take different routes and find different things to look at. I used to take the subway to work in the morning and then, if it were a nice evening, like in the spring or the fall, walk home, which was a distance of about 3 1/2 miles. Then, once I got home, I’d saddle up my dog at the time and head to the dog run and run around with her.
My one VERY slight hesitation about moving to the Casa Encantada was, in a 9/11 scenario or the blackout we had whenever that was, there would have been no easy way to walk home. It wasn’t the distance, it was the unsavory territory that lay between my little enclave and my workplace. That, of course, became a moot point more than a decade ago when I became work-from-home freelance, but that was something I did not foresee.
Lack of mobility sucks.
Indeed it does. In the words of that old song, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”
im usually at about double that amount of steps in a day…and 10 grand would be nice
but not a us citizen…and tbh…i dont see me having to post about it going well
it would just be a month of posts that read walked to work and back hit 10k
the hobos at the harbour were drunk again
and weekend posts of walked to farmers market for sexy bread…detoured by the harbour on my way home….hit 10k
hobos still drunk
I do pretty much the same walk every day so mine would be very boring. If I even wanted to announce to the country where I am at a given time every day.
“Hobos at the harbour.” Now that’s a good band name.
But Farscy, you could do the “Argan Oil Hair Bounce” *as* you walk, *smelling GOOD* as you walk past the hobos…
Think of the marketing *possibilities* here, my friend!
Because I still imagine you as incredibly Puck-like, *except* more “Tall & Gangly” than “Small & Pixie-like”
Basically, for the Social Media videos, i’d imagine it as a Tall guy with a bit of a bouncy-walk, moving along fairly quickly, and *also* imagining him doing a bit of “physical comedy” as he goes–a bit like Hugh Laurie as George/Prince George in Blackadder or Rowan Atkinson in… *anything*… but that occasional physical comedy would be *combined* with the occasional “Strut and Hair Shake” like in the old 1990’s/early 2000’s Herbal Essences & Garnier Fructis commercials😉😆🤣
Basically a new *pedometer twist* & gender-swapped version of those now-vintage “shiny, good-smelling!” hair ads😁😄💖
i full on swagger as i walk me
shake my booty as i go
when ive got my hair down…..i do the supermodel hairshake too
you may be on to something here….lol
smelling amazing is only adding to the experience
(the swagger is unintentional tho…i walk on the outside of my feet….the swag just happens)