Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)

Yesterday, I touched upon the annual On the Move campaign that Spacely Sprockets relaunched last week. It is intended to motivate employees to exercise more. Everyone who participates is supplied a pedometer and depending upon your level of participation a gift card is offered as a reward upon completion. The highest level reward is a $100. An average of 13,000 steps a day is required to obtain this reward, but smaller rewards for less effort are also available. So, there is really no competition, except with yourself and everybody can be a winner. Still, there has been cheating at times. During one of the early years, one of the leading teams in Saint Louis was averaging 40,000+ steps a day per person. That’s like 60-80 miles. I didn’t know any of the people on that team, but I know someone who did and she told me that there was no way that they could be exercising that much and didn’t know who they thought that they were fooling? I was listening to the NPR show “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me”, a comedy, news, quiz show. I tuned in too late to hear the question, but it had to have something to do with cheating in these corporate exercise programs. These programs used the Fitbit to count activities, which apparently offered the opportunity for more creative ways to cheat. Some diligent employees attached the Fitbit to their Chihuahua, while others used their ceiling fan. One truly high performer attached his Fitbit to a power drill, but the overall winner attached his Fitbit to the hamster wheel. Most corporations that do these programs hire a contractor who facilitates it. It is this way at Spacely Sprockets. In an attempt to curtail cheating these contractors will gently question the more outlandish claims. I encountered this treatment last year, while doing the MUP ride during On the Move. I entered 50,000+ steps using their conversion formula for biking 75 miles. They questioned this four-fold jump in activity, but accepted it.