How to Succeed in Business
By 
Team building, Provo style:
A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.
In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.”
. . . . Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs.
Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’ mouth and nostrils – like the interrogation strategy known as waterboarding – and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges.
“At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded,” the suit alleges.
The company disputes the allegations, of course; the president insists the sales manager was merely dramatizing an important lesson from the life of Socrates.
Curiously, this Socratic “lesson” appears in such recent, inspirational page-turners as 100 Ways to Build Self-Esteem and Teach Values, How to Make Your Dream Come Alive, and Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.
What I can’t seem to find, however, is any source that suggests this story actually originates from the life of Socrates. I’m inclined to suspect that the anecdote is bullshit, but maybe that’s because I have no truck with anything that qualifies as “motivational” or “self-help” literature. Anyone know for sure?