So the workers are just interpreting the color codes wrong. RED means you are doing the least amount of work for the same pay as everyone else. Seems like the entire crew would work towards scoring RED. Unless my pay is effected, why would I want to work harder and still get paid the same money as someone working not as hard?
2 Likes
There’s your mistaken assumption
5 Likes
Yeah my work has a thing like this. I have not participated, don’t care if I’m missing out on “rewards” because they’re not worth the effort. Would leave my job if it ever impacted my performance. Definitely don’t want my workplace interfering in my health also because I need to keep things a certain way to manage my illness. Last time we had one of those walking competitions I downloaded the app and never opened it getting a score of 0. I hope lots of other people did too. If it flat doesn’t work for them… they’ll give up eventually. Basically I just try to waste their time and resources as much as possible for null or negative effect. Let them let the metrics start to talk IMO. I like self directed achievements like that… don’t care how it compares to others if I’m satisfied with what I’ve done after all.
1 Like
Nowhere in the linked piece does it say the “scoreboard” was a non-negotiable part of the contract that Disney refused to budge upon.
I suspect the union thought (incorrectly, it turns out) that the scoreboard was an okay trade off for other gains at the bargaining table. In the next negotiation, it can be bargained like anything else in the bargaining process.
1 Like
Who the fuck makes laundry into a competition?
Now answered: Disney.
Charlie Stross’ Laundry series + Hunger Games – what can possibly go wrong??
2 Likes
Oh hey look Harvard Business Review writes about this in 2012:
Gosh… did Disneyland possibly just take things a bit too far?
Why yes! Yes Disneyland did. 
And people, their workers, were hurt. 
In the OP’s linked article:
‘What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality?’
Uh huh.
That’s one way to to put it.
Another way is “What if we found a nearly irresistible way to manipulate other people’s internal states for profit and control etc.?” Please don’t write me back with some glib hot take like “if the workers don’t like it they can just quit.” If you have ever had to support your dependents, your family or yourself doing honest labor that you hate, then maybe we can talk. Sometimes people who need to work don’t have a lot of options. They still deserve to be treated fairly.
At the risk of overstating, and to repeat:
The physical activity that developed into sports had early links with ritual, warfare and entertainment.
[emphasis mine]
Games can be used in so many contexts. Orson Scott Card tapped into one of those. Wondering when his version’s going to show up as a reality.
Maybe it already has.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90260703/the-dark-side-of-gamifying-work
FTA:
Even war has been gamified: drone pilots operate in a highly gamified environment. Foeke Postma, a researcher and programme officer at the Dutch peace organization PAX, says that drone warfare often takes the shape of a game, right down to the joysticks or PlayStation-like controllers that the pilots use. ‘The US Airforce and the Royal Air Force have specifically targeted gamers to recruit as drone operators,’ he explains. The US drone program also employs game-like terminology when discussing targets. High-value assassination targets are called ‘jackpots’. Anyone caught near a jackpot during an airstrike is called ‘bugsplatter’. When drone pilots retire or transfer, they’re given a scorecard of kills. Postma says that this framework risks the total dehumanisation of the targets of drone warfare. In an interview with The Guardian , a drone pilot said: ‘Ever step on ants and never give it another thought?’
ETA: grammar [again] (argh)
3 Likes
Congratulations warrior! You have defeated the drow wizard by folding 27 sheets! Advance to 7th level laundress!
2 Likes
and @36:09
It’s the beating that looks pretty challenging.
And how cold that creek water is.
ETA: time mark on the video
In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and, snap! The job’s a game!
Disney
2 Likes
I know you are being sarcastic. However - no.
4 Likes
Shouldn’t they be measuring who whistles the loudest?
1 Like
To a point, that can be true… if it’s self-imposed. In my last job, I tried to game-ify some things for my own amusement. It was a small shop, and we had to work alone for much of our shifts, and when it got slow, I’d set challenges for myself.
But when it’s imposed on you, it’s not always fun, or a help to productivity. The bosses started a checklist of tasks to be done on every shift, and if something came up that meant we didn’t get a lot of it done, we should write why. I figured, if they want to know what I do on a shift, I’ll oblige. New game: how many things can I list? 
After a week or so, I got feedback from the bosses. “Sure, we appreciate how much you do, but you don’t have to list everything…” Turns out they were more concerned about other shifts where things weren’t always getting done.
But it was fun while it lasted… at least for me. 
4 Likes
Yes, yes I am. My Ayn Rand phase ended in the eighties, a few weeks after it started.
1 Like
You know outside of the ‘preaching’ (so many preachy parts of that book) I don’t mind Rand. Atlas Shrugged is a decent love story. It also shows the evils of corporate/government love nests. The solution Rand wants (manic pixie dream exceptionalism) isn’t realistic - but the idea that big business using government to block out competition (like with Net Neutrality, and tort reform, and one sided binding contracts of adhesion , etc) are real, and hurtful. I could even stomach the dream of ‘manic pixie exceptionalism’ if the damn fools read any part of the rest of the book, because we’d all be on the same side fighting corporate money in politics. To be quite honest, some of the ways the government is abused right now does keep someone with a good idea from rising to the top - because a corporation is able to bury them in money until they give up and sell out, so even that idea has some merit.
The fact that Rand fled Russia and wrote about social programs as the victim of the worst abuses of them, honestly is something I can forgive her for as well. The weird way that parts of the book are fetishized and the context is tossed for a dream land vision of the world… is frustrating.
Before ACA my insurance provider offered cash rewards for working out, watching health-improvement videos and the like. There was no competitive angle other than self improvement, but that $300 check definitely got me more engaged than I ever thought I would be.
Edited because I still haven’t turned off auto-correct for some reason.
1 Like
I can definitely see the sinister aspects of this, but in the case of my wife’s hospital, there does not seem to be a big downside. People who are not hyper competitive, like my wife and a couple of the other female doctors, are not penalized for not playing. As far as I know.
As for my wife, everything is a competition for her anyway.
2 Likes
Not sure what you’re replying to me for, but this is all nothing I don’t know. I still feel the way I do and think the way I do though. Gonna keep doing that too.
EDIT: Thanks for answering, damn I’m prickly sometimes eh?
I think the penalization or even perceived threat thereof is the real issue here. Someone upthread mentioned an opt-in version of this which makes sense to me.
1 Like
