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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, this approach seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Push-ups are, at-best, a difficult exercise to get right (see http://thetoptwoinches.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/100/). Do them in bad form and you can injure yourself. Is the team leader going to be both an expert at management AND an expert at physical education? Does the company want the lawsuits if an employee is injured exercising at the direction of their team leaders? Are investors aware that their money is being used for this stuff?

Oh, and considering this stuff is not related to the job at hand, you could also argue for a discrimination lawsuit considering it's creating a "hostile work environment" for anyone without a lot of shoulder strength (women, old people, the disabled).

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My knee jerk reaction to this story was "do any women work at this company"? (I'm female and do pushups every day as a component of marathon & triathlon training, so I'm not whining about the hypothetical possibility of feeling excluded.) I understand the intent, but the implementation seems misguided for many of the reasons that others have mentioned. If you want to encourage your employees to stay in shape without marginalizing anyone, offer to subsidize gym memberships or the athletic activity of their choice (e.g., karate classes, participation in a soccer league, yoga etc.) And there are plenty of teambuilding activities that have virtually no threat of joint damage.

That's not what "hostile work environment" means. Mandatory pushups are one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard of, but I assume you are not going to be fired if you don't do them. When everyone starts doing pushups, go out for a quick run, or something.

Depending on the situation, you could have a hostile work environment[0]. Take a guy who is over weight and weak, make him feel uncomfortable about not being "good enough" to do the push ups, add "good natured" ribbing from co-workers that goes on day after day and subtle "anti-team" vibe because the rest of the team is pushing up together.

Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Something to watch for but not something to stress unduly about.

[0] Remember, hostile work environment is not about any specific protected class (age, race, etc), but about general feelings of harassment and discomfort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_work_environment

Intent is the key. Making you do pushups isn't intended to make you quit, it's intended to be fun. It's a dumb idea, but it's not hostile.

Dirty jokes are intended to be fun, but they can be hostile. Hostility does not derive solely from intent.

Conduct which creates a hostile work environment is illegal only if it is based upon the employee’s protected status as a member of a protected class. In other words, not all harassing behavior breaks the law. It is not discrimination if one employee is rude to another employee just because they have had an argument.

http://www.eeo.wv.gov/Pages/FAQ.aspx

In most states fat people are not a protected class. So mocking the weaklings and chubbies who can't do pushups is probably still legal.

http://public.getlegal.com/articles/obesity-discrimination

Fair enough, but a lot of women have trouble doing more than 1 or 2 pushups. I'm guessing the author's company doesn't employ any (at least on the tech team).

A lot of men have trouble doing more than 1 or 2 pushups.

Push-ups are, at-best, a difficult exercise to get right

This is surprisingly true. On Monday, I tested my one-rep max on shoulder presses, which involved a couple of balls-out failures with a weight I couldn't lift. Two days later, I feel fine. The last time I tried to find out how many pushups I could do in a row, I hurt my shoulder and didn't feel right again for two weeks. I'm pretty sure on any given day I could simply get on the floor and do pushups (with decent form) until I hurt myself. It's much safer to stick with exercises where you can safely work until failure, since you never know when you're going to accidentally exceed your limits. It's doubly true for people who don't exercise a lot.

I found out that doing flat-handed pushups can cause wrist pain. Pushups on bars or knuckles are much safer for the tendons!

Funnily enough, this seems to be common knowledge amongst gym instructors. Yet many of the people who routinely do pushups as part of the conditioning or warmup for indoor sports don't seem to know, even if people have been doing it for decades.

Even worse, in the cases that I'm experienced with (for various martial arts) these pushups are done on mats that make it even worse because the wrist is even more over-stretched (because the ball of the hand sinks into the soft mat, while the fingers do so less); and doing push-ups on the knuckles is considered something 'for the hard core'.

Are you kidding or is it true? You can get a lawsuit for this? (I don't live in the US)

In the US you can get a lawsuit for anything, but the chances of losing or winning are not always, although frequently, related to how good a lawyer you managed to get on your team.

I don't know where you live, but employers can be sued over many things outside of the US as well; including this, I can imagine.

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