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Comment by tmountain | Hacker News Reader

I visited them during the peak of their success and they had a giant stainless steel slide in the middle of their facility that had been given to them by the German government.

It was steep and twisty, and I inquired about the liability of having it. With a grin, a staff member told me that several employees had broken bones using the slide and that there was an active lawsuit in progress with a former employee due to an injury.

I asked if they were going to get rid of the slide, and the response was, “No way, it’s a symbol of who we are. We move fast and break shit!”

I liked that version of Rackspace a lot. The office was incredible (still haven’t seen anything like it), and the service was great. Sad to hear where things landed.

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I interned there around the same time. The office was an old mall. Apparently, there had been a shooting in/near the mall, which led to people not going and the mall going under. Rackspace bought the mall and converted more and more to office space as they needed it. If I recall correctly the slide was from the old food court balcony area down into the main floor. I agree, it was a very cool office.

> that had been given to them by the German government

Really? that does sounds unlikely to me. Are you sure they didn't say "We got it from Germany" meaning it was imported from Germany rather than given to them by the German government?

[edit] infact I wonder if the slide wasn't by German artist Carsten Höller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_H%C3%B6ller#Slides

According to [1] the slide was built by Wiegand Sports [2] who design and make slides, from small children's slides to 'spectacular event slides' - including indoor slides for corporate offices, malls, museums etc.

So this is a slide made by an established manufacturer.

[1] https://www.expressnews.com/business/local/article/Resolutio... [2] https://www.wiegandslide.com/en/products/slides.html

Looks like Carsten Höller slides are Wiegand slides: https://www.wiegandslide.com/en/products/slides/event-slides...

I guess the problem is that people see a slide and think playground/children's toy and that they are inherently safe, but the size of them can lead to trouble - there was one in the Tate Modern Gallery in London a few years ago that had to have safety personnel at top and bottom.

Oh man, I can feel the summer time 3rd degree burns just by looking at those photos.

My town used to have a huge slide built into a hillside. It was "controversial" in that it was considered dangerous. After general playground renovations, the plastic substitute was subject to repeat vandalism and it's been removed entirely.

I too visited them during the peak of their success, on one of their big job interview days. While a large group of us were waiting (for hours) we were invited to watch a series of videos of their employees "having fun" doing various contests and adventures. They were especially proud of the video of their new "Chief Brand Officer", who decided to have the company logo tattooed on their arm - like, yeah, a real & permanent tattoo.

I left.

Would a "use this slide at your own risk" sign be enough to prevent any lawsuits?

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it.

In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical series. Lots of emotions.

I'm in the US and for years wrote software for the medical industry. I was contracted by a European company to write an app, and of course filled it with disclaimers and extra clicks asking "Are you sure?" When I demoed it, they asked what all that crap was for. I said something like, "Umm, liability, duh." Their response: "Oh, we don't sue people for honest mistakes here."

I just want to mention this in case someone reads your comment and does something inadvisable: "European" is an insufficiently general term. Some countries in Europe are more litigious than others.

Furthermore, while confirmation prompts can certainly be taken to an extreme (and they probably don't do much good if people get inured to just clicking "Yes"), they absolutely make sense for some operations.

That's wild! I'm in Canada, which I generally consider to be much less litigious than the US and A, but we still cover our bases for liability all the time.

>This is so a US thing.

It's also rather exaggerated. People get injured all the time doing all sorts of activities without lawyers getting involved. And actual findings of negligence have a fairly high bar although companies do sometimes make payments to make suits go away especially if they did something not by the book.

How much does it cost to repair a broken leg in your country? In the US it will probably be 5 figures, so getting it paid is a pretty big concern.

And if you can't work due to your injury and are one of the many Americans who does not have paid time off, the best case for you is using FMLA to at least retain your job so you can work - but your absence won't be paid. Hopefully your emergency fund is higher than the American median of $2000.

No idea I never saw any medical bill, I just pay my 100€ a month. I also pay about 50% income tax and 21% on just about anything I buy.

>In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault

You can pretty much sue anyone for anything for sure, but there are big differences between criminal and civil law. A lot of cases come down to the "reasonable person standard" and what level of security should be inherently provided. Choosing to slide down a big crazy slide while standing up and hurting yourself probably fails the reasonable person standard, but choosing to slide down a big crazy slide while sitting and becoming injured because a piece of the slide breaks probably passes the reasonable person standard

In the UK, you might not get the 'at own risk' sign, not because people aren't going to sue you, but because posting an 'at own risk' sign doesn't do a lot to change your liability. Whatever signs you post, it's still your responsibility to do everything you reasonably can to make sure it doesn't injure or kill people.

It's not clear how much these sorts of signs help. You're still liable if you were grossly negligent in some way.

One place I've been told liability waivers are useful is with activities that can potentially be dangerous. It can make it harder to make a credible a claim that you didn't know you could have a fall while hiking harder. Though, honestly in most cases no one reads these things and, again, gross negligence on the part of a guide or other leader isn't absolved anyway.

It's usually way over exaggerated in the US. The "I'm suing for $50000000 because I was the stupid one" is rare, which is why it hits the news.

While it's true we have lots of lawyers, you need them for everything from making wills to starting a business. They're not all criminal/civil and I'd be willing to bet that a lot have never seen the inside of a courtroom, they're just there to make sure all the T's are crossed and i's dotted properly in legal contracts. My company is rather small, but has four lawyers just to interpret EU to NA trademark/copyright/contracts/etc...

When it comes to "who's actually more litigious", the US doesn't actually come close to Germany; Sweden; Israel; or Austria.

"Here is a list of the top 5 most litigious countries by capita: 1. Germany: 123.2/1,000 2. Sweden: 111.2/1,000 3. Israel: 96.8/1,000 4. Austria: 95.9/1,000 5. U.S.: 74.5/1,000. The Top 10 also includes the UK (64.4); Denmark (62.5); Hungary (52.4); Portugal (40.7); and France (40.3)."

https://eaccny.com/news/member-news/dont-let-these-10-legal-...

Sometimes a lawsuit is justified. There was a water slide in KCK that decapitated a kid in 2016. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verr%C3%BCckt#Fatal_incident

> In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault

When I broke my arm, the insurance company explicitly asked “Can we sue someone for this?”

No damn it, do your job! I pay insurance so insurance can pay for shit like this.

I think sometimes (often?) in the US it is not the injured individual pursuing the lawsuit, but rather their private insurance company trying to recoup losses.

A photo is captioned "A Rackspace employee alleges her then-19-month-old son fractured his left tibia after his foot got caught on the inside of the slide while riding it on March 1, 2013."

Even a slide that looks twisty, fast and adventerous must have something wrong with it if your foot can get caught on the way down. Properly manufactured slides don't have things you can catch your foot on going down.

Visual inspection from the outside won't reveal that. It looks like something a reasonable person will assume is a properly manufactured slide, and make their personal safety assessment based on how twisty and steep it looks.

Perhaps "we know some people catch their foot on something on the way down which you can't see just by looking from the outside, and someone broke their leg because of it, so use at your own risk but be warned of this non-obvious risk" would be more appropriate?

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