Wellsteps may be best-known for insulting the intelligence of its customers, by writing outcomes reports that show costs going up and down at the same time, and creating “ROI Models” that anybody can see are blatantly fabricated.  However, their customers deserve what they get.  No one is forcing them to retain Wellsteps. For example, if the Boise School District can’t figure out they got snookered, they need to go back to school.

On the other hand, overweight and obese people, like perhaps 2/3 of Boise’s teachers, who find themselves forced to submit to these programs at the pain of significant financial forfeitures, don’t have the option of firing Wellsteps or even walking away from them. In order to avoid forfeiting money, they must agree to be coached by a company that just announced that the reason people can’t lose weight is that: “It’s fun to be fat. It’s fun to be lazy.”

And: “Not everyone likes the taste of fresh fruits and vegetables, they would prefer chocolate, soda, and Cheetos.”

These lines were penned by Wellsteps’ Troy Adams, who proudly asserts as his qualifications that he “spent 11 years in college as a student and another 20 years as a professor.”

Wellsteps Apologizes

After a while, Mr. Adams realized that letting employees know how they really feel was a bad idea, so he went back in and removed the first line. He then apologized for Wellsteps’ insensitivity and complete lack of understanding about wellness.

Haha, good one, Al.

Obviously they didn’t apologize.  To paraphrase the immortal words of the great philosopher Ryan O’Neal or maybe it was Ali MacGraw (I wouldn’t know because about halfway through the movie, I had to leave the theater to go puke), being a wellness vendor means never having to say you’re sorry.  They just did the Ron Goetzel thing where you go back in and quietly doctor the original once you realized how much trouble you could get into by leaving the original original up.  (The difference is, Ron does that with other people’s originals. At least Wellsteps only did it with their own.)

The Comments Say It Best…

Wellsteps didn’t exactly have an epiphany.  They removed the line following scathing comments to the post. Adele Hite wrote:

This is reminiscent of arguments that the unemployed just don’t want to work (it’s fun to be poor! sleep late every day!). I thought we gave that up for more enlightened thinking, but I guess I was wrong.

Another health educator, Erica Thomas, wrote:

This article is appalling. “Fun to be fat”, “fun to be lazy”?! How do you conduct business with that mindset?

A third wrote:

Dear Mr. Adams, Do you truly believe that getting fat is fun and pleasurable? Have you ever been around anybody in this culture who has gotten fat? Do you truly believe that will power is all there is to the issue of fat?

The Regulators Will Sanction Wellsteps (not)

Yes, of course the comments are right, but there’s nothing we can do about Wellsteps.  They will remain prominent on the Koop Award Committee (where the key qualification is having no qualifications) and of course the Health Enhancement Research Organization. There won’t be any sanctions by regulators because this industry is completely unregulated. Wellsteps can continue to pitch this line to unsuspecting employers as long as they can get away with it, and as long as employers don’t care about the morale of the 2/3 of employees who are overweight or obese.

As for Mr. Adams, his total lack of contrition indicates that there is no chance he has learned anything from this episode.  Ah, well, to paraphrase the immortal words of the great philosopher Bluto Blutarski, 11 years of college down the drain.