KUALA LUMPUR: Employees of a home improvement company in Zunyi, China were made to drink urine, eat cockroaches and undergo flogging for failing to meet sales targets, recently.
According to the South China Morning Post, the incident came to light when a staff member posted a video clip of a ‘disciplinary session’ on Weibo, in which a topless man standing in the centre of a room is seen being whipped with a belt, while several people around him drank cups of yellow liquid.
The post also included screenshots of text messages sent by managers of the company, threatening employees with severe punishments for underperforming.
“If the sales goal has not been met by the end of this month, the team leader will have to eat three cockroaches for each failed sale,” one text message read.
The post was deleted shortly thereafter, but news of the incident reached the authorities in Zunyi, a city in southern Guizhou province.
Three of the managers were promptly arrested, with two later sentenced to 10 days’ jail, and a third to five days in prison, the South China Morning Post reported.
Many social media users criticised the staff for not simply quitting their jobs instead of putting up with the abuse and humiliation.
But one employee told Pear Video that the company owed them two months’ pay and had threatened to reduce their severance pay were they to resign.