Thirty-one people were injured after they burnt their feet during a fire walk over hot coals as part of a corporate team-building exercise for a Swiss firm.
Thirteen of the advertising and marketing company staff were hospitalised after the voluntary barefoot challenge at a “sales day”.
Police, 10 ambulances, a large rescue vehicle, and two emergency medical teams rushed to the scene, where 150 workers were present.
Paramedics treated scalded staff at the scene and took others to hospital after an emergency call to the retreat of 150 workers on the Au peninsular in Zurich on Tuesday.
WTF! After the first one or two got burned why did the rest continue?
Years ago I saw a documentary about two physicists who attended one of those fire-walking thingies. They had done all the calculations and worked out that with the heat of the coals, the duration of contact, etc., they should be OK providing a fragment of coal didn’t lodge between their toes. Nothing to do with mind over matter, just matter.
They did it, no problem, and said “We told you so”. The interesting thing was all the ladies in the group of a certain age and type were still saying “Now I’ve done this, I can beat my cancer/start my business/recover from my toxic ex”.
I guess the organisers of this Swiss one didn’t set things up correctly.
Evidently the power of the will is a little more limited than some people believe.
What BiND said!
Scalded? That’s excessive heat in a liquid. Were they walking over boiling water? Jesus!
Ooh, did it look like that Star Trek episode with the hippies and the acidic grass ?
After the first one or two got burned why did the rest continue?
Hmmph. You’re just not a team player are you, Bloke in North Dorset?
(seriously, the corporate mentality could have played a role here)
Like socialist/communism, the first lot didn’t do it right, so the next lot came to show them how it’s done. They all got badly burnt. Just. Like. Socalism.
Sam Vara,
“The interesting thing was all the ladies in the group of a certain age and type were still saying “Now I’ve done this, I can beat my cancer/start my business/recover from my toxic ex”.”
Walking over fire is the new age version of building bridges out of cardboard or doing an outward bound course.
It doesn’t do anything to help teamwork or help you to start a business. If anything it’s going to make you overconfident in your abilities, that you have god-like powers and your dream of opening an independent bookshop are going to work out brilliantly.
“…Evidently the power of the will is a little more limited than some people believe…”
Thet’s Nietzsche’s business model gone up in smoke, then.
If the photo is a representative example of the event, it’s not hard to see what went wrong.
The physics of the thing are undoubtedly correct. Was given the opportunity to prove that working as a goldsmith. I was annealing some gold to soften it to work. Piece about 4″ long, thick as a thumb. Several ounces. One heats it to cherry red with a torch for a few seconds. Let it cool to black. Pick it up with the tongs & plunge it into cold water. I missed the bucket. When I took it out of the tongs it was still hot. Bit like holding a bar of soap. Slipped through my fingers & dropped on the floor. Fortunately, not into my lap. And gold is going to be much worse than coals. Very high conductivity. Carbon’s low. Only thing I had to show for it was a white stripe across the inside of my fingers. No burn a all. Skin, like carbon, is not a good conductor of heat. Why you can pick up an ember has fallen from the fire onto the carpet & sling it back on the fire. (But don’t try that on a synthetic rug. You’ll get a handful of molten plastic)
But you wouldn’t want to be walking across a bed of live coals in a group. Someone ahead of you stops, you’ll get marooned on it. The way to do it would be to start each person as the previous one exits the other side.
But corporate team-building exercise. They’re training to be good sheep. Ever handled sheep? Individually, sheep are quite intelligent. Flocks of them are virtually brainless.
Corporate team intelligence. I got a letter from Barclays, requesting I close my account as I’m not UK resident. Should have been closed 18 months ago but they stalled the closure because the notarised copy of my identity document they requested was done by a Spanish notary in spanish. What did they expect it to be? Spanish is the legal language of Spain. In English it would not be notarised. So a telephone conversation with Barclays yesterday. Can I come into a branch? A polite version of fuck off. So Barclays has still got an account it can’t close but costs it to service. The 42 minute conversation yesterday will have cost them more than my £20 balance. And this will be a never ending story at this rate. Because I’m flatly refusing to do any more to assist them.
British banks. I’ve dealt with small town branches in Colombia show more intelligence.
@jgh
“Scalded? That’s excessive heat in a liquid. Were they walking over boiling water? Jesus!”
To be strictly accurate, it is scalded. It’s not the skin that burns. It’s the underlying moisture that boils. Things like fats, blood etc undergo chemical changes when they’re at temperatures not much higher than body heat.
Ah, you learn every day. In First Aid and simlr training it was taught that scalds and burns are different, scalds can’t get hotter than the boiling point of the liquid, basic physics, whereas burns can get much hotter as they are from solid heat, the solid can get much hotter until a higher melting point.
Eg, a scald from water cannot be over 100C, a burn from iron could be up to 1500C.
“on the Au peninsular”: oh, FFS, Telegraph.
I’d be more surprised at a display of competence from Barclays.
@BiS, and that’s why people are called Sheeple.
So Barclays has still got an account it can’t close but costs it to service.
They closed all our accounts years ago – even after being loyal customers for over 40 years.
We left a fiver in it; goodness knows what it cost them in postage… 🙂
@jgh
They obviously didn’t know what they were talking about. But the medical profession. Nothing in your body can exceed a temperature of 100°C Boiling point of water. At which point the water turns to steam & carries away the heat. Sure, once the water’s boiled away fats will start melting & inflammables burning. But you’re a bit past first aid at that point & enjoying the services of a crematorium.
BiS
or of course Joan of Arc
‘Corporate team building’ = ‘cult’. They’re trained to follow the lemming in front of them and not ask questions.
@ BiS
Nothing in your body can exceed a temperature of 100°C Boiling point of water… Sure, once the water’s boiled away fats will start melting
The fats then being hotter than 100°C?
“The customer is not a moron. The advertising exec, however…”
–David Ogilvy
@BiC
I’m interested. Did you get the same thing as I did? As I was now resident outside the UK, they upped the requirement for my identity verification. Despite being quite content with operating with the existing methods for years. Latterly with one of those PIN verifier gadgets. Hence the request for a notarised copy of my passport. They also froze my account with well over half a million quid in it, without telling me. Apparently Barclays don’t use e-mail, postal systems or telephones.
Actually, that’s not strictly true. On one occasion someone from Barclays did ring me. The first thing he asked was me to verify myself by providing certain information. So in response I asked him to verify himself by providing certain information. Which he couldn’t. Not hard to work out what was going on. One way system. He enters what I provide & the system confirms T/F. But no access to anything else. I told him he was a cunt & to fuck off. I don’t see any reason to be polite to these people. If you don’t like abuse, don’t work there.