Heavy Weight Resolution
January 4, 2022 – St. Louis, Missouri, USA
The lunchroom for Fast Comfort Heating and Air was the warmest place in the building. On cold winter days, the toasty temperature made employees doze off during mandatory meetings. The room was large enough to hold fifty people. On the first Tuesday in January, forty of them were gathered to listen to Jill Sandoval, head of human resources.
The first HR meeting of the year was always the same. The topic was making resolutions and healthy living. Jill did her best to sound energized.
“This is a chance to lose some of those holiday pounds and we’ve got a big incentive this year. The person who achieves the biggest body weight change will win $1000.”
Everyone in the room suddenly paid attention, even those pretending to be asleep.
“We’ll run it the same way as last year. You’ll make a bid on a number of pounds. If your bid represents the largest percent change and you achieve it by February 15, you get the money. If the person with the biggest bid can’t do it, the second largest bid has a chance to win, etcetera, etcetera. So you’re setting your own goal and asking yourself what you can achieve if you push yourself? Understand?”
They all understood. Jill Sandoval had been running the bid-based weight loss challenge for three years, but never for $1000. Near the front of the room, sitting with three other women at one of the round lunch tables, Lana Gallagher carefully considered her bid. Along with her three colleagues at the table, Lana worked in customer service and account processing. She spent most of the day sitting and she knew she needed to be more active.
The holiday months had been hard on Lana. Her mother spent time in the hospital and Lana turned to her favorite comfort food – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – to help with the worry. She gained unwanted pounds and was frustrated when she felt out of breath while climbing stairs.
Lana wanted to push herself. She secretly eyed her work friends and the rest of the employees in the lunchroom. Then she wrote down “13 pounds” next to her name on the slip of paper Jill had left on the table.
In back of the room, leaning against the wall with his chair, sat Russell Lyman. He wore a dark blue uniform, which included a name patch. Russell installed and fixed heaters and air conditioners. He and the other field technicians loved complaining about lunchroom meetings and how they should be out making money for the company instead of wasting time.
Russell had heard Jill’s New Year’s resolution speech before. His attempts at a resolution had never gone anywhere, which did not bother him much. He considered himself in no worse shape than any of his friends and coworkers. He felt like he was in better shape than his managers who sat in an office all day.
Russell was mostly trying to make his friends laugh when he wrote down “Gain 20 pounds” next to his name. He folded his piece of paper in half before handing it over to Jill.
With all bids collected, Jill returned to the front of the room to thumb through them. She mindlessly mumbled “5 pounds” over and over, as that seemed to be the most common response from people in the room. When she reached Lana’s paper, Jill said more clearly, “Ah, thirteen pounds. This might be our highest bid.”
Jill’s review continued until she read Russell’s response. She shook her head and said sarcastically, “Gain twenty pounds.”
The lunchroom filled with laughter. The volume was loudest against the back wall.
“You didn’t say we had to lose weight,” called Russell. “You only said the biggest weight change.”
“I thought everyone would take this seriously,” said Jill in a scolding voice.
“I did take it seriously. That’s what I think I can actually accomplish.”
After more laughter, Jill replied with, “Okay Russell, since everyone now knows you wrote this down, do you want this to be your official entry?”
“Sure. It’ll be the easiest $1000 I ever make.”
Jill scowled. She was on the verge of arguing with Russell and making him submit another bid when she suddenly changed her mind. “You know what? I’m going to let you do it. You can be our real time example of how bad extra weight makes you feel.”
“Maybe I’ll feel great,” called Russell with a laugh.
“Maybe you will. We’ll see,” replied Jill.
Everyone who wanted to be considered for the $1000 prize was then asked to step on a hidden scale behind a portable divider screen. Jill recorded weights and then took a picture of what they were wearing. When they returned for the February weigh-in, they were supposed to be in the same clothes.
After Jill did some quick calculations, she announced with some disgust that Russell had the highest bid with a 10.5% change in body weight. Lana was second with a 9.2% bid. Jill pinned a list of the bid percentages on the lunchroom’s bulletin board.
With everyone at the company monitoring them, Lana and Russell’s lifestyles transformed over the following six weeks. Lana constantly repeated the number thirteen in her head. She wrote it on post-it notes for her desk and cards for her refrigerator. She weighed herself every morning and tracked her calories. She monopolized the stationary bike and rowing machine in her condo’s exercise room. And the intruder pounds fell off.
For the first time, Russell also stuck with a resolution. Everything he drank had sugar in it. Before work, he stopped at his neighborhood convenience store for 64 ounces of Mountain Dew and a box of chocolate mini donuts. He added butter to everything. He even tried drizzling butter on his donuts. He took third and fourth helpings at every meal. Russell bought an adjustable belt and looser pants. And the delicious pounds clung on.
On the morning of the February weigh-in, Lana began her day with an extra-long bike ride. She did not eat or drink anything. Russell tried to hold in as much Mountain Dew as possible without a trip to the bathroom. He and Lana arrived at work in the same outfits worn when they made their New Year’s bids. Russell’s tight pants pinched his already strained bladder.
The same scale and partition were set up in front of the lunchroom. After Lana took her turn at the scale, she let out a little cheer and everyone knew she had reached her thirteen-pound target.
Russell was next. He stomped over to the scale and when he saw it creep past the plus twenty pounds mark, he shouted, louder than Lana’s cheer, “Yes! Winner!”
Jill Sandoval did not look happy as she acknowledged that Russell had won the contest. She asked him to at least say a few words about what he had learned.
Russell shifted back and forth, wincing at the pressure on his bladder. “I want to say I’m glad I won the money but I did this totally backwards. My body feels awful. All I want to do is take naps.”
“What are you gonna do with the money?” called one of Russell’s buddies from the back of the room.
“Probably buy a gym membership and lose all the weight.”
Most of Russell’s coworkers chuckled in response. One of his other buddies called out, “Hey, you’re wearing boots instead of sneakers. You were wearing sneakers last time.”
Russell’s face flashed red. “No, I wasn’t. And even if I was, these boots would weigh the same.”
The nervousness in Russell’s voice led Jill to check the photos taken in January. Sure enough, Russell had switched his shoes.
“We better weigh those boots and see how they compare to sneakers,” said Jill, who was clearly excited about the prospect of disqualifying Russell.
“Don’t worry about the boots. They’re ultra-light,” Russell claimed, but he was sweating from the scrutiny and his desperate need for a bathroom.
When Russell reluctantly removed his steel-toed boots, Jill discovered they also contained chunks of lead to make them heavier. She concluded they weighed at least two pounds more than regular shoes and Russell was now under his bid weight. The lunchroom buzzed from the controversy. Nothing this remarkable had happened at Fast Comfort Heating and Air since the morning the company’s owner backed his Corvette through their lobby window.
“Looks like the money has to go to Lana,” Jill loudly announced. “Lana, what are you going to do with it?”
Lana stood up and said, “I’m just happy I kept my resolution. But I feel bad for Russell.” She glanced over at Russell who stood in his bare socks looking humiliated. “If he’s serious about the gym membership, maybe we can split the prize. As for me, I just hope I can stay on track and away from Peanut Butter Cups. How about we go double or nothing on whether I can keep the weight off for six more weeks? We could do another weigh-in.”
Jill paused thoughtfully before saying, “I wonder if all the peer pressure is healthy. And somehow Russell was motivated to put weight in his shoes. Next year I need to change the rules for this contest.”
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