Health and something

A couple of weeks ago, our HR department held a “health and wellness fair”. There were vendors ranging from a health-focused chef serving salad-in-a-jar to mini-massages and a bank.

First off, I’m of the opinion that HR ought to eat its vegetables before it gets dessert, so I’d rather have them focus on things like timely responses to emails, managing benefits and shortening the hiring sequence from months to weeks. However, I thought I’d go down to see what was happening.

Second, I’m not exactly sure what a bank has to do with health and fitness, but whatever.

As part of the event, you carried a paper with your name on it around and got little stickers until you filled up the little sticker area, and dumped it into a box for a raffle.

Frankly, I was perfectly happy with that salad—you put the dressing in the bottom and then layer in a bunch of ingredients until you get to the greens, which in this case included spinach and watercress, and then when you’re ready to eat, you shake up the jar and bob’s your uncle.

That salad was so good that I actually went back down to the fair to thank the chef.

At any rate, I forgot about it until last week when one of my office neighbors appeared in my door while I was working on a PowerPoint deck, and he congratulated me.

Bas Bleu: “Hanh?”

Colleague: “You won a prize.”

Bas Bleu: “Hanh?”

Colleague: “You won a raffle prize. The email just came around.”

Well, it hadn’t for me, but it appeared shortly. And blow me if he wasn’t right: I won something called a NutriBullet.

Bas Bleu: “What’s a NutriBullet?”

Colleague: “I don’t know.”

We both frantically Googled it, he on his mobile phone and I on my desktop. Turns out it’s one of those mini blenders, only this one insists it’s not a blender, but something much better.

Because it “expertly pulverizes fruits, vegetables, superfoods and protein shakes.” Jeez—superfoods? It had to be superfoods?

I looked at the list of prizes and said, “I would have liked one of the massages.” My colleague said, “I’d like the Fitbit.” (Only, of course, he’d have had to go to the fair to be entered in the raffle, wouldn’t he?)

Well, it turns out that this thing will also pulverize ice, and you can make margaritas with it. So it might be a good thing after all.