My brother, his fiancee and I flew from New York to Miami yesterday. One of their suitcases was weighed down with loot from her wedding shower, and after throwing it on the scale, it was determined by the airline dude that there would be an additional charge of $50 since the bag weighed more than 50 pounds.
Well, they took some stuff out of that bag and put it in a lighter one, but as we walked away, my brother said "well, I weigh a lot less than many of the passengers on this plane". That's a very good point, and as I have said for years, that is exactly the kind of thing people should expect (along with lawsuits against fast food restaurants for serving unhealthy food, or denying entrance to those restaurants for the obese) And it's already being considered by the airlines. Pretty hard to imagine weighing the passengers at check-in though, isn't it? Or is it (they did it in the 1970s)? This is all related as the nation and world struggle to balance growing prosperity and consumption with diminishing resources and new challenges in our global marketplace.
Here's an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about some of the anti-smoking policies employers are enacting. In the past few years, employers have tried to encourage employees not to smoke with positive incentives, but in many cases those have turned to punitive measures. In a case mentioned in the article, an employer even told employees they had to stop smoking or they would be fired. He enforces that policy by having their blood tested at random. He has even gone so far as to monitor their spouses, as well.
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