Fail This Chinese Bank Training and You’ll Get Spanked and Have Your Hair Chopped Off

Eight men and women dressed in black pants and yellow shirts line up on a stage, while a man in khakis paces and asks them to explain why they performed poorly at a staff training for employees of the Changzhi Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank in northern China.

“Get your butts ready,” he says, then takes a slab of wood and spanks each of them in front of a large crowd.

One member of the audience managed to record a video of the incident, which went viral after it was posted online by the People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper. It shows each person on stage being spanked at least four times after they’re asked to explain their failures.

Jiang Yang, the trainer who carried out the spanking, issued a public apology, saying that paddling the backsides of poorly performing employees was “a training model I have tried for years” and that he hadn’t done it at the behest of bank officials. Regardless, the bank has suspended two executives over complaints about the training, where some staff were also forced to have their hair cut as punishments for receiving low grades during various exercises.

The Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union, a group that regulates the bank, has launched an investigation into the video and other accounts of what went on at the training. And according to their statement, the bank’s chairman and deputy governor were suspended for “failing to strictly check the content of the course.” Some bank employees may now qualify for compensation from the training company.

Watch the video below: