UPS Special Delivery: Lady Wigs and Yoga

Our pals in brown know how to get down, dog. (har)

Making 150 stops on the route, climbing up and down steps over 400 times a day. Is it Santa?! Nope it’s your local UPS delivery person! And all that probably quadruples during the holiday season. No wonder they’ve taken to yoga to destress and limber up! Sanjay Gupta reported on the new UPS fitness program for CNN back in ’08 (see video). Turns out our friends in brown make a stop at the yoga studio twice weekly under the advice of UPS Health and Safety Manager, Mike Yates. They even have a cute tagline – Safe by Choice, Not by Chance.

“It really balances my life a little bit better. My body’s balanced more, it centers myself a lot,” says delivery guy, and new found yogi, Scott Stephenson.

Of course this is in CA, mind you, where yoga is up there with mowing the lawn and bathing. What about the rest of the country? Well, we don’t have confirmation on that (anyone? UPS spokesperson? man in lady wig?), but if the President of UPS International, Dan Brutto, seeking yoga studios on his stops all over the world is any indication, we have high hopes! It’s true, Brutto is a converted Bikramite:

“I would come back from a trip, and I would say to my family, ‘My back is killing me,’ ” Brutto said. “And my youngest daughter would say, ‘Dad, you got to come with me to this yoga place.’ ”

The kids these days!

“The first time, I almost passed out,” he said. “But I came home, and I actually felt pretty good. So, I did it three times that week.”

The 53-yr-old top exec, who’s usually bouncing around the globe up to 20 days a month, has been tapped to oversee the UPS logistics base camp for the 2012 Olympic Games in London (they’re a sponsor). Sure it’s a huge responsibility, but the only thing Brutto needs? A good Bikram studio! What he’s probably going to get? A call from Bikram’s cronies about 2016! (we imagine the hot one would attempt every angle)

Hey, here’s an idea, instead of those pestering “lady wigged” whiteboard commercials, how about an ad featuring UPS bending over backwards to deliver our packages 😉 FedEx are you listening?

[Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Earlier…Santa Bikram Concedes His Love of Shopping for Junk and Speaking the Truth