More than 500 employees of Keihin Electric Express Railway in Japan will be subject to "smile checks" every morning. Software will evaluate the quality of their grins, and alert them if they aren't looking happy enough.


The smile-evaluating software takes a picture of Keihin employees every morning and assigns smile values to various parts of the face. It then adds those values and delivers a smile scan score. According to an article today in the Mainichi Daily News:



The device analyzes the facial characteristics of a person, including eye movements, lip curves and wrinkles, and rates a smile on a scale between 0 and 100 percent using a camera and computer. For those with low scores, advice like "You still look too serious," or "Lift up your mouth corners," will be displayed on the screen. Some 530 employees of the Tokyo-based railway company will check their smiles with Smile Scan before starting work each day. They will print out and carry around an image of their best smile in an attempt to remember it.


This just sounds like a workplace shooting incident waiting to happen. If I had to pretend to have the perfect smile on every morning - and got criticized if I "looked too serious" - I would definitely go Joker after a while.

via Mainichi Daily News (thanks, Klebert!)