One of the Tyson Foods supervisors who took part in an office betting pool on how many employees who would contract COVID-19 claims it was a “morale boost” concocted by stressed-out managers. “There was never any malicious intent. It was never meant to disparage anyone,” Don Merschbrock told the Associated Press. Merschbrock, who was fired along with several other bosses, said his team worked hard to protect workers at the Waterloo, Iowa, plant and are not “evil people.” “It was a group of exhausted supervisors that had worked so hard and so smart to solve many unsolvable problems,” he told the AP. Tyson and some of the other fired managers are being sued by the families of plant workers who died of COVID.