How bad do you want a bag of chips from the vending machine? Enough to be chipped?

A Wisconsin company has announced plans that next week will make it the first employer in the United States to offer microchip implants to its employees.

Three Square Market announced in a press release that on Aug. 1, employees will have the option of having an RFID chip implanted in their hands allowing them to make purchases in their break room micro market, open doors, log into computers, use the copy machine and other tasks that would require personal identification.

The company said it is expecting about 50 employees to participate in the voluntary program, which it states “has become very popular in the European marketplace.” The chip, which is the size of a grain of rice and would be implanted between the thumb and forefinger, uses the same near-field communications technology used in contactless credit cards and mobile payments.

Three Square Market Chief Executive Officer Todd Westby told KSTP-TV, the ABC affiliate in St. Paul, Minneapolis, that “There’s no GPS tracking at all,” from the chip.

As you might guess, social media reaction to the announcement has been plentiful:

This story was originally published July 24, 2017 at 12:50 PM with the headline "How bad do you want a bag of chips from the vending machine? Enough to be chipped?."