Monday mornings demand extra caffeine, a little lollygagging, catching up with co-workers on the happenings and news from the weekends, and of course humor. Today’s focus in the Monday morning funnies is a humorous policy from a real company on how they dealt with workers taking too many bathroom breaks. The moral of the story I guess is to make sure you don’t drink too much before going to work in the morning. . .or choose a career you can do from home where there is generally free access to the facilities.
The Bathroom Bank
I cannot imagine what types of complaints and/or injustice was occurring within this office when they decided to implement this policy. But one company decided that enough was enough. Bathroom breaks must be monitored to ensure that “all employees are treated fairly” and that the company can account for employees’ time spent in the bathroom.
So they implemented a policy where each employee was given 20 Bathroom Trip Credits at the beginning of every month. (Notice the capitalization there that gives the bathroom trip great importance.) They outfitted their bathrooms with voice recognition locks. When a particular employee’s bathroom trip credit balance reached zero, the doors would no longer open and the employee would just have to um. . .hold it. That employee would no longer be able to use the bathroom at work for the rest of the month. On the other hand, large bladdered employees could accumulate credits for bathroom trips. (My question is can they accumulate the points and then use them for vacation time? After all, that’s countless bathroom trips not taken! Who knows how many minutes and days that would add up to on the vacation clock?)
Oh But Wait. . .It Gets Better!
As if installing voice recognition locks in the bathrooms isn’t a little over the top–get this: The new bathrooms were also being installed with automated stalls to curb excessive stall time. Walls had retractable toilet paper, and doors would open automatically–all on a timer set for a strict 3 minutes. An employee had exactly 3 minutes to finish their business or else. . .an alarm would sound. If after 30 seconds you still have the nerve to occupy the stall, the toilet paper will retract into the wall, the door will fling open, and the toilet will flush. (I guess that final toilet flushing proclaims you finished!) If you still have the audacity to occupy the stall your picture will be taken. The picture of you getting caught with your pants down will then be posted on a public bulletin board in the Employee Relations Room and if your picture ends up posted three times–well, that’s grounds for immediate termination.
I’m not sure which company employs this high tech bathroom system–but I’m thinking that this policy might discriminate against Alli users. But on the bright side, I suppose it creates a few new jobs. You could have the bathroom trip credit accountant–the person unequivocally in charge of keeping track of and doling out bathroom credits. You’d also need the bathroom techie person–the one who keeps all those retractable toilet paper dispensers working as well as the voice recognition system. After all, the only thing that could be worse than this policy would be having your precious bathroom trip credits rendered incapacitated by technological dysfunction.
I’m thinking the boss had his own bathroom in his office.
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Valorie Delp shares recipes and kitchen tips in the food blog, solves breastfeeding problems, shares parenting tips, and current research in the baby blog, and insight, resources and ideas as a regular guest blogger in the homeschooling blog. To read more articles by Valorie Delp, click here.