Some Chicago union workers have their knickers in a twist over bathroom breaks.
Teamsters Local 743 filed a now-famous complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against a company for unfairly disciplining 19 workers last month for "excessive use" of washrooms.
"Excessive use" is defined as "60 minutes or more." Wow, that is extravagant! Who are these loo-sers (get it?) lounging in the lounge for hours at a time?
Oh, there's more to that 60 minutes ... "over the last 10 working days."
Math time. Sixty minutes over 10 days -- that's just six minutes a day?
Gulp. Wince. Fidget.
Here's where we point out that the company in dispute, WaterSaver, manufactures faucets, of all things -- faucets that those producing them would have little time to use. A daily maximum of six mere minutes in the washroom doesn't leave much time for actual washing. Which would lead to more germ spreading, illness and ultimately less productivity.
But WaterSaver maintains it's trying to be a time saver. The company claims 120 hours of work in May were lost to employees' unscheduled bathroom breaks (they'd know; the company installed a monitoring system that requires employees to swipe a card when going in and out of the lavatories).
Wait ... unscheduled breaks. So that means there are scheduled ones?
Yes, employees have a 10-minute break in the morning, 30-minute lunch break, a 15-minute afternoon break and five-minute cleanup period before their shift ends.
So it's not that employees are limited to six minutes a day. It's that these workers already get a rather reasonable 60 minutes scattered throughout the day, and that's still not deemed adequate by some (making an exception for anyone pregnant or sick) determined to waste time. Pardon the pun.
As an incentive, the company pays $1 per day (up to $20 a month) to WaterSaver employees who can hold their water and not take bonus bathroom breaks.
If I worked for WaterSaver, here's what I would do:
Decide to make that extra $1 today.
Forgo the venti coffee/44-ounce diet cola.
Work until morning break. Sluggishly, because I've had no caffeine.
Take one-minute bathroom break (sorry, no time to waste wiping the sink or picking that paper towel off the floor!) and nine-minute catnap during morning break. Except, well, I wouldn't really have to go to the bathroom yet, so I'd waste nine minutes and 30 seconds trying and only get 30 seconds for a nap.
Work until lunch break. Crankily, because my nap wasn't long enough.
Spend 30-minute lunch break exercising, because anything I eat or drink will just make me have to go to the bathroom. This way I can just sweat it out.
Work until afternoon break. Lethargically, because I'm dehydrated.
Spend afternoon 15-minute break passed out.
Work until cleanup break before shift end. Bitterly, because I really should have gone to the bathroom last break.
Collect $1 for day. Yes! Only 19 more days to go to make $20 for the month!
Dream of what I will spend all this additional money on. Perhaps a nice dinner? Maybe a bottle of wine? Or an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader? No, those would be completely counterproductive.
Use money to invest in NASA astronaut Maximum Absorbency Garments and a Detrol prescription instead.
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Style on 07/22/2014