TIL my old boss timed bathroom breaks with a stopwatch

Back when I worked at a cabinet shop in Tucson, the owner kept a literal stopwatch by the time clock. One day I came back from a 7 minute bathroom run and he said '3 minutes over, docked from your check.' I told him I had a stomach issue and he just shrugged. That was the moment I realized he saw us as machines, not people. Walked out that Friday and started my own flooring gig. Has anyone else had a boss try to police stuff like that down to the minute?

2 comments

2 Comments

webb.victor1d ago

Yeah I gotta admit I used to be one of those guys who thought bathroom breaks were no big deal. Like if you gotta go you gotta go, right? But then my old boss at a warehouse job started timing us with his phone and actually writing down how long each person took. At first I was on his side, thinking people were probably abusing it. Then one day I had food poisoning and was in there for maybe 12 minutes and he came knocking on the door yelling at me to hurry up. That changed my whole view real quick. It's not about the time it's about treating people like they're not even human. There's a line between keeping things fair and being a total jerk about it and he crossed it hard.

river_burns1d ago

The warehouse manager knocking on the stall door is where it stops being about productivity and starts being about power. They always hide behind "people abuse it" until someone has a genuine medical thing, then it's still your fault for having a body that does body stuff.