This is something I shouldn’t need to say, but hang up before you go into the bathroom. Okay? Really, your conversation can wait 5 minutes. Or two minutes, if you’re fast.
Also, being connected is a great thing. Having your boss monitor your heart rate is not a good thing. Can we all just have some space, please?
To read more about it click here: No, it’s Not Okay to Talk on the Phone in the Shared Office Bathroom.
Yes it’s sad that this needs to be put in writing and published. But some people really were born in a barn apparently.
My gosh. Cell phone technology is amazingly good. You don’t think the person on the other end of the line can hear what’s going on?? As for me, I’m sitting there in my own stall feeling like I can’t do…what people do in a restroom…because I feel *I’M* somehow being rude to the person on the other end of *your* line. It’s gross. Just stop!!
Someone subjecting you to their telephone conversation in a shared restroom is being rude to YOU, so — by all means — do not allow them to make you feel rude. I make a point of flushing, so that the person on the other line will know exactly what’s going on. Other tactics I have revenge-fantasized, but am too chicken to do: pretending that I think the person in the next stall is talking to me and start talking back. Making loud, Whoopee-Cushion-type noises. Suffering an attack of Tourette Syndrome and loudly blurting out random cusswords or barking. Singing at the top of my lungs, preferably some ditty with naughty lyrics. But, I go on…
I used to work in an office managed by a total control freak. Even though it was a professional office in which most of the employees were Exempt (and there were no known slackers), the boss would go berserk if anyone was even a minute late arriving to work or going to or returning from lunch or left work a minute early. He made a Federal case out of it should you need to change your schedule, say to accommodate a doctor’s appointment. He had badge readers installed at all the doors, including the bathroom ones, and emailed out the printouts from the badge readers, so that everyone could see how long everyone spent in the bathroom!
I was on a large group call with our Board of Directors one time and my boss, who was generally a great guy, was flushing in the background. We snickered about it for weeks. The calls could be long, granted, but he was at home and could have held off on the flushing so we didn’t all know what he was up to.
And how much do you want to bet that the employees who opt out of the badge program are going to be passed over for promotions and/or plum assignments. They won’t be seen as team players and since their data won’t be included in the aggregate data collected, they may even be forgotten altogether. They may even be the first people to go when it comes to layoffs. Something tells me that the peer pressure to participate in the program will be very very high.