Managers Hang Sign In Office Bathroom Saying Light Will Turn Off If Workers Take Too Long To Poop
And you thought your boss was a micromanager…
bowie15 / Getty Images | Billion Photos | Canva Pro A notice posted in a workplace bathroom by micromanaging bosses has gone viral because of the bizarre new rule it announces about employees supposedly wasting time.
Wasting time how, you ask? Too much coffee machine chit-chat, perhaps? Extra-leisurely lunches? Oh you sweet summer child, if only it were that normal.
The micromanaging bosses put time limits on workers' poops with a threatening new procedure.
We've all had bosses and managers who are way too concerned with how everyone is spending their time and entirely too strict about employees' comings and goings. It's just part of the experience of having a job.
But regulating employees' dumps is a whole new level of being entirely too involved in your employees' lives.
Locking oneself in a stall in the employee washroom is the only peace some people get, for starters. But more importantly, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING.
Are bosses now this broken in the brains that they think regulating people's deuces is the key to higher productivity? Apparently so, because comedian Tyler Regan shared a notice found in a workplace that seeks to do just that.
The notice alerts employees that the bathroom lights will shut off when their pooping time is up.
Workers are then plunged into darkness when the time expires, which is deeply weird, profoundly sadistic, and should be as illegal as it feels. Like, this seems exactly like something Buffalo Bill would have done to his victims in "The Silence of the Lambs." It chills the blood!
My main question, though, is how is this enforced? Because nowadays we all own a phone with a flashlight on it, so what turning the lights out mid-dump actually accomplishes besides a profoundly strange and ineffectual power trip is anyone's guess. Is there a Poo Police that comes and breaks the door down? A S.C.AT. Team that lowers in from behind the drop ceiling like Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible?"
Photo: Tyler Regan / Facebook
And I am going to go to POTTY JAIL if I dare pinch one more out after the lights go down? Will I have my day in court? Does the Due Process clause still apply? I just don't think these bosses have thought this through!
Furthermore, "BM's [sic] beyond the lighting timer should be done on personal time not company time"— are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how INSANE you sound?
And what is one supposed to do if one is not done when the lights go out anyway? Clock out, drive home, finish, and come back? Should these employees ask for some PTO to go to the nearest Barnes & Noble or Nordstrom (these are obviously the best places to dump away from home, everyone knows this) to finish moving their bowels? Does this count as sick time or vacation time? Does it roll over year to year or is it "use it or lose it?" Can the folks in HR do their jobs for once?
I am just asking for a reasonable amount of transparency here!
But honestly, none of that is even the most bonkers part. The included QR code is.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, it should take approximately 5 minutes to poop.
So don't say we didn't ever teach you anything.
Anyway, that is what the QR code in the notice leads to: The Cleveland Clinic's Bible on pooping, in which they state that "five minutes really should be the maximum time you spend in the bathroom." Okay first of all, your tone is coming off really judgmental right now.
Second of all, enforcing blanket statements like this about people's bodily functions that don't take into account any of the myriad variables is obviously absurd.
But is it as absurd as citing your sources on a notice posted in a toilet cubicle about micromanaging the goings on of your employees' buttholes?
Imagine being like, "We're instituting a punitive new procedure that plunges you into an inescapable, inky blackness if your poops last longer than we want and here's why it's okay because THE CLEVELAND CLINIC SAYS YOU POOP TOO LONG SEE????" Are there footnotes to go along with this? Did you add an appendix or two, you absolute unmitigated goons?
I have never read anything so unhinged in my life and I am a person with four (4) diagnosed mental illnesses. I feel like I should call someone. The police? Amnesty International? The United Nations Commission on Human Rights? Can I file a lawsuit in the International Criminal Court in The Hague?
Photo: Know Your Meme
What are my rights to recourse as someone who's had to not only read this notice but also the Cleveland Clinic's defecation guidelines against my will because of the sociopathic whims of some boss who desperately needs to CHILL THE ENTIRE [REDACTED] OUT?
What else is there to say when micromanaging bosses put time limits on workers' poops? Hmm, how about this: STOP IT. Just quit it! No worker, no matter how incompetent or unprofessional, needs this kind of disgusting, invasive hand-holding! (Now there's a mental image ... )
You do this in my office, I'm coming to your office to notify you every single time I take a dump AND I'm filling that whole bathroom up with candles until it looks like a church on Christmas Eve! And I'm bringing a book! And a cup of tea! Come in and get me, I dare you!
Bosses, managers, and business leaders of all stripes, I say this with all of the love and light in the world: STAY OUT OF YOUR EMPLOYEES' COLONS! And please, for the love of God: Go to therapy.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.