Bathroom Facilities - Not an April Fools Joke!

diane

Upon arriving to work this morning I found out we will have no water in our
facility from noon until 5:00 p.m....i.e. no bathroom facilities. The CEO wants
to tell people that they need to stay until 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. This happened to
us once before and we told people they could leave the building at any time to use other facilities. There is a hotel a couple of minutes away (by car) and a
shopping mall with public restrooms. Does anyone know of regulations that would
preclude us from keeping employees here once the water is turned off? My common
sense tells me that we probably can't force people to stay. I've checked out
OSHA quickly but couldn't find anything specific. I need help quickly...the well is running dry!!

bsa

You poor thing!! When we had our water cut off for repairs - we gave our employees the option of staying or leaving. Most of them went out for an early lunch, took care of the personal stuff and came back for a few hours. Some did what absolutely had to be completed that day, then left. We didn't penalize anyone for their personal choices -- kinda like an "act of God" ...beyond our control.

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-02-02 AT 09:12AM (CST)[/font][p][font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-02-02 AT 09:07 AM (CST)[/font]

I'm not sure just yet that this is not an April Fool's joke. I am sure there is no 'regulation' that would preclude the employer from 'telling' people they could not leave the facility. OSHA certainly would not address it, that I know of. However, the rub comes when someone DOES leave to take care of business and the employer (in a moment of insanity) tries to enforce some sort of penalty on the person for having left. He would have egg on his face like he's never seen egg on a face before. Not to mention being on the front page of your local newspaper. It would have been quite proper for the CEO to tell somebody to order a couple of portables at the very least. Is this manager from the dark ages or what! At the risk of being a bit too graphic, let me say that I know quite a few people who would find some rather creative ways to show the CEO he had made a bad decision if he imposed the 'no leaving' rule. At least he did not decide to tell everyone they must bring a coffee can to work that day.

dhnyct

To bsa: We experienced a similar situation in the past. How did you handle the pay situation for hourly employees?

bsa

My non-exempt employees are paid for hours worked; so if they left for the day, they were only paid for the hours they worked. If a non-exempt who stayed had to leave for a short period of time (+/-30 minutes), they were paid for the time they were gone and surprise, surprise no one abused the company's good faith. The non-exempt's who left for the day did not complain about short pay, in fact it was like a "get out of jail free" card to them - playing hookie without penalties. Exempt employees were paid for the full day.

This may sound strange, but - for the employees who stayed - it was a fun, funny kinda day. Lots of joking, you can't imagine how many times we went to the water faucet for a drink, even though on a normal day we would be drinking bottled water! The local fast food places did a booming business that day. I think we all left about 2:00-3:00 pm. A memorable day x:D

diane

That's pretty much how our day went here when we lost our water. Employees
ended up leaving by 2:00 or 3:00 as well. The CEO is pretty flexible, so we
paid all employees for a full day (both exempt and non-exempt).