Bathroom Facilities - Not an April Fools Joke!
diane
16 Posts
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!!
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!!
Comments
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.
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
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).