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Norway Bosses Monitor Toilet Breaks

Best not get constipated on a workday

Norway Bosses Monitor Toilet Breaks
31 January 2012

A friend of ours used to hate his job so much that towards the end of his tenure he would regularly nip off for an elongated doze in one of his workplace’s many toilets when the mood took him. And the mood took this, ahem, friend of ours a lot.

Thankfully, he didn’t work in Norway, otherwise he would have been in deep excrement - literally and metaphorically. It transpires that a number of Norwegian companies, disgruntled at what they perceive as employee’s extended breaks away from their desks, have initiated a number of systems to curtail these breaks.

The most draconian is at insurance company DNB. If an employee is away from their desk for more than eight – EIGHT! – minutes a day (we presume this doesn’t include a lunch break) managers are notified of this absence by way of a flashing light.

Last year, another firm opened a lavatory visitors book, while another provided staff with an electronic key fob so they could monitor lavatory breaks.

Unsurprisingly, workers are up in arms about such strong-arm Big Brother tactics, accusing bosses of taking the...well, you get it.

[via Telegraph]

(Image: Rex Features)