Strange and intrusive bathroom rules at Norwegian companies

Norwegian insurance company DNB has installed an alarm system in their toilets that alerts managers if an employee spends "too much time" in the restroom. Apparently, this is only the latest weird and intrusive bathroom rule reported to privacy agency Datatilsynet, the "data inspectorate." From the Telegraph:

Last year the country's workplace ombudsman said one firm was reported for making women workers wear a red bracelet when they were having their period to justify more frequent trips to the loo.
Another company made staff sign a lavatory "visitors book" while a third issued employees with an electronic key card to gain access to the lavatories so they could monitor breaks.
Norway's chief workplace ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon said: "These are extreme cases of workplace monitoring, but they are real.
"We receive many complaints about monitoring in the workplace, which is becoming a growing problem as it is so often being used for something other than what it was originally intended for.

"Norwegian alarm system monitors length of office lavatory visits"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Nylund

What’s up with BoingBoing and Chrome not playing nicely? This site crashes or nearly crashes Chrome every time I visit it. A quick Google search shows I’m not alone. What’s going on there?Oh, and yeah, that red bracelet thing struck me as particularly effed up.
- EH
  
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- thatbox
  
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  - sstair
    
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    - EH
      
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      - sstair
        
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- penguinchris
  
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- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-Crisp/100000527948737 Jeff Crisp
  
  Has started happening on Wired too.
relawson

I forget the company, but someone I knew would be “talked to” if they took too many steps going to different places on the floor… wtf?
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

How do they manage to have all the meetings, send all the memos, and write up the implementation docs for policies like this without ever sobering up enough to have a “what the fuck are we doing?!” epiphany?
- http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
  
  Speaking as someone who used to work in an office where the length of bathroom breaks was monitored–and not by a device, but by someone who didn’t have much in the way of job responsibilities–I know how the power can go to a person’s head. Well, a certain type of person’s head.
  
  I also remember when the new phone books were delivered to the office and anyone who wanted a phone book had to submit a written explanation of why they needed one. Amazingly that policy was dropped when the person who put it in place realized that everyone in the office had a lot of legitimate reasons for needing phone books that we were more than happy to write up in lengthy detail.
GawainLavers

Poor European industry, lagging behind Walmart in every area.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

“Norwegian insurance company DNB has installed an alarm system in their toilets that alerts managers if an employee spends “too much time” in the restroom.”

Sounds like someone has taken Michael Fassbender’s antics in Shame to heart.
sollie

Bjørn Erik Thon used to be the head of the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman – he is now the head of The Data Inspectorate. I realize this error was by the Telegraph, but I thought I’d mention it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjorn_Erik_Thon
- http://profiles.google.com/h.f.oftebro Hallvard Fæhn Oftebro
  
  Indeed.
  
  Oh, and DNB is Norway’s biggest bank (though this story concerned an insurance subsidiary, so the post is strictly speaking correct on that count).
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z2PCUJLFNNZNVRIBXBER67IBTI petr

A fellow I knew who (probably in the 80s) worked in a large printshop in Germany said the toilets were slanted, so that it was not possible to sit on them for very long. The reason was obviously to reduce toilet breaks. Having run my own business for years, I noticed that no one ever goes to the can on their lunch hour. And they refuse to abide by my alphabetical system ie. names beginning A-E should be able to go between 8-10, F-K between 10-12 etc.
if you miss your allotted time then you have to go the next day.
- Mister44
  
  Please tell me you’re being sarcastic.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z2PCUJLFNNZNVRIBXBER67IBTI petr
    
    yup.
- marilove
  
  If you’re not being sarcastic, then you are a terrible manager.
- http://twitter.com/skormos skormos
  
  Since Bowel and Bladder both begin with B, what’s the point of ever going after 10a?
DeargDoom

Alarm systems seem like pretty half assed intrusive bathroom behaviour to me.
This is what I call bathroom monitoring:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0531/1224298147411.html

School told to take CCTV out of student toilets
A SECONDARY school in Co Kildare was ordered to remove monitoring cameras from student toilets after their parents made a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner.
- urbanspaceman
  
  Old news, but still relevant in my opinion:
  
  http://cornellsun.com/node/30466
hantz

I just started being happy for working in the nature…
Mister44

Jesus – the bathroom was the one area I could go sit and cry about how I screwed up my life. On top of that, I have had times where I need a whole hour to work things out.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z2PCUJLFNNZNVRIBXBER67IBTI petr
  
  please tell me you’re being sarcastic. How would you feel as an employer if people spent an hour in the can?
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5PDJ4VH4UHPEJE6P2TEDELKWOQ M
    
    Shit happens.
    - SummerFang
      
      Yeah it does, I guess it just takes longer for some.
  - Mister44
    
    When that happened it was because I had nearly a week long back log to work through. So in the long run, it ended up the same amount of time.
http://twitter.com/bjr70 Bonnie

I briefly worked for a company as a teen that would dock your pay if you went to the restroom outside of your 15 minute lunch. They were actively violating labor laws and I only lasted 2 days, but seriously they docked you a quarter for each minute you spent in the bathroom. It was insane.

In my early 20′s I worked for one of the split off baby Bells processing new phone orders – just checking in the paperwork once phones had been installed. We had to raise our hands and be dismissed by a manager to use the restroom. We were allowed two minutes, and after those two minutes were up you were docked out of your two 15-minute breaks. They eventually were stopped by the union, but only for direct hires. Us contractors were still docked. Crazy shit.
http://twitter.com/skormos skormos

The obvious solution is to make everyone’s desk seat a toilet. This way no one has to leave for anything but lunch.
emschelle

This makes me think of Shawshank Redemption, when Red’s asking the boss to go to the bathroom *after* he gets out of prison-
- Dan Allard
  
  Wasn’t that Brooks? When he was bagging groceries?
  - emschelle
    
    I thought Brooks was the one who offed himself in the room before Red got there?*
    
    *perhaps I have a great movie to rewatch….
    - Labbit
      
      Correct. And it was definitely Red asking for the bathroom break when he had the same bagging job some time later.
Øyvind

Listen, BB…I thought we agreed that you would try and give us Norwegians a bit more favorable coverage in 2012? Pretty much every case of 2011 had us down as idiots. And now this. There is more to us, I promise!
RJ

I can’t speak for Norway, but in the US, employees who are harassed and/or penalized for using the toilet have recourse to OSHA.

OSHA Regulation: 29 CFR §1910.141(c)(1)(i)

Official interpretation of the above

Basically, if your employer is prepared to time your bathroom breaks and penalize you for pissing incessantly (or whatever they say you’re doing), they also have to be able to prove that they’re right for doing this.

If your employer actually has the balls to dock your pay for bathroom use, you’ll need to contact your state’s Department of Labor and ask about that. The law varies from state to state, and there is no federal regulation on this matter. The DOL can help you out there.

I’m not trying to derail the thread, either. All these regulations just go to show that there are shithouse-crazy employers in EVERY country, not just Norway.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z2PCUJLFNNZNVRIBXBER67IBTI petr
  
  just curious, have you ever employed people? Would you be thrilled if someone had one cup of coffee after another, and then spent half the morning in the can? I’ve had employees like that, whining about not having enough time to send a customer a proof but no problem finding time for a smokebreak.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Maybe you should give yourself a poor annual evaluation for having such bad hiring skills.
SummerFang

Sweet Jesus! After reading this and another workplace story here on BoingBoing, I’m feel so damn fortunate to not have to deal with this ridiculousness! I even work for a fairly big corporation in the US, but I work for and with rational, intelligent people! So grateful!!!
penguinchris

I have a hard time understanding how such shitty workplaces exist. I understand that people put up with this kind of thing because they need the job (and presumably are doing what they can to find a better job), but what makes it descend to this level in the first place?

The answer is, of course, bad management – but how can management be this bad? Having a pleasant workplace can only increase productivity and managers who don’t realize that should be fired. If it goes all the way to the top, well, the CEO and other execs are idiots sitting on top of tons of wasted productivity – which would increase their already ridiculous paychecks, so you’d think it’s something they’d be interested in.

Presumably these kinds of policies result from people actually abusing the company’s time and spending a lot of time in the bathroom, or standing around the water cooler or whatever. Thing is, everyone – besides the managers apparently – knows who the people who do these kinds of things are. If the managers were any good they would know too, and can deal with the people directly (to be clear I’m not suggesting that workers should inform on their cube mates).

I know that if I worked someplace that tracked my every movement, I would spend more time figuring out workarounds out of spite than I would working.
urbanspaceman

Right on, Penguinchris!

This kind of personal harassment and systematic infantilization sounds like something American business owners would pull. I never thought that Norwegians would.
BunnyShank

Obviously what this calls for is a ban on lutefisk.
Labbit

A previous workplace of mine had no official bathroom policies, rules or reprimands… just one of those push-in-timer buttons that controlled the lights. If you spent longer than however-long-it-took-to-spring-back-out-again you had to finish pooping in the dark.
slippedstoic

This reminds me a lot of a scene from Neil Stevenson’s Snow Crash, where there is a 2-page bureaucratic document listing the proper regulations for using the toilet paper for government employees.

Here’s the passage in Google books if you click the first link.
http://books.google.com/books?id=RMd3GpIFxcUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=snow+crash&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zBIpT4ifDe_MiQLSwOXYCg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Bathroom&f=false
FrodeSvendsen

I don’t believe for a moment this is legal in Norway. The worker-rights in Norway are quite probably some of the best in the world. For the employees, mind you..