Ask Slashdot: When Does Time Tracking at Work Go Too Far?

An anonymous reader writes "I work in a call center, full time, for a large mail order pharmacy. Recently, as part of their campaign to better track time spent both at and away from our desks, they have started tracking bathroom breaks. They use a Cisco phone system, and there is now a clock out option that says 'Bathroom.' My question is whether or not this is in any way acceptable in a large corporate environment (Around 800 people work at this same pharmacy) and is it even legal? How invasive would this really be considered, and beyond privacy concerns, how are they going to deal with the humiliation that their employees feel as a result of this? Has this happened to any of you?"

Re:Unionize

[TheGratefulNet]

USA to china: "when I grow up, I want to be just like you!"

(think about that..)

eat a lot....

[TenAngryPistols]

of chinese/taco bell for lunch... They did this at my first job (tech support) a few years ago. I just did everything like I always did.. if I had to drop a huge deuce and it took 10-15 minutes... then whatever. What're they gonna say? "You're fired for taking big long dumps?" Besides, with those Cisco soft phones when you "log out" and choose the available options for why you're logging out, most people will select the most generic answer like "asking a question" or "helping a customer" or whatever. You'll eventually see that people in your apartment spend a LOT of time "asking questions/helping customers" and almost nobody has to poop anymore.

Very short conversation

[EngrBohn]

I can give you an answer, but it'll have to take less than three minutes to explain. More than three minutes gets rounded to six minutes, a billable tenth of an hour.

Re:Short answer

[History's Coming To]

Or simply time to get everybody to constantly hit the "Bathroom" button. When management realise that every cubicle is occupied by an average of 17 workers every minute of the working day and work is still getting done, they'll realise it's pointless. A virtual dirty protest if you will.

Take your phone to the bathroom!

[yog]

Better than unionizing -- just take your wireless headset to the toilet. You can stay on your calls, and there can be an LCD monitor in the stall if you need to reference information, read from a script, check your Facebook page, etc.

At the end of a particularly annoying call, the sound of a toilet flushing would be entirely appropriate, too!http://slashdot.org/story/12/09/16/1213226/ask-slashdot-when-does-time-tracking-at-work-go-too-far#

Re:Unionize

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try Mr Romney...

Piss on the floor

[sjames]

If they're going to treat you like a small child, act like one.

Re:Unionize

[Znork]

Of course, unless one happens to be one of those people talking out of their ass, there's nothing preventing the combination of the activities. No break needed, problem solved.