Help regarding toilet breaks

feygan

Hoping someone can shed some light on a problem situation. My partner currently works in a call center that manages several nation wide contracts. Her job role is as a "customer support adviser" this also comes with 11 hour shifts that entail 10 hours of work time.

Recently she had to come home early due to a total failure of her voice, after seeing her GP she was placed on two weeks sick leave for strain, this involved ssp and a referral to a voice coach on how she should be talking on the phone to limit damage. Part of the advice given was also to ensure she drinks plenty of water to prevent her throat drying out thus causing damage.

The upshot of this means she now finds herself needing to go to the toilet more than she would do in a normal day off due to an increase fluid intake. However over the past couple of weeks she has been getting messages from her team leader that her "unplanned breaks" are too high (sometimes a total of 14 minutes). To clarify this the company uses a system where you can log yourself into a work state called "unplanned break" this simply means you are taking abreak from work that is not one of your scheduled and authorised rest breaks. Obviously this is meant for use as toilet trips although it is a known fact some employees abuse the system for other means. My partner does not smoke, nor does she have a need to check her phone (kept in her locker at all times during work periods due to data protection laws) every hour for facebook etc. So she uses her unplanned breaks for toilet and only toilet trips.

Her team leader has informed her that employees are only allowed up to 10 minutes in total of unplanned breaks, this starts from the second you log in to this work state and finishes the second you log back into another work state. The company does have a swipe card system for entering some parts of the building but not for the toilets so all the system can say is you spend x amount of minutes in an unplanned break and not what you were doing.

Now my argument is that it is a basic right to use a toilet as it is a basic right to be allowed water if requested, thus I feel that to threaten a recorded meeting (the company uses this as a pretense before contacting HR or official disciplinary proceedings) for going to the toilet should be unallowed. Though I cannot fathom exactly how she should approach the matter, obviously a medical excuse simply doesn't fly as a company can just argue she is physically unsuitable for the work that is required.

So is there a loop hole that allows a firm to dictate to employees exactly how much time on a toilet bowl they are allowed per day? If so can someone point me in the direction of such so I can better verse myself with this regulation and help out my partner as it is obviously causing her stress that she does not need in this job.

maninthestreet

So how much time, on average, each shift is your partner actually spending on these 'unplanned breaks'??

Kayalana99

I kind of agree with them to be honest... how many toilet trips is she taking to need 15min a day?

I mean she has a dinner break...so she has to go 5hours at a time till dinner then home? Surely without a medical reason (drinking a lot of water is a reason to go more often but not a weak bladder kind of problem) she would be able to go 2-3hours at a time easily? So that's what two trips out a day? Surely 5min is enough for a quick wee unless the toilet is on the other end of a large building or something

WestonDave

She possibly needs to work on the balance between not drinking enough so her throat dries out and drinking too much so that she is overloading her body to the point it starts flushing out the excess. Having a frequent sip of water will keep the throat moist and avoid loss of voice - drinking a pint of water in one shot (to give the other extreme) will simply lead to massive overload and 3 trips to the toilet in quick succession.


Its pretty logical that if she is urinating a lot of water out, its not staying in her body to benefit her throat which in turn suggests she can cut back what she is taking in in terms of quantity whilst maybe working on frequency to retain the throat benefits.

feygan

Part of this issue stems from how the official breaks are structured. Due to the nature of the job an incoming call from a customer could take anything from ten minutes to well over an hour. This means my partner could have been scheduled for an official break say at 3pm but not be able to take that break until nearer 4pm as she was took a call that went on past her allotted break time.

She has no issue with this however she cannot simply say "I have finished that call and it is past my break time I am off for lunch". She must wait until informed by her team leader that it is time for that team to take their break, this means she can then have to wait another quarter of an hour or such due to there being too many other teams on a break at any one time. In these cases she then ends up using her unplanned break periods for the toilet. The building itself is four floors and she has informed me that there are toilets on two on those floors, due to the way the company works she could find herself on any one of those floors at any given day so some days she will have to travel between floors for the toilet.

From an outside perspective it appears to me as if this unplanned break policy is in place due to the way some of the employees decide they wish to take a smoke break or such. The problem I see is there is no way to discriminate between those who simply walk to the loo and walk straight back and those that do not. Regardless I still feel that if an employee needs to go to the toilet every 2-3 hours that should really not be an issue that I as an employer can dictate. Especially when you consider the time taken to log into your unplanned break state, leave that room then walk to the toilet and reverse. Even if that were coming to 15 minutes each and everyday the employee would still only be spending 2-3 minutes tops in the actual toilet itself.

DKLS

Is working in a call centre the modern equivalent of a galley slave?

If she needs to go she needs to go!

A friend of mine who is a club singer gargles with glycerin before going on stage and she swears that has saved her voice, not sure if its an old wives tale but may be worth looking into what professional singers do to keep their voices: I just looked on youtube and there are a bunch of videos on 'Vocal health' which may help.

morganedge

DKLS wrote: »

Is working in a call centre the modern equivalent of a galley slave?

Ditto!
I was just thinking that.
I've read a number of very depressing threads similar to this one recently (and not just in call centres, either)
I bet the people who choose benefits over work must love such threads!
Jeez. What a world.

Lily-Rose_3

Oh gawd, what an AWFUL employer. No wonder some places can't keep their staff! I hope your partner finds something better OP.

DKLS

morganedge wrote: »

Ditto!
I was just thinking that.
I've read a number of very depressing threads similar to this one recently (and not just in call centres, either)
I bet the people who choose benefits over work must love such threads!
Jeez. What a world.

I have done my share of soul destroying jobs, but monitoring how many times and how long you take seems a tad controlling and not an efficient way of managing staff moral and performance.

swingaloo

I worked in a call centre which was exactly the same.

I now work in a distribution warehouse and swipe cards have just been introduced to monitor 'loo time'. We had been warned it was coming for a while but its because those that have abused the system (going to the loo 5 mins before break time, etc) have now made it lousy for the rest of us. I feel the managers should have managed the abusers not penalised the rest of us.

whodathunkit

feygan wrote: »

Part of this issue stems from how the official breaks are structured. Due to the nature of the job an incoming call from a customer could take anything from ten minutes to well over an hour. This means my partner could have been scheduled for an official break say at 3pm but not be able to take that break until nearer 4pm as she was took a call that went on past her allotted break time.

She has no issue with this however she cannot simply say "I have finished that call and it is past my break time I am off for lunch". She must wait until informed by her team leader that it is time for that team to take their break, this means she can then have to wait another quarter of an hour or such due to there being too many other teams on a break at any one time. In these cases she then ends up using her unplanned break periods for the toilet. The building itself is four floors and she has informed me that there are toilets on two on those floors, due to the way the company works she could find herself on any one of those floors at any given day so some days she will have to travel between floors for the toilet.

From an outside perspective it appears to me as if this unplanned break policy is in place due to the way some of the employees decide they wish to take a smoke break or such. The problem I see is there is no way to discriminate between those who simply walk to the loo and walk straight back and those that do not. Regardless I still feel that if an employee needs to go to the toilet every 2-3 hours that should really not be an issue that I as an employer can dictate. Especially when you consider the time taken to log into your unplanned break state, leave that room then walk to the toilet and reverse. Even if that were coming to 15 minutes each and everyday the employee would still only be spending 2-3 minutes tops in the actual toilet itself.

It takes an enormous amount more time to smoke a cigarette than it does to have a pee!