A pregnant woman's right to pee

[Trekker4747]

I'd say the employee or her coworkers have ample cause to report this specific incident or the policy in general and get OSHA on the case.

I agree, though, OSHA should certainly take a look at this.

 

[Mary Ann]

As others have said, when you have to go, you have to go, especially when pregnant. During my pregnancies I knew where every publicly accessible toilet in my town was for this very reason.

I should be at work right now, but just as I was putting my bag in a locker at work before my shift I received a call on my mobile phone from my daughter's school telling me she's ill. I told a supervisor what happened, and left to pick up my daughter and bring her home. Now I'm killing time until her doctor's appointment, after which I'll head back to work. I feel guilty for having left my co-workers understaffed, but my co-workers and my supervisors are fine with what happened, because we work for a company that believes in putting family first in these situations. I'm damned lucky.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

This company fails the OSHA "reasonable access" guidelines on time sensitive or complete denial grounds, since they're delaying access to the bathroom too long (until the employee has a designated break period) or denying access entirely (as indicated by them giving the employee a trash can to use instead).

It fails on medical grounds, since they're preventing someone who has a genuine medical need to use the bathroom often and since there's no standard number of bathroom breaks a person needs anyway; everyone is different and sex, age, or health concerns come into play.

And it fails on reasonable cause for denial grounds since a call center is not an assembly line or other similar situation where the sudden disappearance of a worker on the line would shut down the whole operation (and even then, they are expected to quickly provide replacement workers to fill the gap and allow the employee to use the bathroom).

I'd say the employee or her coworkers have ample cause to report this specific incident or the policy in general and get OSHA on the case.

Well put. This crap is most likely illegal, and the company should be called to account.

As for call centers, those are well-known for treating employees like garbage. You are not a human being, you are a robot who reads a script, and you can be cheaply replaced if you don't like the rules.