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Comment by kjkjadksj | Hacker News Reader

Easily one of the nicest part of wfh is the frictionless bathroom experience. No long walks. No mess, no smells or grunts from others. No trying to find time to even do it at all, just up and go. As a heavy water drinker I could easily be going once an hour. The office was literal torture some days, stuck in ‘important’ meetings with what feels like a knife in your gut and practically running out before small talk ropes you in for another 20 minutes. It’s a certain kind of hell for sure.

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I really don't understand grown people who don’t have the decency to at least lift the toilet seat to pee when standing.

The public bathrooms in Japan on the other hand are a fantastical heaven.

A lot of dudes legitimately don't know that's what it's for, or they don't understand just how many little splashes happen, or are too grossed out to touch public toilets, therefore feed into the spiraling feedback of desecration.

A lot of dudes will actively deny that they splash at all.

Just lift the seat with your foot if you don't want to touch it.

And (at least in the mens room) leave the seat up unless you need it, and if you use it, put it up when you're done. That keeps it clean for the next person.

On the flip side, when you get up and go off camera or turn camera off in a small video call (few participants), it feels awkward to get up and leave and I usually hold it and suffer through it. In person for some reason it felt less awkward to excuse yourself for a few minutes.

Not to mention I always leave the airpods in when I go now and have to triple check I’m on mute :)

In a pinch like that I'll just put "brb" in the chat, turn off mic and camera, and take the laptop with me.

I have a five-step ritual.

1. Mute myself. 2. Double check I am muted. 3. Ask, "Can anyone hear me?" 4. Ask, "Can anyone hear me?" again, louder. 5. State, "I'm about to urinate."

Increasingly embarrassing failsafes, but not as embarrassing as broadcasting a bathroom break. I'm happy that I never needed anything past layer 2.

My old headset would disconnect at random. It had its own physical mute button. At some point, Teams decided to switch microphones for me without telling me. So when the headset came back online, Teams continued using the built in laptop mic. Fortunately I wasn't doing anything embarrassing.

Someone asked where some background noise was coming from. I said "not from me, I'm on mute". And several people said "no you're not!"

I mentioned this because of the ongoing anti-Samsung thread. I've always avoided Samsung but caved on the folding phones. I haven't really tried out any other phones lately, but I really like their buttons to disable the microphone and camera for this. Not sure if it's Samsung or stock Android at this point. Also I just got an update their adaptive battery protection is something I have been wanting.

I’d debate you on 5. That may be more embarrassing.

I used to have a 1L water bottle and I asked my manager for a water cooler, which had a bunch of benefits, it was never as dramatic as you make it sound.

If you're drinking so much water that you urgently have to pee once an hour you might be over doing it. You can overhydrate. Your urine should be a light straw color. If it's totally clear you might be overhydrated. If it's darker yellow you are probably dehydrated.

On the plus side, it does force you to take the recommended breaks from sitting in front of a screen.

Not to start a tangent, but the problem here has less to do with WFH vs. RTO (I’ve been 100% WFH for 10 years, FWIW), and more to do with meetings.

People that have calendars packed with meetings will have a hard time with bio breaks regardless of where they work.

I’m fortunate enough to work for a company that has a culture of minimal meetings for ICs (I probably average 4-6 hours per week), so bio breaks aren’t an issue.

But I should still be better about hydrating. I do better than some, but could still do better (probably 80 oz. per day).

With wfh I could be in meeting and just mute and shut video off while I relieve myself. If someone asks me to chime in during the act I could pinch off and be on the mic in 30 seconds.

The real most dangerous game.

I agree with what you've said before, but I still usually wait for the meeting to be over when working from home. The fear of accidentally unmuting, or not having muted correctly to begin with, is too high. It's an expected value thing: The failure case is unlikely, but when it hits, it hits awkwardly. (While also not being the end of the world, which factors into me saying "usually".)

It is however unequivocally true that I much, much prefer going to the bathroom at home.

Even if the camera was on not like its directed at the action anyhow. Laptop might be set down in the hallway outside the door or on the sink.

I’m using my phone, which would then be face down anyway, but I’m more worried about the mic being on inadvertently. It’s easier to accidentally unmute and not notice that.

Calling it a "bio break" makes it sound like you are trying to excuse some unfortunate deficiency.

Since time immemorial we have been coming up with euphemisms for “I need to shit”.

I actually find this one minimally objectionable. I am a meat robot and I must attend to biological necessities. This is a convenient abstraction for my working relationships.

Yeah, different mindset I guess.

Taking a shit is a pleasure, the meeting is the inconvenience.

Nah, it's a gaming term that goes back to at least 2006 (first I'd seen it). When you're grinding 10 hours on some new raid in WoW it was common to say "brb bio" or "Everyone take a 5 min bio break" etc.

We said it in FFXI a few years before that. I thought maybe it was a pun since the game has a spell called Bio and people would highlight the word using the auto-translate function, but I just checked and this says the term dates back to the mid-90s:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bio-break-meaning-a...

Kind of? It is an unfortunate biological reality that we need to eat, sleep, pee, etc. I mean, we literally say "Excuse me" all the time as a matter of social etiquette; this is no different.

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