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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Sounds right. On the flip side there are jobs where random bathroom breaks don't really work.

EG: bus driver.

So I am actually not sure how that works for a pregnat bus driver. Letting her randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee doesn't seem fair to the commuters. Probably in practice pregnant bus drivers get assigned to a short route or something like that.

I don't know the nature of Amazon warehouse work. It's possible that unscheduled bathroom breaks affect multiple people (eg, I am peeing and you are idle because you depend on me to do your task) - that's the only condition where this feels at all conscionable.

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If you really wanted to optimize something involving living consciousness beings like a machine, at least you should consider things like the need to take a piss as a hard constraint and design the system around it.

Don't get me wrong I love factorio like the next guy and understand the idea behind your thinking, but there should be limits to that thinking in the real world. And if that doesn't convince you consider the efficiency loss of a depressed worker with a urinary tract infection.

Honestly - and I don't mean that as an insult - I hope for you to experience (just once) the loss of dignity that not being able to visit the restroom on your own decision will give you. Might make you realize the hell this kind of thinking leads to.

// Honestly - and I don't mean that as an insult - I hope for you to experience (just once) the loss of dignity that not being able to visit the restroom on your own decision will give you. Might make you realize the hell this kind of thinking leads to.

I am not insulated and I think my post was received stronger than I intended, with my point being simply that there are jobs where physical presence at a given moment is more significant than in knowledge work for example (say whatever you want, bus drivers and others defacto hold it in if possible to avoid disruptions at least here in NYC)

And to be frank even at my job which is very removed from bus driving or warehouse work there are moments where I would feel self-pressure to hold it in short of a dire emergency.

(Eg, I am on stage at a speaker panel or something like that where my absence would be visible and disruptive)

Are you on stage at a speaker panel 8 hours a day, every day? Because in the 8 hours a day case 'just holding' isn't an acceptable requirement.

Not going to discuss this further, but wanted to apologize for my message. I was annoyed and should've waited before sending. Sorry.

You've never been on a bus where the driver had to stop to go use the restroom? There is no prohibition against that.

Correct. In however long I've taken transit in NYC, I have never experienced a bus driver stepping out to pee, nor had a subway train held up for that reason. I am sure it happens, and I just read up on the rules around that - but the defacto is that this causes disruptions to passengers and the system and the employees do their best to hold it in and pee at the terminus.

I am glad that the rules allow bathroom breaks when emergent but the fact that people try to minimize it tells you something as well.

I grew up in Toronto, I've seen it a few times. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Though more memorable was the gentleman singing out the stop names.

Turns out depending on the metro they already solved that problem.

Just let them piss.

They actually do let bus operators randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee in some cities. In Ottawa (Ontario), for instance, as long as an operator is within their 5 minute "late standard" window, they can stop and make a quick pee break or Timmy's break as long as they keep the bus in time.

The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot) so you can't take it out of neutral anyways to try to steal it.

https://www.michaelsuddard.com/2013/03/oc-transpo-condoned-t...

(Best part is this old blogpost with someone cranky over the stop as well getting shown receipts by OC Transpo that their Tim's wielding bus driver that morning was in fact running on time based on GPS data.)

> The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot) so you can't take it out of neutral anyways to try to steal it.

Huh, it would never have occurred to me to raise the objection "but someone could steal the bus while the driver is in the bathroom!" Why does the bus need to stay in neutral with a special system of daily rotating PINs, rather than having the driver take their key to the bathroom with them?

Transit buses generally actually don't use keys, amusingly. You pop the drivers' window open and reach in for the manual door release, then climb on board.

The headlight switch is also the 'master on' switch for the bus, then you slap an engine starter button and off to the races you go. It's assumed you keep the bus stabled somewhere secure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GtuUBEeTVg

https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/

Clever Devices is one of the large players of the bus telematics industry and they just sit on the CANbus of the bus (heh!) and block the gear shift from being able to shift over it until you enter the PIN.

If you've ever played with a bus simulator, OMSI 2's Chicago Downtown addon requires you sign onto the bus to take it out of gear, too - you just look up and see the post-it note with that driver's ID and PIN ;)

> The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot)...

How do drivers remember their daily PIN?

When they show up to the depot and get their bus assignment they get a slip with the PIN (IIRC), otherwise they can call dispatch back up, identify themselves, and be given a reset remotely. (https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/)

Thank you for this informative comment.

Many bus routes are designed with stopping/break points, including limiting route lengths so that operators aren't stuck in these conditions.

Yes, at 5pm in a major city, a bus driver might pull up next to a convenience stop, stop the bus, go pee, and come back. Does it happen often? Not that often, because of the aforementioned "we design routes so people aren't trapped for multiple hours" concept.

Whether you're stowing, picking, diverting, or working the dock... you literally just grab someone to cover your position for a few minutes. That's it. There are process assistants present who can literally do that if they have to. There's no reason to deny a pregnant worker this except "This is making my day harder because I can't run my aisles at an absolute minimum head count and still stand around with my cart pretending to do useful work".

The only real case I could see where grabbing someone to cover you while you take a bathroom break might not work is, for example, someone working as a yard marshal... since that's not something everyone gets trained for, so the pool of replacements is smaller (including among process assistants).

So unless this worker was working the yard... there's not a lot of reason to deny them bathroom breaks... and that goes whether they're pregnant or not honestly.

look man you might just consider not commenting about stuff you know absolutely nothing about. it's totally ok to just not speak up and use it as an opportunity to learn.

Both jobs already need to be designed around some expectation for how often people need to use the restroom. If individual exceptions are not feasible, they design the job so that it works for everyone.

What the fuck?

Edit: Sorry to be brusque. You're suggesting that it's conscionable to disallow a bathroom break that would inconvenience customers or cause a fellow employee to be unable to progress? That category of work culture should be unheard of in the USA, but it's leaking in, and if we don't viciously reject it, we might as well start the country over.

If bathroom breaks are frequently causing some kind of unacceptable complication, then the problem isn't the bathroom break, it's the design of the position.

All he's saying is when Swift gets on stage and her drummer needs to pee, he's going to have to hold it instead of walking off stage in the middle of the song. Sometimes jobs require periods of required availability.

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