A Chinese company has had enough of lazy employees and has started fining those who take more than one bathroom break during their shift.
The corporation based in Dongguan, Guangdong province, Anpu Electric Science and Technology, has started enforcing a rather cruel once-a-day bathroom break policy. An employee to break this rule would be fined 20 yuan, which equals a $3 fine.
The notices issued by the company were later on published on social media by some angry employees, and about seven staff members were fined on December 20 and 21. The new rule has started an outrage online. However, the management justifies it by saying that many of the employees are lazy and not committed to their work and use these bathroom breaks to smoke and chill during their working hours.
“We are helpless. The fact is that the workers are lazy at work,” one of the managers, surnamed Cao, told Guangdong TV. “The management spoke with those workers many times but didn’t achieve a positive result yet.”
Cao added that fining the employees instead of firing them for their irresponsible behavior suits as a better solution. The hiring processes and making new people learn their roles is quite a task, so they decided to groom the existing employees to be a little more committed to work. The rule-breaking employees don’t have to pay fines right off; instead, the money is deducted from their monthly bonuses.
Now the employee who wants to take more than one break in a day has first to take permission from his/her line manager. And this has raged Chinese netizens even further. On the contrary, some people were in support of the company’s decision and sympathized with them.
The people in support of this decision said that the company was forced to take such an action. Simultaneously, some others added that employees use the toilet frequently and that too for longer periods, which eventually affects the overall productivity and outcome.
However, most people were disgusted by the idea and were against Anpu Electric for such a decision. The rule was considered and called exploitative and humiliating. One Weibo user commented, “What era is it where going to the bathroom is considered as a luxury. Others blasted Anpu Electric Science and Technology and its management, calling the rule exploitative and humiliating.
Dongguan Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau noticed this new set rule and started investigating further, marking the rule illegal.
As it seems, bathroom breaks are a serious problem in China. The private Chinese companies have been taking weird measures in the past to keep the time spent in restrooms and bathrooms to the minimum. The previous year, a firm installed timers in the bathroom, and another company spent 2 million Yuan to block the internet to reach the bathroom premises.