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He also likely has a private bathroom. For those of us whose bowels like to make their move late morning, and whose offices were light on bathrooms relative to

He also likely has a private bathroom. For those of us whose bowels like to make their move late morning, and whose offices were light on bathrooms relative to the number of employees in the building, WFH has been a godsend. I am sure there are another dozen in-office perks that CEO has that the average employee does not.

sleazebreeze 6y ago
The private bathroom has been a completely underrated aspect of WFH. I can poop outdoors on backpacking trips using natural materials to wipe, I can poop in busy airports and I can poop in stinking 100 degree portapotties. But I have a really hard time pooping in gleaming offices where all my coworkers can see me walking into the bathroom and emerging 10 minutes later. I hate it!
- core-questions 6y ago
  I began to hate it less when I remembered a little empathy game that has served me well. The question is not, "when I leave the bathroom, is everyone looking at me and judging me for having used it?" Rather, the question is, "when I see someone else leave the bathroom, do I think about it for more than a fraction of a second, and if I knew they had defecated, would I want to shame or embarrass them for it at all?" The answer to the latter, if you are not a horrible person, is of course not. You don't really care, it's not your problem, you're not keeping track of it, it's just an event you forget moments later. Probably, then, that's what your coworkers think of you, when you go; so stop caring, because they definitely don't. (If anyone ever were to metaphorically give me shit for using the bathroom, I'd turn it around on them in a heartbeat, too. It's so easy - just ask, what kind of creep cares about their coworker's bodily functions to this extent? Gross, weird!)
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > I began to hate it less when I remembered a little empathy game that has served me well. The question is not, "when I leave the bathroom, is everyone looking at me and judging me for having used it?" Rather, the question is, "when I see someone else leave the bathroom, do I think about it for more than a fraction of a second, and if I knew they had defecated, would I want to shame or embarrass them for it at all?" before WFH, I worked at a desk in an open floorplan. for whatever reason, it gives me a constant low level of anxiety to be in an environment where lots of people can see me, especially if I can't easily tell when people are actually looking. so I used to go to the bathroom a bit more often than I really needed, just so I could spend a few minutes in a more private space. I personally don't care, but I certainly do notice which of my coworkers also seem to be frequent users of the bathroom. if I were a pointy-haired boss, that might be one of the data points used to assemble my list of slackers.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Well, you're paying too much attention to what other people are doing, even if you don't ostensibly care.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        probably true, but your empathy game only holds insofar as people like me are rare.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
Yes, this! I worked at a large US CPU company (Not AMD). There were several buildings on the campus. When nature called, I often had to go one or even two buildings away to find an open toilet stall. It was a nightmare. God help you if you had to poop near the top of the hour when meetings were getting out. There were lineups in the restrooms. I used to joke that it was like a concert but without the music and beer. I couldn't believe that a company that designs CPUs couldn't anticipate something simple like restroom loading.
core-questions 6y ago
Haha, I always wondered if I'd find a thread on HN that actually recognized that workers are human and to be human is to defecate. Truly the one thing we have in common with kings. The true art is to speak about it obliquely.... probably won't accomplish that here. In All Quiet on the Western Front, there's a passage about this, where the men discover a tremendous camaraderie about their shared shitting time - since there's no way to have privacy or any nicer facilities than what they can scrape together, it's basically just a purely functional experience. They sit in a field and provide each other dignity, instead of privacy; something we could well learn from. Interestingly, the Romans also had this - https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTcxODU0MDM4OTM2MDY5NDQy/roman-latrine-gettyimages-639163710.jpg https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTcxODU0MDM4OTM2MDY5N... - and it seems they did fine by it. It may be only really in relatively recent Western culture that we added a layer of shame over a natural act, and in turn required immense privacy for it. Wasn't the Tuilieries garden in Paris a place where fancy ladies might pop a squat? I once worked at a startup with 300 people on a floor with one bathroom with 3 stalls. 90% men. You'd always be waiting, you'd always be voiding yourself next two two other people. Maybe people you'd be going back to sit next to in a few minutes. You begin to know things about people you don't want to know. I myself of course do prefer the privacy, like most anyone, and further prefer a single occupancy bathroom because the hygiene opportunities are much better when you have direct and private access to a sink. I think the 300 people to 3 stalls situation was probably close to violating some kind of building code and at the very least it's just not a good example of treating your workers as though you value them. On the far polar opposite, I worked at a startup that had 5 single-occupancy bathrooms for 50 people. Two of them had showers. It was so much nicer in every way.... just that feeling that you were as comfortable at work as you are at home. Not just cattle, but treated with modern dignity; there's a cost to the employer to do this, but it might actually have ROI in the sense that your employees are more comfortable and healthier.
- qqqwerty 6y ago
  I would gladly take a roman bathroom over what I had at the office. I have no shame about the act, merely hate having to hold it in during a long meeting because there was a line for the bathrooms before hand. Oddly enough, I think the shift to open offices deserves at least some credit here. I think most office spaces were designed with a median estimate of occupancy in mind. Before open offices, it was a mix of offices and cubicles, with much less density. When I worked in a cube farm, we had 4 stalls and 2 urinals for about 60-70 men on two floors. My most recent office had 2 single occupancy bathrooms for about 40 people. If we count the urinal as 0.5 toilet, we get almost double the per-bathroom density in the open office. And the other confounding factor is when you combine open offices with cell phones, the bathroom turns into the 'Candy Crush break'. I imagine median occupancy times were lower back in the day, as lugging a newspaper or magazine to the bathroom was a little too obvious.
jcadam 6y ago
Not to mention, the 1-ply sandpaper most offices stock in their bathrooms instead of proper toilet paper. I imagine they use the 3 seashells at FAANG companies, but I'll settle for Charmin.

sleazebreeze 6y ago

The private bathroom has been a completely underrated aspect of WFH. I can poop outdoors on backpacking trips using natural materials to wipe, I can poop in busy airports and I can poop in stinking 100 degree portapotties. But I have a really hard time pooping in gleaming offices where all my coworkers can see me walking into the bathroom and emerging 10 minutes later. I hate it!

core-questions 6y ago
I began to hate it less when I remembered a little empathy game that has served me well. The question is not, "when I leave the bathroom, is everyone looking at me and judging me for having used it?" Rather, the question is, "when I see someone else leave the bathroom, do I think about it for more than a fraction of a second, and if I knew they had defecated, would I want to shame or embarrass them for it at all?" The answer to the latter, if you are not a horrible person, is of course not. You don't really care, it's not your problem, you're not keeping track of it, it's just an event you forget moments later. Probably, then, that's what your coworkers think of you, when you go; so stop caring, because they definitely don't. (If anyone ever were to metaphorically give me shit for using the bathroom, I'd turn it around on them in a heartbeat, too. It's so easy - just ask, what kind of creep cares about their coworker's bodily functions to this extent? Gross, weird!)
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > I began to hate it less when I remembered a little empathy game that has served me well. The question is not, "when I leave the bathroom, is everyone looking at me and judging me for having used it?" Rather, the question is, "when I see someone else leave the bathroom, do I think about it for more than a fraction of a second, and if I knew they had defecated, would I want to shame or embarrass them for it at all?" before WFH, I worked at a desk in an open floorplan. for whatever reason, it gives me a constant low level of anxiety to be in an environment where lots of people can see me, especially if I can't easily tell when people are actually looking. so I used to go to the bathroom a bit more often than I really needed, just so I could spend a few minutes in a more private space. I personally don't care, but I certainly do notice which of my coworkers also seem to be frequent users of the bathroom. if I were a pointy-haired boss, that might be one of the data points used to assemble my list of slackers.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Well, you're paying too much attention to what other people are doing, even if you don't ostensibly care.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      probably true, but your empathy game only holds insofar as people like me are rare.

UncleOxidant 6y ago

Yes, this! I worked at a large US CPU company (Not AMD). There were several buildings on the campus. When nature called, I often had to go one or even two buildings away to find an open toilet stall. It was a nightmare. God help you if you had to poop near the top of the hour when meetings were getting out. There were lineups in the restrooms. I used to joke that it was like a concert but without the music and beer. I couldn't believe that a company that designs CPUs couldn't anticipate something simple like restroom loading.

core-questions 6y ago

Haha, I always wondered if I'd find a thread on HN that actually recognized that workers are human and to be human is to defecate. Truly the one thing we have in common with kings. The true art is to speak about it obliquely.... probably won't accomplish that here. In All Quiet on the Western Front, there's a passage about this, where the men discover a tremendous camaraderie about their shared shitting time - since there's no way to have privacy or any nicer facilities than what they can scrape together, it's basically just a purely functional experience. They sit in a field and provide each other dignity, instead of privacy; something we could well learn from. Interestingly, the Romans also had this - https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTcxODU0MDM4OTM2MDY5NDQy/roman-latrine-gettyimages-639163710.jpg https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTcxODU0MDM4OTM2MDY5N... - and it seems they did fine by it. It may be only really in relatively recent Western culture that we added a layer of shame over a natural act, and in turn required immense privacy for it. Wasn't the Tuilieries garden in Paris a place where fancy ladies might pop a squat? I once worked at a startup with 300 people on a floor with one bathroom with 3 stalls. 90% men. You'd always be waiting, you'd always be voiding yourself next two two other people. Maybe people you'd be going back to sit next to in a few minutes. You begin to know things about people you don't want to know. I myself of course do prefer the privacy, like most anyone, and further prefer a single occupancy bathroom because the hygiene opportunities are much better when you have direct and private access to a sink. I think the 300 people to 3 stalls situation was probably close to violating some kind of building code and at the very least it's just not a good example of treating your workers as though you value them. On the far polar opposite, I worked at a startup that had 5 single-occupancy bathrooms for 50 people. Two of them had showers. It was so much nicer in every way.... just that feeling that you were as comfortable at work as you are at home. Not just cattle, but treated with modern dignity; there's a cost to the employer to do this, but it might actually have ROI in the sense that your employees are more comfortable and healthier.

qqqwerty 6y ago
I would gladly take a roman bathroom over what I had at the office. I have no shame about the act, merely hate having to hold it in during a long meeting because there was a line for the bathrooms before hand. Oddly enough, I think the shift to open offices deserves at least some credit here. I think most office spaces were designed with a median estimate of occupancy in mind. Before open offices, it was a mix of offices and cubicles, with much less density. When I worked in a cube farm, we had 4 stalls and 2 urinals for about 60-70 men on two floors. My most recent office had 2 single occupancy bathrooms for about 40 people. If we count the urinal as 0.5 toilet, we get almost double the per-bathroom density in the open office. And the other confounding factor is when you combine open offices with cell phones, the bathroom turns into the 'Candy Crush break'. I imagine median occupancy times were lower back in the day, as lugging a newspaper or magazine to the bathroom was a little too obvious.

jcadam 6y ago

Not to mention, the 1-ply sandpaper most offices stock in their bathrooms instead of proper toilet paper. I imagine they use the 3 seashells at FAANG companies, but I'll settle for Charmin.