[geofft]

Why require a doctor's note at all?

Humans need to go to the bathroom sometimes, and six times in a workday is, while higher than average, not terribly so. If your business processes cannot deal with humans who need to use the bathroom, that's the fault of the business process, not of the humans. It's like me running code on a cloud instance and then asking Amazon for a hardware tech's note when it reboots for hardware issues. My job, as an SRE, is to design computer systems in a way where it's okay if computers crash every so often, and if I can't do that, that's me failing at my job. Their job, as a supervisor, is to design human systems in a way where it's okay if humans go to the bathroom every so often.

Note that I'm not saying that you need to allow employees to sit in the bathroom for eight hours straight and then clock out. By all means, require that they get their work done! Just measure them on work done.

What is the doctor's note even supposed to prove? Suppose that the employee is lying about IBS and just likes the ambiance of bathrooms. Weird, sure, but does that affect your business processes? Again, measure them on work done.

If you're worried the employee is going to the bathroom to get high, or to hook up with coworkers in violation of ethics policies, or to leak trade secrets, or whatever, then go after that.

[kcdev]

You're forgetting this is a warehouse employee where productivity is tracked and ranked against other employees. Amazon cannot write up one employee and not another without something like a dr. note to justify the different treatment.

[geofft]

I think you misread my comment. I'm specifically not advocating for different treatment. I'm saying any employee who wants to use the bathroom six times a day should be permitted to do so, IBS or no IBS. If you want to enjoy the ambiance of the bathroom six times a day, that's fine.

So, Amazon can easily write up neither employee, which means they don't need anything to justify the different treatment.

(Also, no, Amazon can write up one employee and another just fine. They're an independent company in a free country. They don't answer to Lord Business who tells them they have to run their business a certain way. They can do whatever they like, provided they don't run afoul of a few laws like Title VII or the ADA. And all that will happen if they do run afoul of those laws is they'll get sued - which is exactly what happened under their current policies, so....)

[bb88]

In other words, they're being stack ranked, right?