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Ask Slashdot: When Does Time Tracking at Work Go Too Far?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the your-time-is-our-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work in a call center, full time, for a large mail order pharmacy. Recently, as part of their campaign to better track time spent both at and away from our desks, they have started tracking bathroom breaks. They use a Cisco phone system, and there is now a clock out option that says 'Bathroom.' My question is whether or not this is in any way acceptable in a large corporate environment (Around 800 people work at this same pharmacy) and is it even legal? How invasive would this really be considered, and beyond privacy concerns, how are they going to deal with the humiliation that their employees feel as a result of this? Has this happened to any of you?"

20 of 630 comments (clear)

  1. Unionize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You need a union. It's the only way to fix this kind of thing.

    1. Re:Unionize by leromarinvit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You need a union. It's the only way to fix this kind of thing.

      This. So much this. You don't have to put up with this bullshit. And it will only get worse unless you fight back.

      --
      Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
    2. Re:Unionize by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Although I agree with the sentiment, as a former vicidial / polycom consultant in all cases where I had to log toilet breaks the underlying reason was always driven by the clients, not the call agent employers. The call centers would prefer to log nothing at all, but the clients pay good money for analysis of the dialler logging. Take a look at the contracts and you'll get an idea of how detailed these agreements are. It sucks, but that's where the pay check comes from. If you push back too hard there are a hundred more centers that could be up and running with the same product in a few days.

    3. Re:Unionize by leromarinvit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The idea migt be shocking to you, but there's nothing wrong with having a union even when things are going well. When labor laws are being violated, you need a union that can draw support from and build upon an established base, so it is actually able to act. Just starting to build one then seems a tad late.

      --
      Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
    4. Re:Unionize by alere · · Score: 5, Informative

      Joined just to comment on this. Used to work at a unionized call center for a major corporation, they did the exact same thing. Tracked bathroom breaks, had people coming to work while contagious and ill, wouldn't let you use PTO you earned because it was "not available that day". The only thing the union did for me before I quit was take my money. Now I am extremely happy in a non unionized job making a fair wage, infinitely better benefits, and I actually enjoy going to work (not so much getting up to go to work though :) ). I've been on both sides of the fence, and my experience with unions have been they are more worried about their bottom line than helping the people who pay them. They may be good for some people and really help them, but I have not experienced one that does.

    5. Re:Unionize by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You unionize when labor laws are obviously being violated.

      You get a lawyer when labor laws are obviously being violated. You unionise when you want to negotiate with management on behalf of the workforce as a whole, not just on behalf of yourself.

      You also unionise when labor laws which don't yet exist (but should) are being violated. The law is often behind technology, so there will always be a place for this.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    6. Re:Unionize by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What a terrible first response. I mean fucking, stupidly, terrible. You don't unionize over a few bad practices, probably put in place by a stupid manager. You unionize when labor laws are obviously being violated.

      There is a distinct issue here of medical privacy that is most likely being violated. Tracking bathroom visits could be a way for someone to infer you have a medical condition.

      What you should do is seek an attorney who will look at this pro bono. They will probably tell you to start with your HR department with a complaint. It's all about the paper trail.

      I will never understand how the political and moneyed classes in the USA managed to convince the working man in that country that unions are the spawn of Satan. While I can see the problem when unions becoming lazy and corrupt I don't really see what is wrong with the vast majority of them who are properly run. I have been a union member all of my professional life. I prefer to have a union behind me to foot the bill if I have to take my employer to court as opposed to the situation in the US where you are frequently up shit creek without a paddle if your employer decides to crap all over you. Another service I get from my a union is legal advice regarding employment contracts. One of the many things the engineers union I am a member of offers to for it's members is to have a legal professional read over your employment contract and point out to you legal land mines your employer sometimes builds into those things like draconian clauses about IP ownership, anti competition stuff and requirements that you relinquish the right to take them to court in favour of private arbitration (no prizes for guessing who gets to choose the arbitrator). It's easy to abuse a single person, it's a whole lot harder for employers to abuse 100.000 of you standing together.

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
    7. Re:Unionize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because organized labor is detrimental to the economy and a joke.

      Yeah, just look at Germany. Probably the strongest unions anywhere in the world, and look where it's gotten them. The economy in the ruins, all labour outsourced to India, poor hungry people roaming the streets, right? /sarcasm

    8. Re:Unionize by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OR... you could just find a new job.

    9. Re:Unionize by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Informative

      I worked at a place where management took the stall doors away in the toilets so they could see if people were slacking off. Union had the doors back up that afternoon and that was the last we heard of it.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    10. Re:Unionize by HapSlappy_2222 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The only problem is this: I worked for Qwest / CenturyLink, who DOES have a union. Guess what? Bathroom breaks were still tracked, down to the minute, just like regular breaks, lunch, arrival, and departure.

      On top of this, I was forced to quit my job there when the union didn't allow me to change my schedule due to lack of seniority. I had my kids coming home for the summer, and there's not a lot of daycares that stay open until 8:00 pm; none that I could afford on my salary.

      Unions are great if they really do look after the workers, but this isn't the 50s anymore. If you need any sort of special accommodations, or the union decides some egregious policies aren't really an issue (bathroom breaks, mandatory overtime, etc) then you're screwed either way.

      Quit and find a new job. That's my advice; you'll be happier.

    11. Re:Unionize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm starting to suspect americans got conned once again, because your description of how your union worked sounds so far removed from how the unions I've been part of here in europe that you might as well be from another planet.

      For an example, "I was forced to quit my job there when the union didn't allow me to change my schedule due to lack of seniority." would not happen here, the only instance when the union would care about your schedule would be if you logged more than the legal maximum hours of overtime. The employer would care about your schedule, but here you'd be able to use your paid for parental leave to leave work in order to pick up your kids and there wouldn't be anything they could do about it (assuming they don't just start to making shit up, but that fight is what you supposedly have unions for, so not even that option will be cheap for them).

      as I said, accounts like yours makes me confused.

    12. Re:Unionize by bibliophage · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've never understood the free market argument against unions. Unions are a *function* of the free market. They fit in the role of consumers (of employment) who want to have some control over the product they buy (the work they do). If the free market provided everything the employees need/want, no one would want to unionize.

      --
      There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    13. Re:Unionize by jpmorgan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't worry, your union dues are well appreciated by the politicians your union supports in your name.

  2. Short answer by mrsam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Time to start sending out resumes.

    1. Re:Short answer by CrashandDie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They can't. If they hit the bathroom break button, it changes their state, and they won't get any calls.

      I'm the lead dev / product manager for a software VoIP callcentre solution. We've had to develop features such as "don't allow an agent to take a bathroom break if there aren't enough agents available, or the waiting queue is too big, or if the estimated waiting is over X".

      Supervisors will spend the day looking at the monitor, constantly checking how many calls are waiting, how long each agent is on the line. They will put themselves in "whisper" mode, so they can yell at the agent, without the customer hearing anything. If you're ever on the line with a callcentre drone, and he suddenly starts taking time to answer, or suddenly starts having trouble finding his words, it's probably a sign you're using up too much of his allotted per-call time, and getting the poor lad into trouble.

      We operate in France, so we've had to deal with a lot of employee-protection laws, but more often that not, our customers (the callcentre) will force us to override specific settings (the mandatory 2 second break after each call can be revoked if the last call was too long; hence not effective enough), even if they violate the law.

  3. Honestly? by dmacleod808 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Get another job. You are just being treated like cattle and there is NOTHING you can do. If you were to sue, they will find some reason to fire you. If you were to Unionize, there would be massive layoffs. In my company, I don't clock in, I don't clock out, I can work 5 hours per week overtime without approval. And I work for a fortune 300 company who you think would be soulless. I see how our CSRs are treated, and it is a damn sight better than anywhere else. And we have metrics in the upper 90% range for hold times (Less than 90 seconds) and call backs. Customer first will always make you profitable.

    --
    There Can Be Only One...
  4. "Bathroom" can easily be renamed.... by overlook77 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Your company should track all "Personal Breaks" together and not specify whether it's a bathroom break or not. A personal break would be a smoke break, getting water/food, bathroom, etc. There is no reason to break it down further in my opinion. I'm a call center manager, and at our company we lump all that stuff together. At the end of the month if someone is not meeting their percent time work goals we can see how much of the problem is attributed to personal breaks vs. other things, such as off the phone research. But I personally don't want to know that someone was taking a dump for 20 min.

  5. Take your phone to the bathroom! by yog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better than unionizing -- just take your wireless headset to the toilet. You can stay on your calls, and there can be an LCD monitor in the stall if you need to reference information, read from a script, check your Facebook page, etc.

    At the end of a particularly annoying call, the sound of a toilet flushing would be entirely appropriate, too!http://slashdot.org/story/12/09/16/1213226/ask-slashdot-when-does-time-tracking-at-work-go-too-far#

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
  6. Manager here by stewbacca · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a manager at a call center. We track time away from calls, not because we care how long it takes you to take a smoke, or to take a crap, but for metrics. We have over 25,000 people on the phones world wide and how many minutes a call takes vs. how many workers are available for a call vs. how many workers are away from their desk (for whatever reason, we don't care) is critical to improving wait time.

    As usual for the paranoia gang around here, it's not really about you. It's a big wad of data that is considered on the whole to make better business decisions.

    Now back to your extended shitter break.