Sometimes I just have to go

[Bright_Star]

A long time ago, I used to work the night shift at Circle K in Tucson , Arizona. It would just be me for most of the night. So if I had to use the bathroom, I had no choice but to lock the doors & put a "Be back in X amount of time" notice on them. And when I was finished with my bathroom break, I would unlock the doors & would get people who'd be pissed that I locked the doors. I would just shrug my shoulders...lol.
When you're alone & you gotta go, then you do what you have to.

[Loki]

About a year ago I was working at a convenience store in Las Vegas, NV. It wasn't a bad store to work at but being the only employee during the graveyard shift did make using the bathroom interesting. The store could be utterly void of customers for hours on end, but the moment I moved to put up the "Back in X Minutes" sign, I knew I'd be getting someone that wanted to come in. My personal favorite though would be getting customers who were obviously either drunk or high and having them trying to force the doors open once they were locked. -_-' Ye Gods I hated people that did that.

[50 mission cap]

It does seem when it gets slow at the desk, the moment I decide to use the restroom or just step outside to get some fresh air, the phone rings, a guest drives up to check in or check out, or a guest already in-house comes to the front desk. Or when I prepared a nice hot meal to quickly eat, I get a very long reservation on the phone and then all of the check-ins for the night arrive and my food is now cold.

We get chewed out for not being at the desk sometimes too because a customer will complain about it, as sometimes we have to leave the desk to take care of a customer complaint. You know 1 minute = 5 minutes in sucky customer land.

I'm surprised some managers out there haven't suggested we wear Depends at work so we don't use the restroom (I bet some thought of that though.)

This exact situation happens to me all the time to ....

[TonyDonuts]

I'm surprised some managers out there haven't suggested we wear Depends at work so we don't use the restroom (I bet some thought of that though.)

Things like this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0237031620070503

and this:

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-tr...4255560-1.html

Companies who are run by the kind of guys who wonder why their employees hate them.

[Pimento]

Sometimes when im out shopping and see someone at a desk doing the pee dance or unwrapping their meal, i like to call all my friends and tell them the store has a non-existant sale! Muahahahahahaha

Kidding, but seriously, that sucks. In car sales it was always awkward to run to the bathroom (ours was right off the showroom, so as customers wandered youd open the door and theyd be standing there lol) so i always had to wait, and sometimes it made me grumpy as hell.

[XCashier]

It does seem when it gets slow at the desk, the moment I decide to use the restroom or just step outside to get some fresh air, the phone rings, a guest drives up to check in or check out, or a guest already in-house comes to the front desk. Or when I prepared a nice hot meal to quickly eat, I get a very long reservation on the phone and then all of the check-ins for the night arrive and my food is now cold.

It does seem that way, doesn't it? The same customers who can't read any word except "FREE" on a sign, somehow all have ESP and know when an employee is about to head to break / lunch / restroom / home, whereby they all converge on said employee and demand that he/she wait until THEY'VE been served!

My managers are very good about getting everybody to break or clockout on time, but I still get a bunch of those mind-reading SCs. I never have figured out how they do it.

[JustaCashier]

At the last parking garage I worked at, 12+ years ago, the nearest restroom was two floors up from the garage, in the building's second floor lobby. I could usually run up the stairs to it, pee, and run back down in about three minutes.

Generally, I felt it was pretty safe to make one last run up by around 8:00 a.m. without having to worry about drive-outs (this building was built in the early '70's, and didn't have the gate arms to prevent drive-outs). I'd lock up the booth, and make my run.

That would usually hold me until my coworker would show up a few hours later. If I needed to go in between those times, I'd try to catch the Security Guard and have him stand by the booth and let any customers wanting to leave that I'd be "right back".

One morning, I'd made my 8:00-ish run up there, and coming back down the stairway I could hear the fire alarm. Normally, not a huge issue, we had occasional false ones in the building. Only problem this time, the fire alarm was accompanied by a loud HISSSSSSSSSSSS!!!.

I don't recall if I realized what it was right away, but as I exited the stairwell, which was just around the corner from the booth at the garage level, I was greeted by a lake on the floor of the garage, and water gushing from the fire sprinkler pipe.

A regular customer, doing his daily drop-off of his kid to the building's daycare, had forgotten that he had some long lumber boards in the bed of his full size pick-up truck, that were so long they extended over the top of the cab. The lumber had snagged one of the pipes.

The cashier booth at this particular location, instead of being pre-fab, looked like it was pretty much slapped together onsite. It sat at the bottom of the long island that separated the long, steep, entry and exit lanes to/from the garage. The sprinkler pipe that broke, actually ran through the booth, with a sprinkler head right above the (relatively cheap) electronic cash register! Fortunately, the pipe and sprinkler stayed intact within the booth.

The guy felt really bad, and even though idiots not knowing the height of their large trucks/vans/SUV's/Etc, (but expecting garage staff to know, and somehow make the garage taller if they were over height), was my biggest pet peeve of that job, I couldn't be mad at him because it truly was a mistake anyone could innocently make. The only thing that was a pain in the ass, besides squeegeeing the water to the nearest drains, (which I had great help with form the building's Maintenance guys), was filling out the damage report, which was a pain in the ass no matter what the liability type incident was.

Mike

[Darkforge]

ahh, reminds me of my last job, cust support for a manufacturing company, the building was a factory and then offices on the top floor, I was the one guy in the dept that worked over the weekends (Got tues and weds off) which was perfectly legal as there were other people in the department next door who covered me when I needed a bathroom break.

the thing was that EVERY SINGLE TIME my boss rang me it was when I was on a toilet break.
Gah!