A worker in Tianjin, China has been fired from his job for spending an unusually long time in the restroom during work hours.
The individual, identified as Wang, faced termination after records from his company revealed that he made a remarkable 22 visits to the office lavatory within a week.
Wang had a habit of using the restroom two to three times during each shift, with his extended stays ranging from 47 minutes to an astonishing three hours.
Following his dismissal, Wang sought arbitration to request reinstatement and the continuation of his employment contract.
According to reports from the South China Morning Post, Wang had been working for the company since April 2006 under a non-fixed-term contract starting from April 2013.
However, in December 2014, he underwent surgery for an anorectal condition, which he later recovered from. Despite the recovery, Wang continued to experience persistent pain, leading to his extended restroom breaks.
Due to frequent absenteeism, tardiness, and leaving work early, the company made the decision to terminate Wang’s employment in September 2015. Despite Wang’s efforts to dispute the termination in court, he was unsuccessful in regaining his position at the company.
The Tianjin High Court, as reported by Kosmo!, ruled that the termination was legal and justified. The court deemed Wang’s excessive time spent in the lavatory as unreasonable and beyond what his physiological needs warranted.
Another siao lang spent 355 hours smoking at work
A public servant in Japan has been subjected to a reduction of 10% in their salary for a duration of six months and has been instructed to reimburse JPY1.44 million (approximately RM48,500) from their earnings. The penalty was imposed due to their engagement in smoking on a total of 4,512 occasions during work hours over a span of 14 years.
This particular employee is associated with the finance department of the Osaka Prefectural Government. As per an article published in The Mainichi, an English daily in Japan, two other individuals were also disciplined with a 10% deduction in their wages for repeatedly smoking while on duty. The report was published on 24th March.
Among the three employees, it was confirmed that only the 61-year-old staff member had committed violations. Throughout their service, they had consumed a total of 355 hours and 19 minutes in smoking during work hours.
In September of the previous year, the prefectural government’s human resources division purportedly received an anonymous tip about the situation. Consequently, the supervisor warned all three employees involved. However, when the supervisor discovered that they had continued to smoke in defiance of the warning, a confrontation took place. During an interview in December, the three individuals lied about their smoking activities, claiming that they had not smoked since receiving the initial warning.
The exact methodology employed by the department to calculate the time spent smoking by the trio remains undisclosed.