# Mall-Wart forbids employee reading in the can-employee goes medieval **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 28, 2004, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592 "2004-05-28T23:11:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/21 "2004-05-29T06:06:40Z")
Ha! I keep books on my Palm Pilot, which I keep in my pocket at all times. I can read in the can whenever I want! Mwahahaha! ---
**Author:** ![Thunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a8b319/32.png) [@Thunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thunder)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/22 "2004-05-29T06:39:39Z")
Is anybody else thinking “Seinfeld episode” on this? “I’m sorry sir, that book has been marked. It’s been in the bathroom.” ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/23 "2004-05-29T06:48:18Z")
Maybe, it was a map from the store that he just grabbed from the shelf to read without paying for it? I used to do that sometimes on my breaks-oh, I would never take it into the bathroom, but since the cafe in Kmart was next to checkouts, I’d sometimes grab a magazine from the racks and read it on my break. ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/24 "2004-05-29T07:02:49Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Could be a crazed employee, could be a bad boss finally got what was coming to him. But it’s crashingly stupid, unenforceable policy. As many have stated previously, indvidual work problems should be addressed individually. IMO any manager spineless enough to resort to this stupidity should be fired. It’s using a shot gun when a pair of tweezers is needed. Oh gee, let’s impose potty checks for printed matter across the board! That’ll work. Let’s see, can’t have 'em reading the wrappings on spare toilet paper rolls, or pondering all those nifty new holograms on dollar bills in their wallets. A policy applies to _everything_ and _everybody_ equally. That’s why it’s a policy. And it places the burden of enforcement squarely on management, right where it belongs. Of course Wal\*Mart’s HR practices are so shoddy it takes something this ludicrous to register but it’d be a litigation nightmare if someone actually chose to push it. I strongly suspect most self-respecting employees would immediately make a subversive point to flaunt the rules. The absolute last thing any supervisor with two working brain cells wants is to: 1. know 2. be responsible for what employees do in the toilet. I swear, real life really _is_ more nonsensical than anything the worst hack writer could imagine. Veb ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/25 "2004-05-29T08:18:05Z")
Let’s see, I’ve been working since I was 15 (well, for companies other than my father’s), and I’ve worked for a total of 15 different companies since then, and until I took my present job, if I were to snag a magazine, newspaper, or book on my way to the shitter, I would have been fired on the spot. Wouldn’t have mattered if it was my own, or if it was something the company sold, I’d have been fired simply because it’s been against company policy to do such a thing. I don’t have an employee handbook from any of those jobs anymore, but I can assure you that the regulations we had to follow were so vaguely worded that a supervisor could have _easily_ found a justification for firing me on the spot. At my present job, there’s newspapers left in the bathrooms and employees routinely spend close to 30 minutes in the shitter reading the sports page or whatever. Any other place I’ve worked at, if you were gone to the can for more than about 10 minutes, they’d send in a “rescue party” to make sure you were okay (and in the case of one guy I worked with, it was a good thing too, since he’d had a massive heart attack while he was in the bathroom and if someone hadn’t gone in to check on him after 10 minutes, he most likely would have died). Frankly, it pisses me off to no end that the other employees will take a paper when they go shit, because I know that they’re **not** going to get off the can until they’re done reading it. Hell, I’d be willing to bet that half the time many of them **don’t** have to shit, they just wanna read the paper, and rather than waiting until break, they just use “dropping the kids off at the pool” as an excuse to go do so. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/26 "2004-05-29T10:09:03Z")
Holy cow. A criminal slashes three people with a stiff blade, and what gets pitted is his company’s break policy. ---
**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/27 "2004-05-29T10:29:00Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > It’s not like he’s sitting in there thinking, “I should really get back to work, but I want to find out where I-90 goes!” Snork! > [@Metacom](#): > > Could you imagine what would happen if Wal\*Mart ™ let employees read on the can? Would you rather read, or perform manual labor for minimum wage? To be frank, I can imagine both (a) finding out where I-90 goes (b) crapping and (c) staring at the wall literally more interesting than working for wallmart… ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/28 "2004-05-29T11:20:44Z")
Have you seen the picture of the offender? If I was his supervisor and saw him mosey into the can with some reading material, the _last place_ you’d find me would be in the bathroom with him. The reprimand could wait. ---
**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/29 "2004-05-29T11:37:15Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > Why does anyone need to look at something while on the toilet? Seriously, I have never understood this. Well, for some people it doesn’t come out as quickly as they’d like. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/30 "2004-05-29T12:10:29Z")
I hear Dell have signs in their toilets reading: > [@](#): > > We can work together to save money. Please - fold, don’t scrunch. which would be enough to send me postal. That’s fairly bonkers though, stabbing your managers over something like this. I’m just amazed no-one has made the obligatory “going for a slash” joke. Or “couldn’t find his ass with a map,” maybe. You’re all slacking, I tells yer. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/31 "2004-05-29T12:24:30Z")
> [@Thunder](#): > > Is anybody else thinking “Seinfeld episode” on this? > > “I’m sorry sir, that book has been marked. It’s been in the bathroom.” Exactly what I thought. Then again, maybe it’s good that it happened, as it might get a person like this out of the workplace and into the system where he can hopefully get some psychological help for whatever is wrong with him. No one’s really mentioned yet that the real thing that should have been Pitted is the crazed SOB who thinks it’s valid to start slicing up people like Christmas hams because he was _reprimanded_ - not fired, not docked pay, but just reprimanded. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/32 "2004-05-29T15:47:13Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Holy cow. A criminal slashes three people with a stiff blade, and what gets pitted is his company’s break policy. Well, yeah, because everybody’s had at least _one_ boss where they felt their only recourse was to carve the bastard up. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/33 "2004-05-29T15:50:43Z")
I haven’t. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/34 "2004-05-29T15:52:45Z")
Lucky you, then. ---
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/35 "2004-05-29T16:11:50Z")
> [@Una Persson](#): > > Then again, maybe it’s good that it happened, as it might get a person like this out of the workplace and into the system where he can hopefully get some psychological help for whatever is wrong with him. No one’s really mentioned yet that the real thing that should have been Pitted is the crazed SOB who thinks it’s valid to start slicing up people like Christmas hams because he was _reprimanded_ - not fired, not docked pay, but just reprimanded. **Liberal** made that observation. While I don’t condone the reaction of this employee, you’re missing the big picture. When an employer imposes draconian policies, people will occasionally snap. How do you think the phrase ‘going postal’ became part of the language? It certainly wasn’t a fluke of etymology. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/36 "2004-05-29T16:30:42Z")
> [@danceswithcats](#): > > **Liberal** made that observation. > > While I don’t condone the reaction of this employee, you’re missing the big picture. When an employer imposes draconian policies, people will occasionally snap. How do you think the phrase ‘going postal’ became part of the language? > It certainly wasn’t a fluke of etymology. :rolleyes: 1. Geeze, there’s no need for a rolleyes here. 2. I didn’t see anything when I posted. 3. I’m not missing any picture. I just thought the criticisms were a bit unbalanced. 4. “Don’t read in the john” is a “draconian policy”? With respect, if this is in fact your belief, it must be nice where you work. Where I work, a “draconian policy” is “you MUST work through lunch”, “you’re an exempt employee, guess how many hours we’ll make you work this week. Go ahead, guess!”, “all vacations are cancelled for the month and replaced with mandatory (unpaid) overtime”, and “we don’t cover your same-sex partner on health insurance”. To call “Don’t read in the john” “draconian” is hyperbole that detracts from the main issue. Plus, I always thought the abuses of management of the postal service were related to long hours, intense productivity targets, violations of privacy by security cameras in all areas of the office, intense involvement of management in the personal lives of workers, browbeating and severe discipline, etc. Nothing at all like “don’t read in the john”. I know WalMart is many people’s favourite whipping boy, but seriously, some perspective is needed. And the magnitude of slashing people with a knife is not even on the same planet as “don’t read in the john”. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/37 "2004-05-29T16:48:45Z")
**Una** , don’t mistake my criticism of Wal\*Mart ™ for an endorsement of the employee’s reaction. Obviously, what he did was bad. There’s (hopefully?) not going to be much argument or debate over that. I think this article just brought to light the policy, which was a more interesting tidbit then Yet Another Nut Going Postal. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Asbestos_Mango)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/38 "2004-05-29T17:25:09Z")
Former Wal-Mart employee weighing in. Suprised someone didn’ go apeshit with a boxcutter sooner, actually. This guy was probably either a stocker or maintainance worker- those are the most likely to be carrying blades for work-related purposes. I don’t know what the situation is for the “back of the house” types, rule-wise, but Wal-Mart can be a uniquely aggravating employer to work for. I have worked for other companies where petty and draconian rules interfered with getting the job done, but at least at those jobs, when it finally became obvious that the rules were interfering with productivity, the rules were changed. At Wal-Mart, they just kept tightening the screws. If a sale item came up more than $9.00 over the sale price, a CSM had to be paged. See, all employees are dishonest, and they’ll give their friends discounts, so if the bike that has a tag on it that says “Clearance- $50.00” rings up at $78.00 (this actually happened to me), you have to page a CSM. And page, and page, and page… for fifteen freaking minutes, while the ever growing line of customers gets progressively angrier… at me. See, somehow it’s the cashier’s fault that we are not allowed to suspend a transaction if we need to for some reason and go on to handle the next customer’s purchase while the CSM doesn’t respond to the page. Oh, and we can’t be allowing cashiers to count down their drawers at the end of the shift to make sure the folks in the cash office who are notoriously innacurate in their accounting don’t give us those _ **SCREAMING NEON PINK** _ sheets of paper that advertise to the distant planets that our till was short when in fact it was not. (No, really, I got those “pinks” at least every half-dozen shifts until I started counting, then they magically stopped- until management banned cashiers from counting the tills- see if we were over, we would steal, because all employees are dishonest, and Evil Soulless Mart has never heard of a thing called a blind count, which is pretty much standard practice in retail). Oh, and you had to be extremely careful about doing price corrections on stuff that rang up three or four dollars over the price on the shelf (or, even more amusingly, the price tag). See, we can’t be giving all those customers the three dollars off their total bill, the store would lose money, so if a cashier fixes the price at the register too often, well, obviously, they’re giving their friends discounts, so we have to fire them for theft. Yeah, sooner or later, somebody’s going to snap. Oh, and I don’t have my employee manual, but I don’t remember ever seeing anything in it about not reading on the throne. Sounds to me like a “policy” the manager made up on the spot. Either that or it was one of those new policies that the company is always handing down, but never seems to want to tell the employees about until after they violate it. Yeah, Wal-Mart does that, too. ---
**Author:** ![Asylum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/53a042/32.png) [@Asylum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asylum)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/39 "2004-05-29T19:43:32Z")
[The map wasn’t his.](http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=22222) I think that’s why they cornered the guy, not because of an anti-reading policy. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592/40 "2004-05-29T20:55:06Z")
This is interesting, from **Asylum** ’s link: “The other two managers were cut when they tried to help their boss. Owens ran away, but was arrested by police officers who had just arrived, Franzen said.” So he slashed the three managers and ran away, and the police showed up just as he was exiting the store? That has to be the fastest police response in history. Let’s see, slash, run from office to front of store, get arrested. Somebody’s not saying something. It sounds to me like the police had already been called before Mr. Owens was called into the office. I think that three people cut and bleeding all over the place are most likely to try to stop the bleeding before calling the police. As for me, I’ve encountered similar rules in the workplace. I worked briefly in a convenience store many years ago, and we were allowed to take smoke breaks when there were no customers at the register. The place for smoke breaks was about ten feet from the register, and we were free to stand there and smoke - we had a clear view of the registers and doors. However, we were forbidden to read while smoking. I didn’t get it - I’m not doing any work at all while smoking; am I somehow doing less that zero work by reading while I smoke? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mall-wart-forbids-employee-reading-in-the-can-employee-goes-medieval/247592.md?page=3)