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Amazon is an absolute tank of a company, we all know that. With an expected valuation of $1 trillion, the online conglomerate essentially rules the online shopping sector, with millions of people using the service to buy things like running shoes to getting their groceries delivered. It’s insane how Jeff Bezos created such a monster.
As hugely successful as Amazon is, though, there are tons of people out there who refuse to use the company for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s people in Seattle who think the city’s culture is changing because of all the tech bros walking around, to reports of unfair treatment and pay for warehouse workers with the company, Amazon is constantly under attack from people who try to stain its reputation — fair or not. And the latest example of Amazon being a stickler for things isn’t going to help them at all — and it could actually end up costing them millions of dollars.
That’s because a now former Amazon employee named Nicholas Stover was fired from his call center job in Winchester, Kentucky after his supervisor told him he was committing “time theft” for going to the bathroom too frequently. Here’s the real kicker, though: Stover deals with the painful digestive problem, Crohn’s disease, which causes him to go No. 2 more than the average person.
Stover, who was fired on Dec. 21, 2017, received an involuntary termination letter, which didn’t include a reason for his dismissal. However, the former Amazon employee says his former manager accused him of taking too much personal time thanks to his “excessive bathroom breaks.” That’s led Nicholas Stover to take legal action, which is why he’s suing Amazon for $3 million.
Per the New York Post:
Because of the disease, Stover says he was forced to use the bathroom more often than other employees, causing him to get reprimanded on a consistent basis. “Episodes of symptoms of Crohn’s disease can occur without warning and can require urgent response, including the immediate need for bathroom facilities,” Stover says in the 18-page complaint.
He believes the company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act with “unyielding and inhuman policies regarding bathroom access,” per the suit. It mentions he disclosed the disease when he applied for the job and during training after he was hired in November 2016.
In the lawsuit filed on Feb. 15, he is seeking $3 million in damages for lost wages and a “significant amplification of the symptoms” of Crohn’s disease.
The New York Post piece also noted that Amazon employees at Stover’s Kentucky call center were given an hour for a meal, two 15-minute breaks a 20 minutes for personal time each week, according to Stover. But when he requested unscheduled bathroom breaks, a desk closer to the bathroom and help accommodating his treatment for Crohn’s, they were all denied.
The reasoning? Stover said that HR mentioned that, if they met his bathroom needs, everyone else would need the same privileges.
In every other workplace, people can go take a crap as often as they want to without anyone worrying about them. In fact, it’s almost more embarrassing pooping at work than anything else, so limiting it as much as possible is usually the way to go.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have been the case at Amazon, which really makes you wonder why a trillion dollar company is so concerned with bathroom breaks.