
At Amazon, the Bathroom is an Extension of the Office (2015) - dgelks
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mgbzbx/at-amazon-employees-treat-the-bathroom-as-an-extension-of-the-office
======
Twirrim
For what it's worth, I was there for nearly 3 years (including when this
article was written) and never saw that kind of bathroom behaviour. People
seemed to follow the general unwritten rules. Conversations were rare, and
where they did happen, the usual idle chatter that happens anywhere, while at
the sink or waiting for a toilet to be available.

I _was_ there during one of the peaks in staff/toilet ratios. After getting
rid of all of the 2 - 3 person offices and replacing it all with open plan
office, and then packing us in even tighter (What they referred to as "high
density" seating arrangements), actually getting to use a toilet was an
extremely frustrating experience. With such a prominent gender bias, the male
bathroom was constantly occupied, and a now infamous "toilet ticket" was cut
([https://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-employees-biggest-
compl...](https://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-employees-biggest-complaint-
not-enough-mens-bathrooms-for-all-the-dudes/)).

Eventually they relented, and as new office floor space was opened up in new
buildings, they agreed to reduce staff density and set a more practical
staff:toilet ratio, along with adding in an additional toilet on every floor.

side note: What would have really helped was if staff weren't selfishly
spending 5-10 minutes sitting on the toilet browsing the internet or playing
games on their phones. It rarely takes that long to do the necessary.

~~~
kartan
> the male bathroom was constantly occupied

I'm always surprised by this. Why not have unisex bathrooms? In most
companies, I have worked the bathrooms are just one toilet and sink. That way
anyone can use it.

> What would have really helped was if staff weren't selfishly spending 5-10
> minutes sitting on the toilet browsing the internet or playing games on
> their phones.

I can't agree with that. Without actually knowing for sure (I will guess that
you weren't looking at other people while they poo), you are blaming employees
for the lack of toilets. But in the rest of your description, it looks like
it's clearly the company that failed to offer the most basic needs. Timing
your team workers bathroom times doesn't look like a good approach to solve
the problem.

~~~
brianwawok
> In most companies, I have worked the bathrooms are just one toilet and sink.
> That way anyone can use it.

it cost more this way?

All the companies I worked at in Chicago prime real state I can think of had
gendered bathrooms, at least monthly. Common setup was 2 stalls 2 urinals and
2 sinks for the men (and I assume either 3 or 4 stalls for the ladies,
depending on how tight they packed it).

My guess it would take the same space to make 2 single use bathrooms as a
single bathroom with 2 stalls / 2 urinals / 2 sinks. The throughput of a 2
stall / 2 urinal bathroom for men would be about triple the single bathroom
setup, depending on your exact pee to poop ratio.

And when you are counting dollars and cents, if a decision can save you from
having another 600 square feet of bathroom space (at say $300 a squarefoot a
year in lease), it can add up to some decent chunk of change (at perhaps the
cost of some sanity).

~~~
kasey_junk
By that rationale we should replace urinals with troughs & remove stall walls.

The model that makes the most sense to me is unisex small single rooms
surrounding a set of sinks that can be shared. As long as you have kick plates
on the doors you get similar size constraints, better privacy & queueing
theory kicks in.

------
inertial
Suddenly various AWS services start making sense,

\- EBS : Elastic Bathroom Stalls

\- ACL : Active Coding in Loo

\- API Gateway : Always Poop Interactively ...

\- IoT : Inconvenient Office Toilets

The article is full of instances like :

> The most horrifying moment of my employment at Amazon was the time I was
> using the toilet and a coworker began talking from the stall next to me. He
> asked me why I had not responded to his very pressing email [...] What email
> could be so important that it could not wait five minutes for me to use the
> bathroom?

> ... He began tapping on the wall between our stalls ...

> I regularly saw people bring their laptops into the bathroom, where they
> would sit on the toilet and write code

> I heard people take phone calls while mid-business

~~~
Tharkun
Why would anyone put up with that sort of madness? If my employer can't even
let me shit in peace, I don't want to work for them. It's not like programming
jobs are scarce...

~~~
brianwawok
Sounds like it was coworkers not the boss. And if you quit every job with an
awful coworker, I am not sure you would have many jobs left ;)

~~~
Tharkun
Bosses tend to create (or encourage) this kind of behaviour. This is either an
infrastructure or a management issue. If there aren't enough toilets, your
infra sucks. If you need to discuss work while taking a dump, management
sucks.

~~~
brianwawok
Sure, culture is part of this. But just an annoying guy talking to you in the
crapper? Maybe can't blame that one...

------
digitalzombie
My friends who works at Amazon a while back this is 2009 and between that and
now they've been saying don't work for Amazon. I kept in touch with the
freshmen and such since I was president of ACM.

It also affect my spending habit on Amazon too.

Jeff Bezos have been quoted Kindness is a choice but the things I've read
especially the warehouse condition is right. Kindness is a choice and it seems
like Amazon chose to not to be kind.

I'm glad they're trying to fix their culture but sheesh. The article mentioned
about competitiveness. He makes it out as if it is some cut throat thing. If I
have a family do I need more undue stress from competition while worry about
my kids and family needs? I mean do I need to suck up and watch my back from
co workers on top of everything? That's a terrible place to work for.

Even if it's not necessary so that I have cut throat coworkers, I still have
to compete against them while doing my job. That's insane. At least with
Government some branches such as FDA you get raises base on the papers you
publishes IIRC, you don't need to hurt people or compete against your peers.

------
zw123456
There was one company I worked at that, for whatever reason, people thought
that the bathroom was a good place to have a phone call. Simple fix; when
someone would start a phone call I would flush, and keep flushing every time
they talked to make sure the person on the other end could hear it. I usually
only took a few flushed for people to get the hint.

------
uji
After nytimes articles, Amazon seriously has started improving its culture.
Managers though still have same mindset of treating employees as replaceable
resources. This is one instance after the article came out. My pregnant friend
one day sent an email that she would be WFH as she isn't feeling well. Manager
replied back that this is not acceptable and you should give a week of notice
for your plans.

This might be okay in other fields, but in tech WFH is considered a perk and
companies don't care as long as you do your work.

~~~
madamelic
Minimum notices for WFH days baffles me.

I can understand making it a policy to limit WFH days to a very minimum, but
the idea of a notice period for WFH makes no sense to me.

It makes people more unproductive then they really have to be.

~~~
dawnerd
I've made the choice to never work for a company that doesn't let me work from
home whenever I want.

------
valar_m
I've been with Amazon for four years and have never once seen or heard of
someone taking their laptop to the bathroom. I have difficulty believing
that's true.

He's right about not enough bathrooms, though. It's _really_ fucking annoying.

~~~
pbourke
As a counterpoint, I worked there for 6 years until 2013, and I saw it happen
a few times at the SLU campus.

------
2OEH8eoCRo
Okay it's kind of silly to still conduct business in the restroom but why do
people freak out when someone speaks in the restroom? Like, relax. Take it
easy.

------
eyjafjallajokul
I'm curious to know what team/organization the OP was from. Because of how
massive Amazon is, every team interacts with each other differently. For
example, the org that houses Amazon Go is much more high stress, and I can
imagine this happening there v/s a team working on building internal systems.
I've been at Amazon for 5 years now, and have never experienced whatever the
post said. I have, however, been in the uncomfortable situation where a
colleague has tried to talk to me in the urinal about things outside of work.

Funny read though :)

------
callingspade
I work for AWS since 2014 and I am in a building that arguably has highest
density compared to other Amazon buildings. I have not seen a single instance
of what the author describes, on tens of floors except that during peak times
one may have to go to the next floor to find an empty stall. Specifically --
1\. I have not seen anyone take laptops to the stalls 2\. No conversations in
the bathroom, at most a Hi when washing your hands or a 'excuse me' at the
door. Definitely no cross-talk across stalls. 3\. No one is using bathrooms as
a meeting place or a place for long conversations.

Since last year, there are also unisex bathrooms on each floor. While I am
here, might as well dispel some other myths. Occasional WFH is the norm, not
an exception. I haven't seen people work long hours as a norm. Most people
come in between 9-10:30 and leave between 5-6:30pm. Some come in earlier and
some later. Almost everyone I know is driven by their own passion for their
work, customer obsession, immense learning opportunity, do things that have
never been done before, increasing stock value and increase in their own
market value, to name a few.

