Where We Are: A Company Threatens 'Smell Checks' on Employees in the Bathroom More Than 10 Minutes - to Ensure They Aren't Playing on Their Phones

Do you have a nose for detective work?

If so, you may be the perfect hire at a company spotlighted on Reddit.

As reported by Baltimore’s Fox5, the organization needs your skills, as employees are apparently spending too much time in the bathroom. It seems in this modern age where we’re more connected to our phones than to one another, people are taking their time on the throne because they’re kings and queens of the internet.

Wanna buy some new shoes on Amazon? Kick it in the restroom. Need to Facebook with Jim? Go to the John. Fancy a trip to Instagram Island? Hop onboard the S.S. S-hole.

Therefore, the company’s instituting a smell test.

See the sign for yourself:

Employees taking long breaks
If in bathroom for more than 10 minutes, a smell check will be completed to ensure employee not sitting on phone," the first part of the sign says. "If it does not stink, employee's name will be reported to office," the second part warns pic.twitter.com/LXvHzY4Lbh

— Rajeev Agrawal (@FattyMotu) December 14, 2019

The Nanny State isn’t merely governmental; it can come from anywhere and hit you where you live. And let go.

Not everyone’s a fan of the policy, of course. And it certainly isn’t without collateral damage.

One Redditer wrote, “I’d stop flushing just in case.”

Some on Twitter had the same crappy idea:

This is the death of the courtesy flush.

— Scott Rider (@sjrider) December 16, 2019

https://twitter.com/Kokoshi/status/1206814800426274816

The company isn’t alone in its attempt to fight the hemorrhoidal woes of phone addiction: According to The Daily Mail, “New downward-tilting toilets are designed to become unbearable to sit on after five minutes.”

Backed by the British Toilet Association, a Staffordshire-based start-up has created a commode that’s sloped 13 degrees to increase leg strain. Therefore, you’ll have to finish that YouTube video later — your thighs are burning.

Bathroom time truly has become a pain in the butt for the bottom line:

A survey by Protecting.co.uk carried out in July 2019 across eight UK cities found that some people were spending up to 28 minutes in the bathroom while at work.

The researchers found that with the average bathroom break in a London office sitting at 28 minutes and 35 seconds, companies might be losing up to two and a half hours of working time per week for each employee.

A company has designed a new downward-tilting toilet that becomes unbearable to sit on after five minutes to help reduce the time employees spend in the bathroom. https://t.co/7vz9zVqMDk

— Tulsa's Channel 8 (@KTULNews) December 18, 2019

Back to the smell test — that Sharpie’d sign is a sign of the times in which we live. It’s a reflection of the degree to which minutiae and monitoring have taken over our lives.

It also says volumes about where our attention lies — on our phones.

The American community has suffered as local communities have broken down amid cultural and political chaos; division has fractured the country. The pillar of family has ceased to uphold the center of society.

And increasingly, we turn our attention to that glowing screen — that world of social media profiles that show us as better than we are. And, sometimes, worse.

And we’re worse for it. We’re so busy living online, we forget to live for real. And sometimes, we forget to come off the crapper.