It may not be true as a standard of operations, but it happens enough that employees have to be (and largely are) aware of the possibility.

I have a funny story that ties incontinence at work and dastardly corporate shenanigans together: I’ve worked from home full time since 2019, and most of the time since 2006. This year, my employer (over 50K employees nationally) dictated everyone had to return to working in the office full time, rolling back the clock to my first days as a new employee 20 years ago.

I decided to put in for an ADA exemption based on my chronic incontinence, which was 100% at the time, because all our restrooms at work, while they have stalls, don’t have private sinks, so any cleanup I’d have to do would potentially be seen by others coming and going to the restrooms (“Don’t mind me, Steve, I’m just washing my testicles…that was some meeting, huh?”).

To get the exemption, I had to submit a very detailed write-up as to why I needed it and how it would benefit the company, and why a “reasonable” accommodation wouldn’t work for me.

I got it put together, kicked it around for a couple of days because I was laying my health issues out there for all in HR to see, then submitted it via the employee HR online portal, with an automated reply that someone would review it and be in touch with me within 48 hours, something like that.

What did I get not 15 minutes later? An email from our Infrastructure division, the ones managing the return to office (assigning cubicles and all that) saying that they’d reviewed the distance between my house and my office and determined I lived too far away, so I was granted an indefinite exemption to continue working from home.

Detailing my filthy incontinence issues (and really leaning into them) for all of HR to read and giggle over (and you know they were!) was all for naught!

At this point, though, I’m just hoping they do read them and offer me a decent severance to take me dirty bladder habits elsewhere! 😆