Exactly. Suddenly your imaginary worry about someone's 10 minutes of lost productivity is a class action lawsuit under accessibility legislation that will probably burn you for 1000x that cost or more and leave your reputation, ironically, in the toilet.

And likewise for many other medical conditions.

Or being female and unlucky with the effects of your cycle.

Or just having a rough day because something you ate was bad.

It's one thing if there's an ongoing pattern of long, unexplained breaks and someone's line manager has a discreet word about it and asks if there is anything they need to know. However routinely messing with things like breaks or availability of kitchen and bathroom facilities is surely one of the most counterproductive policies an employer could adopt. Nothing says we respect and value our people like treating them as subhuman!

Bathroom breaks would have to get extreme before management has the slightest place in bringing it up as an issue. Anyway, if someone is getting their work done, why does it matter how many breaks they take?

Sometimes people do abuse the system. Sometimes they have a real medical issue. Sometimes they're being treated badly at the office and they're just desperate to get out of that environment and don't know how to tell anyone or get help. It's not always obvious what is happening or why.

Any of these situations can mean someone isn't getting their work done. Their colleagues might be left to pick up the slack, which isn't fair on them either. Any of the people involved might start to worry or get upset about the situation, which can make things worse.

Whatever is going on it's management's responsibility to figure it out and then deal with it professionally and with appropriate discretion and sensitivity. The difficult part is figuring out what that looks like when the situation could be delicate and there might be anything from very personal medical issues to criminal behaviour involved.

There’s a process for that too.

They file for reasonable accommodation and the idiots who get concerned about your bathroom time have to be quietly told to stand down because you have special permission to poo.

It can get more absurd as well. There’s an unlimited about of goldbricking and bullshit that people are capable of.

Where there's a dumb requirement, there's a waiver.