Ernst & Young Employee Reminds Everyone Just How Important Workplace Flexibility Is

Yesterday, we shared a story with you that probably caused you to thank your lucky stars that you don’t work in Norway (especially if you’re a woman). In that post, we called back to our old report from January about the secure lavatories at Ernst & Young’s Long Island location in Jericho.

You may have been under the impression that someone within E&Y was responsible for the lockdown, however, thanks to an enterprising E&Y employee, we now know who the keymasters really are:

I don’t work in the Jericho office, but got shipped out there for random clients for most of this summer. The bathrooms are in the common areas shared by all tenants of the building, so the keyed entry to the bathrooms is mandated by the building management, not EY (not that I’d put it past the partners to come up with something like this, though).

Also, while there are keys for each bathroom, there are also entry codes you can use instead. So you can grab one of the communal keys (kinda gross), or remember the terribly difficult four digit code (0001 if I remember correctly).

As a side note, I remember the admin mentioning that the original set of five keys for the men’s room was down to two. I’m wondering why someone would make off with these nasty over-sized germ farms.

Okay, so the missing keys aren’t news but what’s it going to take to get some extras made? And, again, who’s making off with the keys in the first place?

And while it’s good to know that the E&Y brass in Jericho aren’t actually the ones putting the clamp on the johns, would it kill them to spring for some private restrooms that non-E&Yers don’t have access to? It’s one thing to have to schlep to the front desk to get a key every time; it’s entirely another to be sharing a bathroom with the entire building. What is this, Penn Station?

Seriously, how much time and cost would it take to throw in some pots, sinks, urinals and XLERATORs®? It’s a health issue for crissakes.