Word: bathroom
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Airline-reservation computers, for example, closely measure how long individual clerks take to handle each customer and the amount of time the employee spends between calls. The computer takes note of any idle moment and measures lunch hours, coffee breaks and even trips to the bathroom. At grocery stores, optical scanners not only ring up prices but also tell a central computer how many items per minute the clerk is handling, as well as other information. Even in factories where employees operate complex electronic machine tools rather than keyboards, computers can monitor the equipment and alert management about slow...
...long the 400 reservation clerks spend on each call and how much time passes before they pick up their next one. Workers earn negative points for such infractions as repeatedly spending in excess of an average 109 seconds handling a call, and taking any more than twelve minutes in bathroom trips beyond the hour a day they are allotted for lunch and coffee breaks. Employees can lose their jobs if they rack up more than 37 points in a year...
East and West Germany were ensnarled last week in the kind of case that makes the two countries the spy center of Europe. The main character was Herbert Meissner, 59, a leading East German economist, who was discovered shoplifting a bathroom fixture in West Berlin. After requesting to speak with West German federal intelligence service officials, Meissner signed statements declaring that he had been spying for East Berlin since 1978, and sought to defect to the West on his own free will...
...most evocative residue from those days are hundreds of graffiti scrawled on walls with pencils, knives and chalk in dozens of languages. As the restorers heated the building to bake out years of sea moisture, paint flaked off, revealing these immigrant artifacts. One Chinese graffito penciled on a bathroom wall is raw, wonderful poetry: "Thinking of home brings tears. I don't know what day we can be freed from our worries. Fathers, brothers, wives, children have scattered. Lucky just to arrive in the Flowery Flag country. I expected peace with no worries...
...federal aid from discriminating against the handicapped. The case was brought by three organizations, including the Paralyzed Veterans of America, which noted that some airlines subject the handicapped to humiliations like requiring them to sit on blankets for fear they will not be able to make it to the bathroom. The court found that airports, not airlines, are the recipients of current federal aid programs. Thus airlines are not bound by the strings attached...