Worker Who Got Fired for Masturbating in the Men's Room Loses His Appeal

Source – An arbitrator found that a Canadian company was right to fire a male employee who masturbated loudly in the workplace bathroom — and who tried save his job by arguing that his sex addiction was a disability, according to reports.

The National Post reports that the employee, who worked for an aerospace company that operates in the airport at Halifax, Nova Scotia and whose name has not been released, was fired after fellow employees complained that they could hear him pleasuring himself in the bathroom, which they say caused them “embarrassment and distress.”

In addition to his sex-addiction-as-a-disability argument, the man’s union, Unifor, tried to argue that the man didn’t receive a fair warning about his co-workers’ complaints. …

The man denied making “moaning and groaning” noises and assured officials that he kept the sound on his phone down if he used it to watch porn.

This ruling was just handed down, so we still don’t know all that it will mean going forward. But I feel like this could be one of the great landmark cases in the history of labor in the United States. Right up with there with monumental decisions like Commonwealth v. Hunt, which decided the legality of labor unions or Bunting v. Oregon which upheld the constitutionality of the 10-hour working day. And like a lot of these legal decisions of great consequence, this one might be further appealed and overturned by the courts. It’s happened before, such as when child labor laws were enacted, declared illegal and then reinstated.

And it’s hard to imagine a issue of greater consequence than this one: Is there a fundamental right to masturbate at work? It’s something that will no doubt be argued by legal scholars for the next generation, at least.

And before you just automatically say the answer is “no” because you want to argue you’re hired to do a job, that job rarely involves pleasuring yourself and besides, jagging off is being non-productive, let me ask you this: What about all the non-productive things every worker does every day. Lunch breaks. Coffee breaks. Smoking breaks. Nursing mother breaks. And, of course, bathroom breaks. Is it really anyone else’s business what you do once you get inside that locked stall? Whether you’re doing No.1 or No. 2, checking your texts, playing Candy Crush or rubbing one out, aren’t you entitled to do what you must in order to get back to work and earn your day’s pay?

My personal opinion is that yes, you are entitled. Your right to whip up a batch ends where my cubicle begins. And I won’t even add a caveat like “as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else.” Because in my days of working in a big office, I was subjected to plenty of things way more offensive than a co-worker whacking it. For instance, striking up a conversation while we’re in adjacent stalls, which is the worst. I’d be sitting there just trying to pretend neither one of us exists like a normal person does and then get the 75-year-old department head saying “So how’s it going today?” like somehow the silence would be more awkward than a nice exchange of pleasantries at a moment like that. Or I’ve had to listen to guys forcing out a bowel movement like they were at home by themselves. Holy smokes we had a custodian who was 450 pounds if he was an ounce, who would once a day drop a nuclear warhead in the public bathroom. Seriously, the place would be uninhabitable for hours afterwards. And if anyone had the courage to follow him in there, they’d report he was eating Doritos while sitting on the bowl. Those things are far more egregious and constitute much more fireable offenses than a man spanking it.

All that being said, let’s all be adults about this and admit this ex-aerospace worker is lying through his teeth when he denies “moaning and groaning.” How else would his co-workers know if he wasn’t moaning up a storm? I believe a man’s stall is his castle and wouldn’t care if he pleasured himself like a bonobo ape in there. But don’t lie to us. If you’re going to be the Erin Brockovich who wins this battle for workers everywhere, you’re going to have to be more honest than that, you filthy perv.