Security guard at B.C. Health Ministry building wasn’t allowed to go, so he stopped drinking fluids during work
A security guard who worked in a B.C. Ministry of Health building in Victoria has sent a letter to the government claiming that he lost a kidney because he couldn’t go to the bathroom. Ron Jeffries, 59, says he stopped drinking water because he was told he couldn’t leave his post at the front desk. The result, he says, was a kidney stone that required surgery and
ultimately cost him the organ. Jeffries worked for a private company that had a contract to provide security services to the health department. But he’s blaming an oversight in provincial labour laws, which don’t explicitly require employer to provide workers with bathroom breaks. His doctor figures that his deliberate dehydration contributed the stones. But he can’t say for sure, which may explain why Jeffries hasn’t sued.