Accounting, bodily taboos, and intimate space at work: Access to toilets under time-based performance

This paper investigates the impact of performance objectives and, more specifically, time management, on intimate spaces in the workplace, focusing on access to toilets for train drivers working for the French public railway company, SNCF. Despite the existence of legal obligations, heightened operational performance expectations result in limited access to toilets for certain occupations, obliging employees to resort to makeshift solutions. Drawing on a discontinuous three-year institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987) conducted in liaison with labour unions, we analyse the embodied impact of a new punctuality policy at SNCF, introduced alongside budget cuts and increasing market competition. Using insights from critical geography, we examine how this policy affects relationships between workers, their bodies, and their workspace. We show that performance policies restrict both material and temporal access to toilets, compelling drivers to regulate their bodily needs in order to comply with organisational expectations. We identify the accounting dimensions of intimate spaces at work and advance two conditions governing access to such spaces and two governing their use. Finally, we argue that accounting practices, which currently largely overlook intimate spaces, should consider workers’ bodies in their material and temporal contexts, thereby fostering greater worker dignity.