Standing Up for Work
“A few of my employees are cashiers and need to stand behind the register all day so they can ring up customer purchases. One of them is asking to sit down while behind the register but I think it makes the employee look lazy. Can I tell her no?”
My HR Survival Tip
A lot of different types of employees are on their feet all day. In some cases, there is no other way to do the job. However, when there are options, you need to be very careful with your response.
The Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) Wage Orders actually mention seating for employees in some industries. It requires “suitable seats” when the work will reasonably permit the employee to be seated while working. The IWC continues to state that you must also provide seating for employees not actively doing the work that normally requires standing.
What’s this mean to you? As a rule, the courts have said that someone standing behind a register should have a stool or chair, if requested. The reason is that the seating won’t interfere with their job so you don’t have any real legal standing to refuse.
In Bright v. 99 Cents Only Stores, 189 Cal. App. 4th 1472 (2010), the company denied a retail cashier’s request for a chair. In this case, the potential liability was $204,000 per year plus attorneys’ fees. This included penalties of $100 per employee per pay period for the first violation and $200 for each subsequent violation. One really costly aspect was that the law used also allowed similar coworkers to be pulled into the case so the penalty potential grew because it could be about a lot of employees rather than just the one who initiated the lawsuit.
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