A recent survey done in the UK found that the average full-time employee spent an estimated 8.6 minutes hiding in office restrooms at least three times per week. The European Cleaning Journal reported that this act cost businesses roughly $2 billion per year ($1.5 billion euros).

The survey was conducted by UKBathrooms.com and polled workers ages 16 and over who are employed in full-time positions. The goal of the survey was to find out more about restroom habits in the workplace.

When asked the question, "Do you ever hide in the restroom during the working day?", 27 percent of participants replied that they did. When looking at the main reasons for doing so, 71 percent claimed that they did so as a "time wasting activity," while 14 percent did so to "avoid certain colleagues/clients." And 57 percent admitted they were likely to hide in the toilet to pass the time "three times per working week."

All respondents who admitted to hiding in restrooms during the work day were asked to estimate how long, on average, they spent hiding each time. When taking all answers into account, the average length of time spent hiding was 8.6 minutes.

Taking into account the average days worked in a year, researchers found that the average worker hid in restrooms 139.2 times each year. If each person spent 8.6 minutes in the restroom per visit, three times a week, then the average employee would spend 19.95 hours in hiding.

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