In the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known by Republicans as Obamacare, there is a section which expands the Fair Labor Standards of 1938 to include that companies with 50 employees or more should allow women who are breastfeeding to have an unpaid break to express milk in an area other than in a bathroom.  Compassionate, but not exactly earthshaking.  Just the chance for women who choose to feed their children naturally to do so in a clean environment.

Now, rationally, this just means that when an employee comes back from maternity leave that she be allowed to utilize a spare office or breakroom for the amount of time that it takes her, usually about 20 - 30 minutes, to express her milk for her baby.  Just a matter of scheduling appropriately and problem solving by keeping it simple.

Unfortunately, there are those people who have great difficulty seeing the simple solutions.  Take one Tom Sternberg, the co-founder of Staples.  His reaction to how to deal with the issue of employees who might be breastfeeding was akin to the Rube Goldberg concept of business.

He decided that the only means to deal with the issue was for companies to build "lactation chambers" in every store.  Lactation chambers?  The term conjures images of diving bells filled with milk.

“Do you want [farming retailer] Tractor Supply to open stores or would you rather they take their capital and do what Obamacare and its 2,700 pages dictates – which is to open a lactation chamber at every single store that they have?” he asked.

“I’m big on breastfeeding; my wife breastfed,” Sternberg added. “I’m all for that. I don’t think every retail store in America should have to go to lactation chambers, which is what Obamacare foresees."

Really, Mr. Sternberg?  That’s the first thing that came to mind when you read the passage, the reconstruction of every store to accommodate a “lactation chamber”?  

I thought your company slogan was, "That was easy" not "Let's blow this completely out of proporation".  

It didn’t occur to you to put up a paper sign on a break room door saying, “Occupied” or utilizing some of the panel systems you already have on hand to make a temporary area in a room?  Was this chamber idea something you did when your wife breastfed, build a separate chamber for her to enter in order to express milk or feed your children?

I guess we should just be thankful the PPAC didn’t mention diaper changing – heaven only knows what he would have come up with for that.