A Strange Interview!

We were reminded last night at my new course about the importance of confidentiality and anonymity, but I just remembered this little incident this morning and had to write about it - I'll try and be gentle!

I was staying in a county in the UK conducting interviews on behalf of a government evaluation (if that's not anonymous, I don't know what is - there were hundreds of these things going on during the last decade.) One of these sessions was a telephone interview with a woman who happened to be pregnant. It was a fairly long interview. She mentioned at one point about her need to pee frequently.

"Oh," I said. "If you want to take a break, we can finish this later."

"It's okay," she said. "I just went. I've been talking to you for the last ten minutes sitting on the toilet."

I'm still not sure what I found stranger. That she had taken a loo break while still conducting a telephone interview....or that she admitted the fact. (Or does everyone do this on the phone?!)