Generally just used it in the bathroom stall and made sure it was on silent. They used to ban all electronics on site with the static explosion excuse even though I'm not in an at risk part of the plant. I read a lot of books and drew in my sketch pads for the first few years. Along with napping and watching some shitty over the air free tv channel programming. Wasn't worth sneaking it any where else here you'd risk getting fired pretty easily at the time. We still had/have landline phones family could call.

Oldies retired and new sociopaths took over but they chilled on electronics. Now we can have phones or tablets in control / lunch rooms and locker room. A full blown laptop would still get unapproving looks on dayshift, but not on night shifts. It was kinda shit until west Canada finally had larger data plans after another couple years. They've been fine with me using a Steam Deck. They generally don't bug me about stretching the rules because I don't fuck up nearly as often as everyone else in my department and I'm better at salvaging more material as prime than the others. Basically I'm in-house reclaim.