The Malmö police department will stop at no lengths to refrain from spending a penny, employees learned recently.

At first, staff thought they were getting a bum deal when two toilets near the surveillance unit's offices were closed last week, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reports.

But when employees from the narcotics and criminal divisions also found themselves locked out of the bathrooms in their wings, employees began to suspect the closures were no accident.

As it turned out, officials at the department had decided to shut down several of the station's toilets over the summer in an effort to keep from draining the public purse.

But someone forgot to tell workers at the police station, prompting the station's workplace safety officer to lodge a complaint, at which point the toilets were once again opened for business.