Do constructions workers pee when they are standing on beams high up in the air?
I say yes. Especially when you consider it would take them at least a half hour to ride the construction elevator down to the bottom and then back up again. I can see the foreman not having patience for bathroom breaks up there.
So when they need to go, they just unzip and let it rip, as they are hammering in another rivet.
On high rise construction, often as a floor is placed, a portable toilet is lifted to that floor. The framing or decking goes on two to three floors above typically ahead of the final floor but rarely do you see anyone having to go to the ground to take a leak. Does someone do such into a can occasionally in an awkward location? Sure, but not very often.
I re-read the article and although it is not specific, I think this was the tower crane operator who had taken a bottle to his cab to use to pee into to avoid manually climbing down and I will say that is not uncommon. Dropping it on your boss is pretty uncommon I imagine. Almost anything dropped from forty feet and up gets up enough velocity to kill someone.