I’m putting this in the Pit so that people with similar experiences can feel free to curse.
After 15 months of unemployment, broken only by some temp assignments, I’ve landed an excellent job. Temp-to-perm, but I’m confidant they’ll hire me as a permanent employee after 90 days. Nice environment, literally a mile from my apartment, and with a better salary than I’ve ever had before.
But – tomorrow I have to go for a drug test. Years ago I swore to myself I’d never do that. If I were still living alone, with nobody else depending on me, I’d stick to my principles and possibly find myself homeless. But my girlfriend has kept us afloat during a very difficult year, and I owe her bigtime. She understands my objections, but takes a pragmatic view.
When they brought up the drug test (required by the company for all new hires), I just said, “Okay”. But something scrunched up inside of me, and I certainly lost a little respect for my new-found employers. But I kept from ranting, and I got the job, which means we can buy food and build our savings back up.
I’m sure the subject of drug tests has been endlessly debated here (just allow me to say I still don’t understand how the fuck companies can legally do this in America). I just wondered if anybody else has had to violate a deeply-held belief for the sake of making a living, and how they felt. I feel like shit, myself. Should be really happy about the job now, but inside I feel like I’ve licked a boot.
I took a piss test last year for a temp job, even though I feel much the same way. Nobody depends on me, except me, but I needed the money. I probably don’t feel as strongly as you about the issue though, I’d never become homeless over it.
Papa Tiger works for a Fortune 500 company that does a lot of government contracting, and requires a drug test from all new hires at all levels of the company, from the new CEO on down. It’s obnoxious, but definitely has become part of today’s business world. Don’t take it personally. It may be a requirement for a contract your new employer holds or some such.
It’s a little annoying, but I don’t understand your moral outrage. You piss in a cup and somebody checks it for illegal substances. I imagine it’s much worse for the person who has to actually administer the test.
I had to do one for my last job. It’s no big deal.
I’ve done the same thing. I’m subjected to random drug tests. Monitored random drug tests.
I knew what I was getting into. I also realized that my principles, when combined with a dime, won’t even buy a cup of coffee these days. I did what I had to do; and I don’t regret it. Besides, in this line of work, someone staring at my wang while I piss into a cup is the least of my worries.
It seems like capitulation now, but by the time you’re forty you’ll have a huge bag full of junked principles that didn’t survive contact with reality. You can feel shitty about it if you want, but you should recognize that the untested principles of your youth are going to have to work in practice eventually, or be let go. Just because you label something a principle doesn’t mean you’re enslaved to it forever. If I believe in the free food principle, and starve to death because of it, have I died a noble and principled death? Fuck no. I died a stupid, spiteful, wasteful death.
I had to take a piss test for my last job, but I could understand why—it was a direct health care kind of job. I didn’t bitch about it that time, because I understood. And I’ve never taken an illicit drug in my life, so it wasn’t like I was sweating bullets or anything.
About a year later, someone found a joint at the workplace, and they were trying to weed out who did it. (Weed out—yuk yuk.) I had to be interviewed (since I was working in the vicinity of where the joint was found) and I was also asked to take another (voluntary) piss test. They made it clear that I didn’t have to take it, and I did bitch a bit about it, for principle’s sake. But, I decided to go along with it, because I understood their position and it seemed like it would cause a stir if I refused. (And, I repeat: when it comes to drugs, I am pretty much the most squeaky-clean person imaginable.) But still, it annoyed me to have to piss on demand like that.
So I understand feeling icky about it, but you did take the pragmatic stance. And, think of it this way—they weren’t asking you to torture a kitten or steal from an old lady. It’s upsetting that you had to be put in this position, but I think being pragmatic (considering the circumstances) was a wise course.
Thanks for the thought, but I’m 43. Haven’t junked any of my principles yet; when it comes to public policy, they’re pretty much the same principles eloquently described in the U.S. Constitution. Without principles, we’re just dangerous apes with big brains.
Because it’s a search, and one that a company has, in my opinion, no right to conduct as a requirement for a job, anymore than they get to come into my house and search through my sock drawer. At least I don’t think this company does any kind of testing once you’re hired, which would actually be worse – since periodic mandatory testing means that not only does your employer treat you like a criminal, but your employer (talking about ordinary, private companies, such as a bank or an auto parts store) gets to act as if it were a law-enforcement agency. Why do we allow that? Why is my new employer so intent on starting off on the wrong foot with me? How can they expect any kind of loyalty?
I’ve been told I have a congenitally low tolerance for stupidity. Maybe that’s my problem. It’s just that back in the 1980’s I thought this insane, un-American bullshit would be a passing fad. Man, I wish I could kick Attorney General John Ashcroft in the nuts right now. I know that’s irrational, but it would make me feel better.
Well, thanks for the feedback, guys. Tomorrow I’ll submit to evil, and I’ll take the job and probably do well. But it’s tainted from the start.
This week I was invited to apply for a managerial job in my company, but I declined because the job requires a higher-level security clearance than I already have. I would have to take a polygraph test, which is a load of horseshit a mile deep, and endure various invasions of my privacy.
I can say that I have no regrets at this point, and I expect other opportunities will soon arise that let me move up without sacrificing my right to a private life.
I have a lot of respect for people, like my dad, who put up with crap in order to provide for their families, but on the other hand I still feel I need to set an example for my kid by not being too much of a suckass. If you lose respect for yourself your kids will have a hard time respecting you. Anyway, the important thing is to make the best of your decision and try not to dwell on it, especially if it’s a done deal. When a better opportunity comes along, don’t hesitate to give your (former) employer your opinion of drug tests.
I think your principles can survive this. Submitting to an indignity for the sake of one’s family is less blameworthy than inflicting it on others. I believe in good diction, but I don’t feel guilty for conversing with people who say “ain’t.” Reasonable men and women apply rigid standards of conduct to themselves, but do not shun those who don’t meet them.
Of course, if your new job is to administer drug tests to the other employees, you do have an ethical problem.
Your belief that you should take care of your girlfriend, and do for her as she’s done for you and generally be a productive member of society.
Your belief that employment drug tests are, well, bad, and that you shouldn’t submit to one.
Whatever you do, you’re violating one of your values. I’d go for #1 if I were in the same situation, because #1 would be a stronger conviction for me than the second one.
There are times when you should put your balls on the line and stand up for what’s right and damned be the consequences. Then there are times where doing the former will not change anything and all you would be doing is losing your shirt and neither you nor anybody else in this world would be benefitted by your stand.
If people railed about these routine erosions of privacy and didn’t submit to them, they’d disappear. I got hired by a large insurance company which required a drug test. I took it, and passed it, then I told the company to stuff it. (Well, I was more polite. I said I had decided not to accept the job after all, because I couldn’t possibly work for people who’d made me submit to a test like that.)
Then I moped around for a few days while I considered giving up eating, heating my house, etc. Then I got offered a much better job. I have an office, with a window that opens, and I’m doing work I like. No drug test.
You have to wonder, why does an insurance company need a drug-free newsletter editor? Why does a plumbing company need a drug-free dispatcher? Either you can do the job or you can’t. They do it because they can get away with it and it’s a certain level of control. It’s a level of control I can do without, and I’m pissed off at all the people who felt it violated their principles and then did it anyway.
I could understand it if I was trying to get hired as a driver, or anywhere in the field of law enforcement, or even in a company that had a lot of sensitive contracts of one sort or another–I still think it’s needlessly intrusive, but I could understand it.
In addition to this privacy-invasion issue (I understand that you’re asked to list any medications that you are legitimately using, prescription or over-the-counter, to hand in to the lab along with your sample. Anyone could read that information, and that’s clearly not anyone’s business) there’s also the question of other things which can be detected by testing someone’s urine, conditions such as diabetes, pregnancy or even the presence of HIV.
Even though most companies require you to sign a consent, blah blah blah, for urinalysis, there is really no safeguard for the tester, no way to prevent the company from ordering any number of tests on the sample you provide, nor any good way to prove that they did and used the information that they garnered to make a decision on hiring because they figure that certain results mean that you’re going to run up huge insurance bills or will require a lot of time off or will eventually end up collecting disability on their dime.
This is one principle I wouldn’t have violated. If you’re not my doctor, you don’t get my bodily fluids or my hair or any other biological material from me for any reason.
Hell, I got very very testy when my company abruptly decided (two years after my hire) that I (and all of my co-workers, regardless of the length of their employment) needed to give a non-HR employee all of my personally identifying information, including name, addresses and phone numbers going back ten years, DOB and social security number in order to have a background check run. It was all the info anyone would have needed not only to check backgrounds, but perpetrate a massive identity theft financial fraud against any of our co-workers. Worse, the person collecting this data did not have a secured office and was going to hand the data off to another person without a secured office to be sent off (via unknown means) to a third party who would then send it off to an outside company for the checks to be run, and all outside of the framework of what was considered “employment documents” which have to be kept confidential, so I put my foot down.
I didn’t think that any of my co-workers were going to do anything untoward with the information. That wasn’t the point. Fortunately, I was high enough on the corporate food chain (and in a position in which my opinions about such matters) that I was able to effect a change in how the process was handled to limit the possibility of anything unseemly, but I still wasn’t happy about blanket background checks, either. I’ve yet to figure out why a company which had absolutely no corporate vehicles nor any situations in which corporate property was transported needed the driving records of every employee. Were they going to fire PhDs in a very esoteric field for having too many speeding tickets? Was someone’s ability to do research into enzymatic reactions on lipoproteins really compromised by a pot bust when they were a 19 and working their butts off at Yale or MIT? The whole idea of prying into someone’s off-the-job behavior (to the extent that it doesn’t impact on their ability to do their work or open the company to liabilities) truly stinks.
Get off your well worn cross of “principled” angstification for just a sec. Imagine you are an employer who has to obtain insurance for your business. People with hard drug habits are huge risks for theft, accidents, medical claims etc. If you don’t screen job applicants the insurance carrier will drop your coverage, and no one else will cover you either. Is it irrational or immoral for the insurance carrier to demand some level of screening form the employer it is covering given the risks involved?
I dunno, IMO those are two different things. Apples and oranges.
I don’t understand your moral outrage either.
In Hawaii there is an “ice” (crystal meth) epidemic and I would much rather be subjected to a piss test along with everyone else, rather than possibly work alongside someone with a serious drug problem. I think the company has a responsibility to the people already employed to keep drugs out of the workplace.
Oh, and like some others said, principles don’t pay the rent.
Or what if someone’s taking something they’d rather keep private? (Legitimate prescriptions here, folks).
I hear ya, Guin. I’m on Adderall for ADHD. That’s an amphetamine that would definitely show up in a pee test. I would be forced to tell a potential employer I had ADHD before I even went for the test, and I can just see them “suddenly” finding a “more suitable candidate” for the position. Never mind that I’m doing awesome on the medication; nobody wants an easily distracted employee. And even if they DID hire me, I’m not real keen on having to tell my employer that I have it. It’s none of their business.
There is no privacy. That’s just part of the problem, even for perfectly legitimate prescriptions. The whole mindset is just a slightly evolved version of serfdom. TPTB don’t own your person, just your means of earning a living. But in this case, your person is automatically assumed guilty until proven innocent. Forget performance, track record, handling your life productively…can’t tolerate no druggies. Of course legitimate prescriptions are okay and applicants shouldn’t hesitate to mention their use upfront. Right. But what if they go off them? Red flag there…
The other huge problem is test accuracy. In the highly dangerous position of librarian I’ve had to piss in bottles and have blood drawn for my last two jobs–with 15 years of stellar job and driving records. Nothing’s more fun than wondering what cheapo test the employer is using. Hint: the thing about avoiding poppy seed bagels and some artificial sweeteners is true. Cheap tests can return false positives for an amazing array of things.
I thoroughly agree with the principle, Baldwin. It’s intensely degrading, in the most personal sense. But starving won’t prove anything either.
Ya do what ya gotta do. Do the work, take the money, keep your conscience and vote accordingly.
Last two jobs I had required piss tests. For both of them I used urine from a friend, first time because I wouldn’t have passed and the second time because I had some leftover piss on hand. Piss tests are just one more manifestation of our national hysteria about drugs and given the chance to make a mockery of one I will.