I see no reason to doubt the OP here. It seemed rather plausible. To me, it is reasonable to assume that a person who’s job it is to handle pee all day for an industry that assumes guilt rather than innocence would lack people skills.
On the other hand, your scenario lacks all credibility. The OP already stated that he needs this job and had made the choice to submit to the test because of this. Given these facts (assuming that you believe them) it is reasonable to assume that the OP will be acting like any new hire/prospective employee in every aspect of the process to qualify for the job (i.e. extra polite, extra efficient and so forth).
Lib, quite a few times I’ve very politely expressed my dismay at your tendency to express yourself obnoxiously in particular debates wherein your ideology impels you to wax moronic. I usually try and give you my honest feedback regarding whatever point it is that you seem to me to be attempting.
In this case, I will depart from that format for no other reasons than that Baldwin happens to be my brother IRL, and although I happen to disagree with him on many levels on this particular subject I’ve no reason to doubt that he’s abandoned his typical devotion to accuracy in his account.
In this case Lib, I will simply take a utilitarian approach and ask you to take your presumption and condescension and insert them wherever it will do the most good for the most people. I have a suggestion as to where that insertion point might be found.
As Lola asks, why would they assume guilt? It seems o me just the opposite. The vast, vast majority of people who come in to be tested are “clean”. From here.
He’s fortunate to have a brother who holds him in such high regard. My good brother died many years ago, and all I have left is a brother who is as near to evil incarnate as anyone I’ve ever known. Nevertheless, brother or not, there is always more than one side to a story, and all I did was suggest what might have been another point of view. The guy in the test center might have a caring brother, too. I hope he does, but since he’s not here, I don’t mind playing the role.
I am not sure what one has to do with the other. The fact that most people are testing clean only shows me that this whole process is not only invasive, but it is also needless.
On the other hand, the fact that people feel the need to test at all shows me that they assume that there is a problem and that they assume that (some) people are guilty of a crime (doing recreational drugs) even though lacking any evidence
I’ll go out on a limb here, and say that the majority of people opposed to drug use, and who support the continuted illegality of drugs, don’t really want to put every single drug user in jail. If people really wanted that to happen, they would make it happen. We’d have random spot drug tests on the street. A cop would stop you on the sidewalk, issue you a piss-ticket, and then you’d have to go to a testing center, just like when you’re cited for a broken break light. Obviously we don’t have that. It’s one thing to say you want drugs to be illegal, but it’s another to say how far you want the government to go in enforcing that, what kind of punishments should be meted out, and if ‘zero-tolerance’ means just that, or just zero tolerance of obvious nuisances arising from the public sale and use of drugs. Heroin addicts robbing drug stores is one thing, and someone smoking a joint at home is another.
We now have a situation where the real enforcement of drug laws is being done not by the state, but by private business. The situation is now such that the use of drugs incurs not just the remote prospect of being arrested, but the very real prospect of losing your livelihood. If you’re a recovering addict, that little job you have might be your way back to being a productive member of society. But, by all I’ve heard, addiction recovery is an iterative process. I’m hoping Qadgop or someone equally knowledgeable will set me straight, if I’ve gone off the rails here. My point is that, as a customer or a co-worker, if an employee has a drug problem but is working to overcome it, I don’t think that person should be fired for falling off the wagon. Obviously, I don’t think this applies to jobs that impact public safety, though.
Portraying the other side of a story can be done fairly and honestly, and without creating dialogue and behavior for your fictional participants out of whole cloth. Although I’m sure the angry young fucktard who served my brother would be happy with your more inventive approach, I personally wish you were the type of proxy sibling who stuck to facts already in evidence.
And I’m sorry to hear about your relationship with your remaining brother. I am indeed fortunate to have mine.
Xenophon – didn’t think you spent time on the SDMB these days. I was going to call you tonight and tell you all about this stuff. Thanks for speaking up, and yes, my account was as accurate as I could make it.
Lib – thank you! I made a little bet with myself that you, of all the thousands of members on the SDMB, would post an imaginary vignette exactly like what you produced. I actually got shivers up my spine, because it was a near-psychic experience. Oh, and you’re completely wrong in your assumption that I’m either a liar or divorced from reality, so kindly shove your head back up your ass until you can grasp the back of your own throat with your teeth, then keep pulling until you collapse into a singularity. (I’ve got twenty lines of symbolic logic lying around somewhere that prove this is possible…)
Apparently the test came out okay, and I did the paperwork for the job today, so it looks like I’m in. The first 90 days as a temp, but I’m reasonably confident they’ll want to keep me. So I’ll shove all this stuff into the back of my mind, and just enjoy earning a proper living again.
Whether there’s a Republican or a Democrat in the White House next year, policies like this aren’t likely to change anytime soon. Eventually, the pendulum will swing back, enough people will get fed up with it, and it’ll just go away. Until then, as some here have said, we must pick our battles.
I keep getting this feeling like we’re sort of talking to each other, but that the content of the conversation is getting garbled somehow.
In your original comment, I thought you came to the conclusion that the testing lab workers had an assumption-of-guilt attitude. I was just curious about how you came to your conclusion because I come to the opposite conclusion. Most of the work that the testing lab does is pre-employement or random screening. If I’m a lab worker, the vast majority of the people who walk through my door are clean. Therefore, if I were to make any assumptions at all, it would be that the odds that the next person who walked through the door would also be clean. An assumption of innocence, not guilt. YMMV.
As far as the companies who are screening their employees (and in case my opinion is lost in the dim history of this thread, I am not against pre-employment screening but do not support random screening of existing employees), yes they make the assumption that there are people illegally using recreational drugs. But there is evidence. It is a fact. Now of course, they don’t know that any particular individual is a user, just that there is a percentage of the population that are users.
'Little more invective than I expected from you, there B, but what the hell.
(And I’ll remember to mention your longevity plans at your wake. )
[/Hijack]
Algernon, Ah, I think that I see where the misunderstanding comes from, and I am pretty sure that it was due to simple bad writing on my part of an undeveloped thought.
To expand and clarify: I think that you are correct in that if a lab worker experiences the vast majority of the tests coming out clean, that he will naturally assume that the majority of folks coming in the door are clean.
I think that what I was trying to get at was that the industry itself is all about stripping people of their dignity and that it is logical to believe that someone that does this day in and day out could have bad people skills.*
*Disclaimers: I am not saying that bad people skills are the inevitable result of choosing said profession, just that my perception of the effects of drug testing and the industries that it has spawned lead me to believe the OP when he reported his experience at the testing center.
How does this explain the rude employees at my local K-Mart? Oh, wait. Maybe it does! (just kidding)
Thank you for your response. I now understand what you were trying to say. And (to put frosting on your cake), I agree with you on this.
I only have a minor quibble with “the industry itself is all about…” I would venture to claim that stripping people of their dignity is not the objective, just an unintended consequence. However, I recognize that the impact to the person walking through the door is the same, regardless of intent.
Not at all, I have done so many times for a doctor as part of one test or another. I can only go on personal experience here, but the two are worlds apart.
The times that I have gone to a doctor and had to provide a sample, first of all I was there by choice and was there to either make sure that I was maintaining my health or to correct a problem. I was handed a cup and given instructions on how to collect the sample and allowed to go to a bathroom and privately do so.
The one time that I had to provide urine for a drug screening was a whole other matter. Much like the OP, I was treated with disrespect and during the sample collection itself had a guy standing over my shoulder looking at my wang while I peed. Now I know that there are other kinds of tests (where they don’t watch while you go, but don’t let you flush or something) but this was my experience. I see no other way to look at this issue but one that stripes the dignity from all involved.
Interesting. When you (or someone else) mentioned his earlier I thought it was simply hyperbole to make a point. I apologize for mentally rolling my eyes.
I’ve had to do pre-employment drug screening twice in the last 4 years. Both times I was given complete privacy and was treated admirably.
I suppose like many things in life, our personal experiences color our opinions.
See, due to my pregnancy last year, I had to pee in a cup every visit to the doctor. And I’d venture to say it’s much harder to pee in a cup when you are female.
All kidding aside, I just wanted to see what your experiences were on peeing in the cup . Now
tells me (IMO) that this is a large part of why some of you are opposed to it (in addition to your other reasons). And I don’t think that being treated shabbily (while very unfortunate) should even factor into the principle(s) behind the testing.
Shit happens (it has to me too, but meh…I get over it). :\
)