Agree. My employment history includes situations where I’ve turned down job offers rather than give an employer complete control over what I do during my time away from work.
From the other perspective, I could not care less if an employee blazes each and every minute they aren’t on the job, assuming they perform as expected once they punch in.
I agree, and I enjoy a variety of recreational substances (less variety as I get older, mostly just pot and coffee these days).
Some folks have nothing better to do than get high. Others get high and do things.
Agreed. I find this whole employee drug testing thing ridiculous. I’ve never heard of it here, it seems a little police state to me, and quite contrary to the libertarian image the US* tends to project (or I tend to receive).
I would argue that private companies have no right to perform such tests on employees, outside of certain jobs where it really is important, and that it’s not up to them to determine the rightness or wrongness of apparently victimless crimes that the employee hasn’t been charged with and certainly hasn’t been convicted of.
I wonder if it’s the “private companies” part that makes it tolerable to some. Perhaps if it were the government doing it, it would be too much.
*I’ve only heard of these drug tests in the US
Username/Post Combo acknowledgement.
mmm
“Drugs can be detected for 30 days, so you must still be high” is the nonlogic used.
I was a Federal government employee for 37 years, and I was subject to drug testing the entire time, even when my job didn’t require a security clearance. But you knew the rules when you were hired, you always knew when the tests were being done - not in advance, but day of - and near as I can tell, the tests really were random.
During one period, my name popped up six months in a row, but then not again for the next 5 years. And the rule for prescription meds was that if something showed on the test, you’d durn well better have proof that your doctor prescribed the substance that screened positive.
In the grand scheme of things, peeing in a cup every once in a while was a small thing to do in order to stay employed. Plus I never tried any recreational drugs and never had any desire to experiment - never saw the point. Who knows what my point of view might be if I was a user…
Wait…is your friend A-Rod and “pot brownies” a euphemism for something else?
There’s something that doesn’t ring true about the OP’s story. Not that I think the OP is lying. But maybe the friend is taking liberties with the truth.
The story has the habitual drug users tone of downplaying her habit, acting as if everyone is out to get her (the lab likely did nothing more than process her test, the “story” did not “somehow get back to her office”) and bemoaning how unfair the policy is.
I mean who just up and decides to eat pot brownies “just this once” when they know their workplace does random testing if they aren’t already regularly doing pot?
I suspect the actual story is closer to “I was caught by my company’s random drug screening and fired because I do pot all the time”.
So if i may sum up your post: “She must be lying because she smokes pot. The test proves it.”
“do” pot? Nobody has ever claimed to “do” pot. Pot just ain’t something you “do”.
Stupid stupid policy - stupid stupid friend.
One thing I always found kind of interesting in my last jobs in Computers. They always drug test before hiring, but it’s just an appointment they set up and give you the paperwork. The paperwork shows exactly what they are ordering , and each of the last 5 have not included THC. I guess they decided they were losing too many good candidates to that rule, and only started to care about harder stuff.
In some industries you’d be really shooting yourself in the foot by firing cannabis users.
It seems to be rarer in the UK, but I did notice that the rail company actually says they may do it- not just for drivers, but for all employees, even those who man the ticket check barrier or clean the toilets.
It was definitely a factor in my not applying- I consume pot in some form or another once or twice a year at most and wouldn’t care much about giving it up completely, but a lot of my friends smoke, and I’d rather not have to worry if spending a night with friends, inhaling second hand smoke, or accepting a cookie from someone and only realising it’s a ‘special’ one later could lose me my job. I hope it doesn’t become more common here.
I have never quite understood the rationale for testing office workers for drugs like pot. Pilots, rig workers, and the like I can understand but tossing an employee for smoking pot at home last weekend seems a tad excessive. They do not have testing here, either because they trust us or the laws here do not permit it. In the US offices, they test in the states that permit it.
Really. In many states, unless you have an employment contract that says otherwise, you are an “at will” employee that can be fired for any reason (except federally protected class reasons such as as race, gender, disability, etc.), or no reason at all. Your employer can require all sorts of tests, refusing which can be grounds for dismissal. You can be fired for testing positive for caffeine, if your company so desires. You have no right to a job.
Ditto.
A one-time use of marijuana can indeed show up for a month afterwards on a lot of standard drug tests, and you don’t have to be obese for that to happen. She could be entirely honest about the one pot brownie.
Funny how a lot of middle-class and upper on the socio-economic scale don’t seem to care much about the collateral damage from the “drug war” until it personally affects them. If it’s not fair for her it’s not fair for those folks getting long jail terms for possession of small amounts and having this sort of thing dog them for the rest of their lives.
Even if pot was legalized everywhere tomorrow it won’t wipe out those convictions and fired for cause records on millions of people.
If you’re in the US then yes, really. It’s been that way for decades.
In the US it’s been the norm for a few decades now.
Unfortunately, this sort of policy is widespread here.
Nope, our state and Federal governments do it, too.
My guess:
I think it’s just easier–and safer-- for a company to announce a blanket policy that covers everybody, rather than make a detailed list of who will be tested and who not. The office worker might get transferred, even it’s only one day per year, to replace somebody who is sick, and suddenly has to drive a company truck or operate a dangerous piece of machinery.
Also there’s an element of political correctness: You don’t want to be seen testing blacks more than whites. It may be that the employees who need to be tested (because they are drivers, machine operators, etc,) are less educated, and statistically they may also have a higher percentage of blacks. And if the office workers have more whites.—that’s a Bad Thing.
But I have zero experience with large corporations and HR departments. Are my guesses relevant ?
a “drug-free workplace” can get lower insurance premiums IIRC.