I have a sort-of friend/ex-coworker who is now asking me for advice, but it’s something I’ve never really dealt with before. Hoping the collective wisdom of the SDMB can help us out.
I’ll call my casual friend MissEm. I worked with her at two different places, the first place an animal shelter where she had issues being on time (serious waking up for work issues - likely the beginning of her Rx abuse). But at work she was wonderful, did a good job, was accurate and dependable to work on her own. The second place was an animal ER (a couple years later), where she continued to have on-time issues, but was also difficult to work with and was sometimes too dopey to work (claiming sleep deprivation) and was sent home. This happened enough times that they drug tested her on the spot, she was positive for benzos and was fired.
MissEm has since successfully rehabbed in a formal program, and is doing great. Sober for over a year, and she wants to get back into veterinary work as a technician. The new potential employers are of course asking specifically for references from the ER, and she doesn’t know what to tell them. Do keep in mind, anywhere MissEm is applying will require her to handle controlled substances - but she never stole or abused any drugs from work, only stuff she was prescribed (I don’t have any details on what she was telling her doctors or if she was shopping among several or what).
Any employers out there who can ring in on this? What would you want to hear from someone who was fired for abusing Rx medications, and who has since gone to rehab and is doing great now? She wants to be as straightforward as possible without them tuning her out at the first sentence. What would you say as the former employer who fired her? I want to giver her a direction as to what to say, and who to talk to at the former place about the referral. The times I knew her, and worked with her sober, she was a great employee and coworker.
She should volunteer that she was terminated secondary to a failed drug test, and that she has been through a formal treatment program and volunteer to be subject to random or not so random drug tests as a condition of employment.
I do not handle controlled substances but I do have people I have to trust with expensive equipment and sensitive data. I am far more prone to trust someone who is willing to let me make an informed decision than someone hiding something.
Well, yeah. She was stoned/high/inebriated whatever you want to call it, on the job. At an emergency room where patients get killed if their nurse is not on the ball, can’t talk straight, can’t calculate drug doses, falls asleep standing up. Yeah. Fired. Take your benzos when you’re supposed to (usually to help you sleep, a full night’s sleep, like after your shift, not in the car before your shift).
She went to rehab. Real rehab, as in withdrawal and all that for months. Just because something is prescribed doesn’t mean the person can’t abuse it.
I have to admit that I’m a bit lost here to - your friend was fired for failing a drug test for medicine she had a prescription for? This doesn’t add up. Are you sure she wasn’t primarily fired because of the effects resulting from that? An ER is no place for those who are less then alert.
On the information given, I wouldn’t suggest she mention that she was an addict. She should simply state that she was on a course of prescribed medication that interfered with her ability to do a proper job and that they had no alternative but to fire her. I can’t imagine the ER, when presented with that, could say anything to contradict a legitimate medical diagnosis that would not expose them to legal laibility. (IANAL in your jurisdiction, so on and so forth)
“Addict”, former or otherwise, raises a red flag. I ma not an employer, but all other things being equal, I would imagine that the person without a history of drug addiction would be hired over your friend.
All I know is she failed the drug test. I admit I don’t even know our workplace’s policy, if it’s zero tolerance, it might not matter if she has a scrip for it. I don’t know because it’s just not something I’ve ever had to bother about. But I did have the misfortune to endure several shifts with her on my team and it was obvious there was a problem. It was confusing to me because I had known her at her previous job and she wasn’t like that. So whether ultimately it was because she was clearly symptomatic of abuse-level doses or because we’re just not allowed to have certain substances test positive under any circumstance, she was let go.
When she’s sober, she’s wonderful, and she’s been wonderful for over a year, though clearly we’re not that close! She is capable of being really good at this job.