PDA

View Full Version : Drug Tests




Warrior_of_Freedom
11-02-2009, 12:55 AM
What's everyone's opinion on mandatory drug testing for many employers? I don't see how this is tolerated. I was fortunate to have an employer that didn't require it, but I would never comply with that. I don't smoke anything and don't touch any illicit drugs, but I would feel so violated giving out my piss just because a company doesn't trust me.

Kludge
11-02-2009, 12:58 AM
I don't see how this is tolerated.

They offer work. I felt more sorry for the young gal that had to check my container of piss than anyone. Do you feel violated when they ask you to provide references, too?

Warrior_of_Freedom
11-02-2009, 01:01 AM
They offer work. I felt more sorry for the young gal that had to check my container of piss than anyone. Do you feel violated when they ask you to provide references, too?

that's totally different, nothing alike, how can you even make a comparison like that? "You have the job, but you have to pee in this cup first."

Kludge
11-02-2009, 01:12 AM
that's totally different, nothing alike, how can you even make a comparison like that? "You have the job, but you have to pee in this cup first."

I guess I don't understand why you're feeling violated, then. I thought it was because a company doesn't trust you and wants a second, third, and, at least, a fourth opinion.

Danke
11-02-2009, 01:14 AM
“"Why is there so much controversy about drug testing? I know plenty of guys who would be willing to test any drug they could come up with”

“If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten”

“I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.”

George Carlin

MelissaWV
11-02-2009, 06:03 AM
I feel drug tests are overused, but eh... it's a company's own policies. Hell, the company I work for has a "smoke free campus". People have to LEAVE the entire facility (and to do that and get back fast enough, you'd have to drive) in order to grab a cig. If you really hate the policy, you don't have to accept the job. I feel pretty strongly that this would apply even to policies that are currently illegal. Consider the policy part of the job, just like pay, location, working environment, etc..

I don't feel "violated" but perhaps that's because I've always worked in jobs where being impaired would be a huge liability. Even now, proofreading medical materials requires a lot of attention to detail and accuracy... so I'm not sure how accurate I'd be if I were drunk or high. It's a company policy to prevent slip-ups that could lead to recalls and worse. Previously, I worked directly at a pharmacy, and the drug tests were fairly random there. Anyone could have nabbed some of the "lower tier" drugs, and with a little skill one could get into the narcotics cage. By default, you can't really take someone's word as to whether or not they're engaging in illegal activity, so the company develops these policies to cover their butts.

Having said that, I don't see why SO MANY jobs now feel the work involved is so pivotal that drug tests are required. They have every right to test, but I was told I'd be randomly tested even back when I was a grocery store cashier. Were they afraid I'd be ringing up plantains as bananas and costing them $0.22 per pound? :rolleyes:

olehounddog
11-02-2009, 06:23 AM
I lost a 12 yr job as because I smoked pot in Jamaica while vacationing at Hedo3. The test was 35 days after I returned. Fuck a bunch of drug testing. I will NEVER submit to another test of anykind.

bill50
11-02-2009, 06:39 AM
A pool company that I worked for paying $10-14 an hour used to drug test. The owner himself couldn't pass it, but I live in such a shitty area that he constantly had stuff stolen and made too many insurance claims. The insurance company required him to do it. It wasn't too difficult to pick out the people passed out from heroin ODs at work though.

Working Poor
11-02-2009, 07:00 AM
I would much rather work with someone that got stoned over the weekend on pot that one who comes in hung over but, we all know who would loose their job if they took a drug test on Monday.

DamianTV
11-02-2009, 07:29 AM
The idea of drug testing is not about drugs at all. Its about completely submitting yourself to your employers will.

Do what I want you to do when I want you to do it and if you dont like it shut the fuck up or I'll can your sorry ass so your next potential employer wont bother to hire you. We want good slaves that do what they are told without thinking about why we require the things we do, got it? Good. now get back to work, slave.

BenIsForRon
11-02-2009, 07:59 AM
I don't feel "violated" but perhaps that's because I've always worked in jobs where being impaired would be a huge liability. Even now, proofreading medical materials requires a lot of attention to detail and accuracy... so I'm not sure how accurate I'd be if I were drunk or high.

Drug tests test if you've done drugs within the past two weeks, not while you were at work. That's my objection. Responsible users will punished for something the do in the privacy of their own home.

TinCanToNA
11-02-2009, 09:03 AM
Drug tests test if you've done drugs within the past two weeks, not while you were at work. That's my objection. Responsible users will punished for something the do in the privacy of their own home.

You make a decent point, but economic freedom means the ability to discriminate against people based on such things. Personal anecdotal evidence leads me to the conclusion that no one that uses drugs could be called a "responsible user," but that's just what I've witnessed (obviously).

I have to submit to drug tests and it sucks--a lot! However, I am really, really grateful that the vast majority of drug addicts are weeded out, so that I do not have to work with them. There's a history of drug use in my occupation, and a related history of an enormous amount of accidents causing death or permanent injury because of it.

SelfTaught
11-02-2009, 09:13 AM
Well, you know, the owner of the company can set the policies for the employees. If they want you to be drug-free, it is their right to drug test you. Their property, their rules. This is completely in line with the free market. If a person owns a company, it is up to their discretion whether to allow fat people, black people, drug addicts, pregnant women, dumb people, etc. If you respect property, you'd understand this.

pcosmar
11-02-2009, 10:04 AM
Well, you know, the owner of the company can set the policies for the employees. If they want you to be drug-free, it is their right to drug test you. Their property, their rules. This is completely in line with the free market. If a person owns a company, it is up to their discretion whether to allow fat people, black people, drug addicts, pregnant women, dumb people, etc. If you respect property, you'd understand this.

Not entirely correct.
Insurance Companies and Lawyers set policy for companies.
They are told they must test employees.
I think the tests are both intrusive and insulting, but I have always taken and passed them.
Background checks are another issue. They are neither accurate nor complete. :(

pcosmar
11-02-2009, 10:09 AM
You make a decent point, but economic freedom means the ability to discriminate against people based on such things. Personal anecdotal evidence leads me to the conclusion that no one that uses drugs could be called a "responsible user," but that's just what I've witnessed (obviously).

I have to submit to drug tests and it sucks--a lot! However, I am really, really grateful that the vast majority of drug addicts are weeded out, so that I do not have to work with them. There's a history of drug use in my occupation, and a related history of an enormous amount of accidents causing death or permanent injury because of it.

BULLSHIT.
There are a lot of addicts with jobs.
I know several alcoholics (addicts) that have jobs and are seldom questioned. I know others that are using prescription drugs. Pain killers, mood enhancers, blood pressure meds that cause them to be as much a risk as any street drug.

specsaregood
11-02-2009, 10:20 AM
Not entirely correct.
Insurance Companies and Lawyers set policy for companies.

Exactly. Back in the .com days one start-up I worked at had a "beer" button in the free soda machine. It wasn't abused; just would be used sometimes in the evening after everybody was done working late. It was a great source of commraderie as sometimes you'd get the executives and the grunts all mingling together after hours in the break room; each having a beer..... Everything was good.... Then the insurance company had somebody come in and evaluate the office for risks......they demanded the beer button be removed. :mad:

fisharmor
11-02-2009, 01:19 PM
Drug tests can't be shown to have any positive effect on the workplace.
What drug tests do is insulate the company from having to make decisions about their employees.

The first problem is that most drugs that are used recreationally are either not going to interfere with your work, or they are going to obviously interfere with your work. But companies in a lot of localities are going to have to deal with fallout for every employee they fire. Since there is an incentive for employers to hang on to employees longer than they probably would have (unemployment payments, possible reprisals, and government meddling) that means that an employees behavior and performance are less likely to get them fired.

Enter the war on drugs. I think employers have latched on to that as another way to stay in control of the workplace. You can't necessarily automatically get rid of someone based on shitty performance, but if their pee doesn't pass muster, you can axe them.

It's about control, but it's more about regaining control the employer lost, I think, than it is about gaining new control.

In a truly free market, one where employers got to actually fire people, Dr. Block's arguments - that it wouldn't make sense to discriminate against women and minorities if they actually produced as much as everyone else - would also apply to drug users. If drug users really did produce less, they would be worth less and would have to take on crappy jobs. End of story, druggies lose, and they didn't have to pee in a cup.

But if they didn't produce less, then if they were discriminated against they would simply get hired by nondiscriminatory employers, who would be able to pay them less, get more value for their dollars, and ultimately, be more competitive than the company that didn't hire them.

In a free market, the abject drunk would be discriminated against, and the weekend stoner would keep his job. And that would be fair. What we have right now is the exact opposite.

fisharmor
11-02-2009, 01:24 PM
Forgot to mention that there are ways to defeat drug tests anyway, so they're not just useless from the standpoint of not having a positive effect, they're useless from the standpoint of not even doing what they are intended to do.

Anti Federalist
11-02-2009, 01:28 PM
Most drug testing is done at the behest of and required by government.

This is true in many industries including mine.

Opposed to them under any circumstances.

TinCanToNA
11-02-2009, 01:29 PM
BULLSHIT.
There are a lot of addicts with jobs.
I know several alcoholics (addicts) that have jobs and are seldom questioned. I know others that are using prescription drugs. Pain killers, mood enhancers, blood pressure meds that cause them to be as much a risk as any street drug.

Well that may be the norm in general or the norm for your occupation, but that is not the norm at all in my occupation. While traditional addicts are found usually within a few months and ejected, alcoholics are often given treatment first, then ejected if they cannot cope with the problem. I have spent exactly one week with someone who went more or less insane with cocaine (I hadn't realized it at the time) until he was never heard from again. Nice guy, but that was definitely the wrong job for him.

dannno
11-02-2009, 01:35 PM
Normally I would be OK with private companies giving drug tests, except that our corporatist health insurance and mandatory employee workers comp insurance has pushed testing way overboard. Companies save money on their insurance if they drug test everyone, but it is more apart of their agenda rather than actually saving them money.

The problem is that cannabis stays in the system for weeks, whereas most other drugs leave the system in a couple days or less. That means drug testing actually pushes people to use harder drugs, because they know they can use them on friday and saturday and be clean by Monday.. or if they are getting a drug test for a job they know in advance.

Companies should be able to, say, test for cocaine, speed and heroine but then not test for cannabis if they want.. but right now it's all pretty standardized thanks to our corporatized system.

If you need to pass a drug test for cannabis, there are some threads on that.. but all you have to do is drink a couple bottles of water (about 30 oz) with some B vitamins, creatine and Certo. THC and it's byproducts are fat soluble, so the Certo will direct anything fat soluble to your colon rather than your bladder. Do this about 1.5 hours before your test. Take a leak about 50-60 minutes after you take the drink, then you'll have a clean sample by the time you have to give your sample.

DamianTV
11-02-2009, 04:09 PM
This has the potential to backfire on us too. Employers are already trying to force people to either not smoke tobacco products or refuse to hire people that do use tobacco products. If this backfires, the drug testing will be extended to include tobacco, a legal product. All at the same time, with pot on its way to being legalized, simply so that states can subsidize their budgets from tax resources, and may or may not be tested for. Funny that. Smoking becomes illegal by decree of corporations (read: socialism) and pot becomes illegal by decree of greedy politicians who have run out of other resources to fill their silver lined pockets with even more gold.

pcosmar
11-02-2009, 04:41 PM
Well that may be the norm in general or the norm for your occupation, but that is not the norm at all in my occupation. While traditional addicts are found usually within a few months and ejected, alcoholics are often given treatment first, then ejected if they cannot cope with the problem. I have spent exactly one week with someone who went more or less insane with cocaine (I hadn't realized it at the time) until he was never heard from again. Nice guy, but that was definitely the wrong job for him.

Actually the "norm" in my profession is no tests. Now a few might, Fleet maint. or Corporate shops.(Maaco, Earl Shibe, etc.) Shitty shops.
Most quality Body Shops don't ask or test, I doubt any custom shops would. They would lose their most valued employees.
I have had "a little extra" included in my pay, in a couple shops.
We had safety meetings in the Paint Booth. :)

phill4paul
11-02-2009, 05:07 PM
Actually the "norm" in my profession is no tests. Now a few might, Fleet maint. or Corporate shops.(Maaco, Earl Shibe, etc.) Shitty shops.
Most quality Body Shops don't ask or test, I doubt any custom shops would. They would lose their most valued employees.
I have had "a little extra" included in my pay, in a couple shops.
We had safety meetings in the Paint Booth. :)

The lawn care profession should have much lower insurance rates. We participate in safety meetings three times daily.:)

dannno
11-02-2009, 05:16 PM
These "safety meetings" sound really informative :)

I wish we had them at my work.

phill4paul
11-02-2009, 05:31 PM
These "safety meetings" sound really informative :)

I wish we had them at my work.

Safety meetings are mandatory as is drug testing.;)

specsaregood
11-02-2009, 05:32 PM
The lawn care profession should have much lower insurance rates. We participate in safety meetings three times daily.:)

One thing I miss about working at home, alone... No more safety meetings with others. I miss those safetey meetings.