I don't really buy the argument that random drug tests are meant to determine if you're showing up to work high because it legitimately poses a safety risk. It's a nice cover story, and I'm sure some people actually believe it, but I don't think that's the actual reasoning.
I think the actual reasoning is that if you ever use recreational drugs (discounting tobacco and alcohol, of course, because reasons), it means you make bad decisions, and nobody wants people who make bad decisions in important positions. Because if you're the sort of person who'll light up on the weekends, well, you're probably the sort of person who'll stick a bobble-head through the paper-shredder just to see what happens.
It's also another easy way to pare down the huge number of qualified applicants for a position.
I'm not going to lie - if I'm a hiring manager, I don't want a person who can't get their shit together enough to piss clean at a job interview.
You know it's coming, and you know how to pass it - don't smoke weed for a week or two, don't do drugs a few days before. If you can't even get that right, you PROBABLY are going to be problematic in other areas.
I don't even care if someone cheats and gets away with it, if you can't pass that incredibly low bar, there's someone who can.
I've also never known a workplace to have you take a drug test unless they were already seriously considering hiring you. There are cheaper and easier ways to pare down a huge pool of qualified applicants - the drug test is a final part of the process, not the first part.
True as far as it goes, I guess, but why should it matter? Someone who smokes pot on the weekend is not any riskier than someone who has a few beers on the weekend. Why should we care?
You could also say that if you're incapable of lasting two weeks without gambling in preparation for a job interview, you're probably going to be problematic in other areas. Not because gambling (nor recreational pot use on the weekend) has fuck-all to do with your job performance, but because that lack of willpower is indicative of poor character that might impact your job.
It would still be a stupid and meaningless prerequisite, though, just like drug testing. Especially since it sounds like the only legitimately risky drug-users you'd catch with that is those people who are such addicts that they couldn't go 24 hours without shooting heroin or smoking meth, and you can probably pick those folks out without a drug test.
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What is at stake here is more than the question of whether testing for drugs cuts out drug-addled benefit seekers from receiving benefits and thus saves taxpayers money.
This is about the most fundamental and important freedom that the United States of America is built on: the freedom to generate wealth.
If job creators like Solantic and patriotic pro-freedom Americans like Rick Scott are denied the freedom to produce wealth, do you know what the result will be?
Why don't you ask Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler? They know the answer.
Trogg on
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
I remember reading a story in somewhere (military publication) about a Navy pilot that did X, like literally as a recreation drug and the same way his wing would do booze. Actually his argument was that he was slightly more responsible ("Oh I'm flying Monday morning and it's saturday? Better not pop any tonight") while he would watch some of his fellow pilots climb into the cockpit hung over or after only a couple hours sleep.
I think I read this back in 05 or 06 or somewhere around there. I remember that his wife was also a user in the same way (though I can't remember if she was military as well).
Can't remember how he got caught but it was an interesting read.
As an engineer working at a nuclear power station who is acutely aware of the effect a single incident can have on the safety of the plant, I am totally fine with random drug screening. One person high on the job could kill dozens and cost the company and government billions of dollars. And even we allow exemptions for pre-reported conditions requiring prescriptions so long as you aren't in a vital role, like reactor operator. We also have tests for alertness in vital roles. The point is, post-incident testing is already too late.
As an engineer working at a nuclear power station who is acutely aware of the effect a single incident can have on the safety of the plant, I am totally fine with random drug screening. One person high on the job could kill dozens and cost the company and government billions of dollars. And even we allow exemptions for pre-reported conditions requiring prescriptions so long as you aren't in a vital role, like reactor operator. We also have tests for alertness in vital roles. The point is, post-incident testing is already too late.
Man that is the most poignant thing said about all this.
The only counter-argument (just for the sake of it) I can think of is that random drug screening is meant to be a deterrent. But y'know, does it work? (the answer is no)
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
As an engineer working at a nuclear power station who is acutely aware of the effect a single incident can have on the safety of the plant, I am totally fine with random drug screening. One person high on the job could kill dozens and cost the company and government billions of dollars. And even we allow exemptions for pre-reported conditions requiring prescriptions so long as you aren't in a vital role, like reactor operator. We also have tests for alertness in vital roles. The point is, post-incident testing is already too late.
Are we talking about tests to see if you're literally high at the moment? Because I'm cool with those. And general alertness tests are aces, and strike me as more useful in general.
Seems like a question of whether we're testing people to punish them for using drugs, or testing them to make sure they're capable of performing their duties without leading to accidents. I'm far more interested in the latter.
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There's no way that a company can perform a random "sleep test" to make sure that their employees are all well rested.
Actually....
http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIX/2010jun00302.html
As a result, my employer now has us all filling out work/rest logs to track our downtime to ensure we're in compliance with the new rulings. Granted, it's not a "sleep test" because such a thing is basically impossible, but it's about as close as you can probably get to having some sort of standard that ensures your employees aren't breaking shit/getting people killed due to being not rested.
That said, six hours off ain't shit. I've worked six on six off before and after a week you start to hallucinate. Think about that though. The bottom of the barrel standard still causes problems and it's still better than what some other people were having to deal with. Anyhoo...
I don't really buy the argument that random drug tests are meant to determine if you're showing up to work high because it legitimately poses a safety risk. It's a nice cover story, and I'm sure some people actually believe it, but I don't think that's the actual reasoning.
I think the actual reasoning is that if you ever use recreational drugs (discounting tobacco and alcohol, of course, because reasons), it means you make bad decisions, and nobody wants people who make bad decisions in important positions. Because if you're the sort of person who'll light up on the weekends, well, you're probably the sort of person who'll stick a bobble-head through the paper-shredder just to see what happens.
Terrendos pretty much covered it but I'm basically in the same boat (HAHA SAILOR JOKES). There are still occasional issues just with alcohol out here, I'd hate to see the sort of accidents and problems that would crop up without random drug tests keeping that end of things in line. Yes, a good number of us could get high responsibly during our downtime but even one fucking idiot being stoned out of his mind at the wrong time can get someone killed/cause massive damage in the marine industry and believe me, there is no shortage of irresponsible manchildren out here.
I don't really buy the argument that random drug tests are meant to determine if you're showing up to work high because it legitimately poses a safety risk. It's a nice cover story, and I'm sure some people actually believe it, but I don't think that's the actual reasoning.
I think the actual reasoning is that if you ever use recreational drugs (discounting tobacco and alcohol, of course, because reasons), it means you make bad decisions, and nobody wants people who make bad decisions in important positions. Because if you're the sort of person who'll light up on the weekends, well, you're probably the sort of person who'll stick a bobble-head through the paper-shredder just to see what happens.
It's also another easy way to pare down the huge number of qualified applicants for a position.
I'm not going to lie - if I'm a hiring manager, I don't want a person who can't get their shit together enough to piss clean at a job interview.
You know it's coming, and you know how to pass it - don't smoke weed for a week or two, don't do drugs a few days before. If you can't even get that right, you PROBABLY are going to be problematic in other areas.
I don't even care if someone cheats and gets away with it, if you can't pass that incredibly low bar, there's someone who can.
I've also never known a workplace to have you take a drug test unless they were already seriously considering hiring you. There are cheaper and easier ways to pare down a huge pool of qualified applicants - the drug test is a final part of the process, not the first part.
True as far as it goes, I guess, but why should it matter? Someone who smokes pot on the weekend is not any riskier than someone who has a few beers on the weekend. Why should we care?
You could also say that if you're incapable of lasting two weeks without gambling in preparation for a job interview, you're probably going to be problematic in other areas. Not because gambling (nor recreational pot use on the weekend) has fuck-all to do with your job performance, but because that lack of willpower is indicative of poor character that might impact your job.
It would still be a stupid and meaningless prerequisite, though, just like drug testing. Especially since it sounds like the only legitimately risky drug-users you'd catch with that is those people who are such addicts that they couldn't go 24 hours without shooting heroin or smoking meth, and you can probably pick those folks out without a drug test.
It's about seeing if potential hires can successfully meet basic expectations. You wouldn't expect to get hired if you show up in pajamas, even though what you're wearing at the interview has no bearing on your ability to do whatever or conduct an interview. Or if the application instructions ask for a cover letter, but you submit your resume without one.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
It's not necessarily about risk at all.
But one thing that's being ignored is the elephant in the room. Lots of companies don't particularly care about drugs / drug testing policies...those policies are mandated by whatever insurance company provides that employer liability insurance. If a company doesn't have a drug testing policy, they are potentially exposed to a lawsuit for negligence if one of those workplace incidents results in injury or death. The jury is out on if those policies lower the number of incidents / injuries, but they absolutely do help a company deflect some of that liability.
If you actually want to reduce workplace accidents, then perform random attention or hand-eye coordination tests.
This strikes me as a genuinely good and feasible idea for dangerous work environments. Make the test a little video game just hard enough to confound a drunk/tired person and a quick pupil dilation check*. You stick your face on the thing, play a game for a few minutes, then go about slinging around conex boxes full of on-going brain surgeries or whatever.
*(Assuming this is an actual indicator of dulled reaction times?)
I don't really buy the argument that random drug tests are meant to determine if you're showing up to work high because it legitimately poses a safety risk. It's a nice cover story, and I'm sure some people actually believe it, but I don't think that's the actual reasoning.
I think the actual reasoning is that if you ever use recreational drugs (discounting tobacco and alcohol, of course, because reasons), it means you make bad decisions, and nobody wants people who make bad decisions in important positions. Because if you're the sort of person who'll light up on the weekends, well, you're probably the sort of person who'll stick a bobble-head through the paper-shredder just to see what happens.
It's also another easy way to pare down the huge number of qualified applicants for a position.
I'm not going to lie - if I'm a hiring manager, I don't want a person who can't get their shit together enough to piss clean at a job interview.
You know it's coming, and you know how to pass it - don't smoke weed for a week or two, don't do drugs a few days before. If you can't even get that right, you PROBABLY are going to be problematic in other areas.
I don't even care if someone cheats and gets away with it, if you can't pass that incredibly low bar, there's someone who can.
I've also never known a workplace to have you take a drug test unless they were already seriously considering hiring you. There are cheaper and easier ways to pare down a huge pool of qualified applicants - the drug test is a final part of the process, not the first part.
True as far as it goes, I guess, but why should it matter? Someone who smokes pot on the weekend is not any riskier than someone who has a few beers on the weekend. Why should we care?
You could also say that if you're incapable of lasting two weeks without gambling in preparation for a job interview, you're probably going to be problematic in other areas. Not because gambling (nor recreational pot use on the weekend) has fuck-all to do with your job performance, but because that lack of willpower is indicative of poor character that might impact your job.
It would still be a stupid and meaningless prerequisite, though, just like drug testing. Especially since it sounds like the only legitimately risky drug-users you'd catch with that is those people who are such addicts that they couldn't go 24 hours without shooting heroin or smoking meth, and you can probably pick those folks out without a drug test.
It's about seeing if potential hires can successfully meet basic expectations. You wouldn't expect to get hired if you show up in pajamas, even though what you're wearing at the interview has no bearing on your ability to do whatever or conduct an interview. Or if the application instructions ask for a cover letter, but you submit your resume without one.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
It's not necessarily about risk at all.
But one thing that's being ignored is the elephant in the room. Lots of companies don't particularly care about drugs / drug testing policies...those policies are mandated by whatever insurance company provides that employer liability insurance. If a company doesn't have a drug testing policy, they are potentially exposed to a lawsuit for negligence if one of those workplace incidents results in injury or death. The jury is out on if those policies lower the number of incidents / injuries, but they absolutely do help a company deflect some of that liability.
They don't even have to test all that frequently. I haven't been popped in, I think, almost two years or some shit like that. However, having the policy there is enough to keep most everyone in line because tomorrow could be the day they test everyone just for laughs. It ends up being a low cost way to prevent problems, at least around here.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
It's about seeing if potential hires can successfully meet basic expectations. You wouldn't expect to get hired if you show up in pajamas, even though what you're wearing at the interview has no bearing on your ability to do whatever or conduct an interview. Or if the application instructions ask for a cover letter, but you submit your resume without one.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
It's not necessarily about risk at all.
But that begs the question.
Why should that be a basic expectation? Sticking with pot for a moment, why should it be an expectation that somebody not use a fairly harmless recreational drug in their spare time, when said drug has no effect whatsoever on their ability to perform their duties? Smoking pot on Saturday doesn't make me any less capable of doing my job on Monday. Smoking pot two weeks ago on Saturday definitely has fuckall to do with my job. So why should it be an expectation that I not smoke pot within a few weeks of a potential job interview? If we could formulate a test that could determine if I'd had an alcohol in the last two weeks, should we adopt that as a basic expectation for new hires? If not, what's the difference?
(And let's be honest, it's not "don't use pot within two weeks of an interview", it's "don't use pot at all whenever you're looking for a new job, which is probably a months-long process.)
Saying that you shouldn't do something in your spare time that has no bearing on your work performance is arbitrary, regardless of what that thing is. And it's not at all the same thing as showing up in pajamas or not bringing your resume, because those are things you are doing during the actual interview, not things you did two weeks in your spare time.
Mostly, I think it's the end bit of your post that's relevant, here. You want someone who's well-suited for your "corporate culture" and who is willing to adhere to "arbitrary/meaningless" criteria regarding their personal lives. Okay, fine, you want to hire people who are like you, just like everyone else does. The problem is that you're pretending that not wanting someone who smokes pot in moderate amounts is objectively different from not wanting someone who hates your favorite football team, or who plays video games you deem stupid, or who has dumb jock friends who drink beer and play Halo all weekend. And, in general, you're tying someone's personal life to their professional life, effectively turning them into an on-the-clock employee 24/7, and I fucking loathe that trend.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
Now, you could go with the argument that you don't want someone who does illegal things in their off time, because you don't want to deal with the possibility that your employee is going to wind up in jail and thus unable to fulfill his duties. Which isn't a meritless argument, though irrelevant in areas where pot use is legal, and probably not what anyone is worried about given that I don't think I've seen it come up.
All I've seen is semi-legitimate concerns about accident prevention and arguments about how employees should be willing to jump through whatever arbitrary hoops their employers demand because of course they should.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
If you actually want to reduce workplace accidents, then perform random attention or hand-eye coordination tests.
This strikes me as a genuinely good and feasible idea for dangerous work environments. Make the test a little video game just hard enough to confound a drunk/tired person and a quick pupil dilation check*. You stick your face on the thing, play a game for a few minutes, then go about slinging around conex boxes full of on-going brain surgeries or whatever.
*(Assuming this is an actual indicator of dulled reaction times?)
If you actually want to reduce workplace accidents, then perform random attention or hand-eye coordination tests.
This strikes me as a genuinely good and feasible idea for dangerous work environments. Make the test a little video game just hard enough to confound a drunk/tired person and a quick pupil dilation check*. You stick your face on the thing, play a game for a few minutes, then go about slinging around conex boxes full of on-going brain surgeries or whatever.
*(Assuming this is an actual indicator of dulled reaction times?)
It's actually been done in pilot studies.
I assume that by 'pilot' you mean 'people who fly planes,' not 'preliminary'
but it could go both ways
:winky:
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
As a hiring manager, I despise the fact that I can be prevented from hiring talent by an abitrary metric that I didn't define. I don't need help paring down my talent pool, and any metric that isn't actually based on talent is counterproductive.
In my field telling me I can't hire a person because they get high on the weekend is like telling me I can't hire them because their favorite color is purple. It makes zero difference to me, or to our work, but it's a policy from on high, so I can't do shit about it.
(It is absolutely an insurance / third party compliance thing in our case)
in most cases drug testing employees is stupid and does nothing for your company
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
We tend to only use drug or booze testing reactively, when someone has done things or acted in a way that suggests they may be under the influence. Broad company wide testing is pretty rare in the UK so far as I can tell outside of specialist industries.
in most cases drug testing employees is stupid and does nothing for your company
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
Plenty of jobs require you to NOT be on prescription meds to do the job, specifically ones that require operating heavy machinery. Accurate reporting and communication is necessary if you're prescribed medication that hampers your cognitive and motor functions. Much easier to reassign duties than clean up a squashed employee on the floor after a load drops off a forklift.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
As a hiring manager, I despise the fact that I can be prevented from hiring talent by an abitrary metric that I didn't define. I don't need help paring down my talent pool, and any metric that isn't actually based on talent is counterproductive.
In my field telling me I can't hire a person because they get high on the weekend is like telling me I can't hire them because their favorite color is purple. It makes zero difference to me, or to our work, but it's a policy from on high, so I can't do shit about it.
(It is absolutely an insurance / third party compliance thing in our case)
Fair nuff, and makes sense. I didn't think of how it prevents you from hiring someone you do want vs. flagging people you potentially don't want.
Would you say other hiring managers you've worked with share your opinion? I'd imagine - with what you said in mind - that most people hiring for real career-type jobs would probably feel the same way (or war on drugs propoganda).
in most cases drug testing employees is stupid and does nothing for your company
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
The entire war on drugs started out as a way to fuck with minorities via the claim that drugs had to be regulated to keep black men from raping white women so, yanno, there's that. If you really wanted to take this into some dark as fuck places you could almost argue that most of the time this is just all about the further abuse of lower class but that way lies madness.
But yes, most of the time it's just more mandatory puritanical bullshit because fuck yeah, America, land of the free.*
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
My job has a policy of randomly testing one person per quarter. I work in IT. From what I've heard, it's not random (guy known to be unliked by management was tested three quarters in a row, etc).
As others have stated, it's dumb that I would have to be prepared to falsify a drug screen on a Wednesday because it fails to discriminate between what I do on the job and what I might have done the previous Saturday. I'd be alright with a mouth swab or similar test that has a meaningful window of detection (did you come into work high, are you driving the company vehicle high, etc) but the fact that they get loose on the weekends is the only thing keeping some of our sysadmins from losing their shit entirely.
My job has a policy of randomly testing one person per quarter. I work in IT. From what I've heard, it's not random (guy known to be unliked by management was tested three quarters in a row, etc).
As others have stated, it's dumb that I would have to be prepared to falsify a drug screen on a Wednesday because it fails to discriminate between what I do on the job and what I might have done the previous Saturday. I'd be alright with a mouth swab or similar test that has a meaningful window of detection (did you come into work high, are you driving the company vehicle high, etc) but the fact that they get loose on the weekends is the only thing keeping some of our sysadmins from losing their shit entirely.
Hell, I have a coworker who is absolutely useless when he's sober, and one of the best employees when he's high.
IT work wooooo...
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
in most cases drug testing employees is stupid and does nothing for your company
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
Plenty of jobs require you to NOT be on prescription meds to do the job, specifically ones that require operating heavy machinery. Accurate reporting and communication is necessary if you're prescribed medication that hampers your cognitive and motor functions. Much easier to reassign duties than clean up a squashed employee on the floor after a load drops off a forklift.
yes yes those exist, but I'm talking about average jobs
if I'm working in an office what difference does it make if I was high as a kite 8 hours before coming to work let alone 2 weeks
in most cases drug testing employees is stupid and does nothing for your company
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
Plenty of jobs require you to NOT be on prescription meds to do the job, specifically ones that require operating heavy machinery. Accurate reporting and communication is necessary if you're prescribed medication that hampers your cognitive and motor functions. Much easier to reassign duties than clean up a squashed employee on the floor after a load drops off a forklift.
yes yes those exist, but I'm talking about average jobs
if I'm working in an office what difference does it make if I was high as a kite 8 hours before coming to work let alone 2 weeks
Then your job shouldn't require random testing. This is the topic where we're taking about transit employees potentially facing random tests, yes?
My line for random tests is pretty simple - do you operate, either on a regular basis or occasional, machinery that can maim, crush, or kill you or bystanders if operated without clear mind or attention? Then yes, you should be expected to have a clean system for a minimum 24 hrs before your shift. Everything else is overkill and unnecessary.
Oh this a fantastic thread that I am glad to sink my teeth into. I have to run to work right now, fitting, but I can tell you this much; random drug testing for a cashier position? I'm so glad that our company has our customers safety in mind. Who knows, anyone under the influence could just whip a receipt around like a madperson!
Steam
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
As a hiring manager, I despise the fact that I can be prevented from hiring talent by an abitrary metric that I didn't define. I don't need help paring down my talent pool, and any metric that isn't actually based on talent is counterproductive.
In my field telling me I can't hire a person because they get high on the weekend is like telling me I can't hire them because their favorite color is purple. It makes zero difference to me, or to our work, but it's a policy from on high, so I can't do shit about it.
(It is absolutely an insurance / third party compliance thing in our case)
Fair nuff, and makes sense. I didn't think of how it prevents you from hiring someone you do want vs. flagging people you potentially don't want.
Would you say other hiring managers you've worked with share your opinion? I'd imagine - with what you said in mind - that most people hiring for real career-type jobs would probably feel the same way (or war on drugs propoganda).
Like-mindedness loosely correlates with generational perceptions about drugs. I am among the youngest and the most permissive in this regard. As you get closer to the retirement age, there are more who hold the mindset that any recreational drugs == irresponsible | undependable | etc, so better to weed them out early; but even some of those are also of the opinion that the tests are a waste of time because these negative traits would be self evident.
So you've got a little overlap between the "drugs are bad" and "drug tests are obnoxious" groups.
Oh this a fantastic thread that I am glad to sink my teeth into. I have to run to work right now, fitting, but I can tell you this much; random drug testing for a cashier position? I'm so glad that our company has our customers safety in mind. Who knows, anyone under the influence could just whip a receipt around like a madperson!
Hey man, one wrong button and you could hit yourself in the crotch with the drawer!
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
As a hiring manager, I despise the fact that I can be prevented from hiring talent by an abitrary metric that I didn't define. I don't need help paring down my talent pool, and any metric that isn't actually based on talent is counterproductive.
In my field telling me I can't hire a person because they get high on the weekend is like telling me I can't hire them because their favorite color is purple. It makes zero difference to me, or to our work, but it's a policy from on high, so I can't do shit about it.
(It is absolutely an insurance / third party compliance thing in our case)
My company does staffing
We do staff a lot of stuff where safety is a legit concern - we do a lot of forklift drivers, for instance
But in our case, we are often two or three steps away from the decision to drug test.
It comes from the client, who has an insurance requirement that everybody be tested.
Corporate bureaucracy ahoy!
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
As an engineer working at a nuclear power station who is acutely aware of the effect a single incident can have on the safety of the plant, I am totally fine with random drug screening. One person high on the job could kill dozens and cost the company and government billions of dollars. And even we allow exemptions for pre-reported conditions requiring prescriptions so long as you aren't in a vital role, like reactor operator. We also have tests for alertness in vital roles. The point is, post-incident testing is already too late.
Are we talking about tests to see if you're literally high at the moment? Because I'm cool with those. And general alertness tests are aces, and strike me as more useful in general.
Seems like a question of whether we're testing people to punish them for using drugs, or testing them to make sure they're capable of performing their duties without leading to accidents. I'm far more interested in the latter.
I believe we employ both sorts (high at the moment, contain latent traces of drugs/alcohol). Having not been subjected to a random test yet, I can only repeat what I've been told both by the company and by my coworkers. Any employee is required to report any medication that might affect a drug test the first work day they start taking it, and it supposedly receives consideration if you get pinged.
But consider this: an operator who mistakenly shuts down a reactor operating at 100% (say, because he receives a false positive notification of a stuck valve that is vital to operation, and acts conservatively rather than awaiting a secondary confirmation) has already cost the company several million dollars. Unsurprisingly, it's not a trivial thing to start a nuclear reactor back up once it's been shut down (and in order to ensure safety specifications, it can take several weeks before it's back to 100% power). Even if they're not directly involved in plant operation, what if said person was in component testing or design? Latent mistakes in plant design can take years to identify. If someone's performance has been affected, it might be that long before we could know. And then there's the security staff who patrol the plant carrying loaded guns.
You can argue that random drug testing is unfair if it's for latent drugs in the body, and it's only fair if the drugs are affecting one's performance. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to tell it's affected certain people's performance is when they've already caused a catastrophe. When a single mistake can cost the company so much money, I can absolutely understand them doing it.
(IIRC the requirement for randomized drug testing is an NRC regulation, not a station or corporate requirement, so even if they wanted to change that policy, they couldn't)
Or, you know, just pay enough attention to your employees to notice these things. Hell, out here in the civilian world it's treated like a rare treat if the boss sees you or talks to you regularly.
They should be meeting with their people multiple times a day and making sure they're all right.
Maybe testing will reduce drugs, but I doubt it. Oh, and all those positions mentioned so far where drugs could cause a problem? Being tired is going to be just as bad or worse than if they smoked a duby after work yesterday.
If you actually want to reduce workplace accidents, then perform random attention or hand-eye coordination tests.
This strikes me as a genuinely good and feasible idea for dangerous work environments. Make the test a little video game just hard enough to confound a drunk/tired person and a quick pupil dilation check*. You stick your face on the thing, play a game for a few minutes, then go about slinging around conex boxes full of on-going brain surgeries or whatever.
*(Assuming this is an actual indicator of dulled reaction times?)
Drunk and very tired have sort of stuttering eye movements. They won't follow movement smoothly.
Not so sure about dialation. Pretty sure I'd have marginal issues depending on how my SSRIs are acting on a given day.
My main grip, aside from the pointlessness in non hazardous jobs of what I do on weekends, is that even if I had a doctor's recommendation to consume marijuana I could be fired for failing a piss test. Just bugs the heck out of me.
I have no issues with drug testing people who run nuclear reactors. It's a high-risk position that - dear God, I hope - pays well enough to compensate for some loss of autonomy. It's a different conversation than talking about the 99.9 percent of jobs that do not involve heavy machinery or nuclear fission.
My experience in the working world, though, is that the higher you rise professionally, the less likely you are to be subjected to a test. Food service and retail were, for me, the places where I had to piss to get a job.
Fatigue in my industry is starting to get the same scrutiny as drug use.
Hours of service and fatigue management programs are being aggressively pushed at the operator level - because it is identified as being such a high rush to incident occurrence. Log books and trip planning are becoming mandatory among the contractor companies, and more and more producers are making it a requirement for all contractors.
Or, you know, just pay enough attention to your employees to notice these things. Hell, out here in the civilian world it's treated like a rare treat if the boss sees you or talks to you regularly.
They should be meeting with their people multiple times a day and making sure they're all right.
Maybe testing will reduce drugs, but I doubt it. Oh, and all those positions mentioned so far where drugs could cause a problem? Being tired is going to be just as bad or worse than if they smoked a duby after work yesterday.
There's no way that a company can perform a random "sleep test" to make sure that their employees are all well rested.
Actually....
http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIX/2010jun00302.html
As a result, my employer now has us all filling out work/rest logs to track our downtime to ensure we're in compliance with the new rulings. Granted, it's not a "sleep test" because such a thing is basically impossible, but it's about as close as you can probably get to having some sort of standard that ensures your employees aren't breaking shit/getting people killed due to being not rested.
Terrendos also mentioned that they do alertness tests for basically the same reason. And even if they haven't already, the places where that shit is important are coming around to ensuring people aren't trying to do critical jobs while walking around like a sleep deprived zombie. It may have taken far too long because if you're tired you should just "man up, wussy" while drugs are a great big satan to crusade against, but companies these days are getting their shit together about ensuring their employees aren't working half asleep.
I have no issues with drug testing people who run nuclear reactors. It's a high-risk position that - dear God, I hope - pays well enough to compensate for some loss of autonomy. It's a different conversation than talking about the 99.9 percent of jobs that do not involve heavy machinery or nuclear fission.
I absolutely agree, however I've noticed that in basically any sort of topical discussion that if you don't have a few guys pointing out the obvious exceptions the conversation can quickly turn into one of absolutes that don't have any bearing on reality. Gun control debates, for instance, are NOTORIOUS for that sort of shit happening. And then I role in and point out how I had to shoo a bear out of my front yard and how you bet your ass I keep a 12 gauge loaded with slugs around because of that exact reason and like magic the discussion drifts back towards sanity as people realize the issue isn't as black and white as they think.
Same thing here, having heavy industry guys around to keep things in perspective is a good balancer.
EDIT: Ah, shit. meant to edit not start a new post. Oopsy.
I work at a lab, and it'd be pretty easy to do some disastrous things if I was too tired or somehow intoxicated, but it's a small business and I work directly for the owner. He's involved in my personal life quite a bit, so I'm fortunate that there's really no need for the "whiz quiz".
Hell, when I had cancer he was the one who told me I should look into "alternative medicine". And he's going on 78 years old.
Most bosses aren't that involved/smart/ accommodating though.
Posts
True as far as it goes, I guess, but why should it matter? Someone who smokes pot on the weekend is not any riskier than someone who has a few beers on the weekend. Why should we care?
You could also say that if you're incapable of lasting two weeks without gambling in preparation for a job interview, you're probably going to be problematic in other areas. Not because gambling (nor recreational pot use on the weekend) has fuck-all to do with your job performance, but because that lack of willpower is indicative of poor character that might impact your job.
It would still be a stupid and meaningless prerequisite, though, just like drug testing. Especially since it sounds like the only legitimately risky drug-users you'd catch with that is those people who are such addicts that they couldn't go 24 hours without shooting heroin or smoking meth, and you can probably pick those folks out without a drug test.
This is about the most fundamental and important freedom that the United States of America is built on: the freedom to generate wealth.
If job creators like Solantic and patriotic pro-freedom Americans like Rick Scott are denied the freedom to produce wealth, do you know what the result will be?
Why don't you ask Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler? They know the answer.
I think I read this back in 05 or 06 or somewhere around there. I remember that his wife was also a user in the same way (though I can't remember if she was military as well).
Can't remember how he got caught but it was an interesting read.
:^: :^: :^: :^: :^:
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Man that is the most poignant thing said about all this.
The only counter-argument (just for the sake of it) I can think of is that random drug screening is meant to be a deterrent. But y'know, does it work? (the answer is no)
Are we talking about tests to see if you're literally high at the moment? Because I'm cool with those. And general alertness tests are aces, and strike me as more useful in general.
Seems like a question of whether we're testing people to punish them for using drugs, or testing them to make sure they're capable of performing their duties without leading to accidents. I'm far more interested in the latter.
Actually....
http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIX/2010jun00302.html
As a result, my employer now has us all filling out work/rest logs to track our downtime to ensure we're in compliance with the new rulings. Granted, it's not a "sleep test" because such a thing is basically impossible, but it's about as close as you can probably get to having some sort of standard that ensures your employees aren't breaking shit/getting people killed due to being not rested.
That said, six hours off ain't shit. I've worked six on six off before and after a week you start to hallucinate. Think about that though. The bottom of the barrel standard still causes problems and it's still better than what some other people were having to deal with. Anyhoo...
Terrendos pretty much covered it but I'm basically in the same boat (HAHA SAILOR JOKES). There are still occasional issues just with alcohol out here, I'd hate to see the sort of accidents and problems that would crop up without random drug tests keeping that end of things in line. Yes, a good number of us could get high responsibly during our downtime but even one fucking idiot being stoned out of his mind at the wrong time can get someone killed/cause massive damage in the marine industry and believe me, there is no shortage of irresponsible manchildren out here.
It's about seeing if potential hires can successfully meet basic expectations. You wouldn't expect to get hired if you show up in pajamas, even though what you're wearing at the interview has no bearing on your ability to do whatever or conduct an interview. Or if the application instructions ask for a cover letter, but you submit your resume without one.
If I'm a hiring manager, I'm going to use every piece of information I can (legally) glean about a potential hire to determine if they are fit and qualified for a job, and if they have personal qualities that make them well suited for my corporate culture. When a potential hire fails at a simple and arbitrary / meaningless task, that's going to count heavily against them.
It's not necessarily about risk at all.
But one thing that's being ignored is the elephant in the room. Lots of companies don't particularly care about drugs / drug testing policies...those policies are mandated by whatever insurance company provides that employer liability insurance. If a company doesn't have a drug testing policy, they are potentially exposed to a lawsuit for negligence if one of those workplace incidents results in injury or death. The jury is out on if those policies lower the number of incidents / injuries, but they absolutely do help a company deflect some of that liability.
*(Assuming this is an actual indicator of dulled reaction times?)
They don't even have to test all that frequently. I haven't been popped in, I think, almost two years or some shit like that. However, having the policy there is enough to keep most everyone in line because tomorrow could be the day they test everyone just for laughs. It ends up being a low cost way to prevent problems, at least around here.
But that begs the question.
Why should that be a basic expectation? Sticking with pot for a moment, why should it be an expectation that somebody not use a fairly harmless recreational drug in their spare time, when said drug has no effect whatsoever on their ability to perform their duties? Smoking pot on Saturday doesn't make me any less capable of doing my job on Monday. Smoking pot two weeks ago on Saturday definitely has fuckall to do with my job. So why should it be an expectation that I not smoke pot within a few weeks of a potential job interview? If we could formulate a test that could determine if I'd had an alcohol in the last two weeks, should we adopt that as a basic expectation for new hires? If not, what's the difference?
(And let's be honest, it's not "don't use pot within two weeks of an interview", it's "don't use pot at all whenever you're looking for a new job, which is probably a months-long process.)
Saying that you shouldn't do something in your spare time that has no bearing on your work performance is arbitrary, regardless of what that thing is. And it's not at all the same thing as showing up in pajamas or not bringing your resume, because those are things you are doing during the actual interview, not things you did two weeks in your spare time.
Mostly, I think it's the end bit of your post that's relevant, here. You want someone who's well-suited for your "corporate culture" and who is willing to adhere to "arbitrary/meaningless" criteria regarding their personal lives. Okay, fine, you want to hire people who are like you, just like everyone else does. The problem is that you're pretending that not wanting someone who smokes pot in moderate amounts is objectively different from not wanting someone who hates your favorite football team, or who plays video games you deem stupid, or who has dumb jock friends who drink beer and play Halo all weekend. And, in general, you're tying someone's personal life to their professional life, effectively turning them into an on-the-clock employee 24/7, and I fucking loathe that trend.
All I've seen is semi-legitimate concerns about accident prevention and arguments about how employees should be willing to jump through whatever arbitrary hoops their employers demand because of course they should.
It's actually been done in pilot studies.
I assume that by 'pilot' you mean 'people who fly planes,' not 'preliminary'
but it could go both ways
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
In my field telling me I can't hire a person because they get high on the weekend is like telling me I can't hire them because their favorite color is purple. It makes zero difference to me, or to our work, but it's a policy from on high, so I can't do shit about it.
(It is absolutely an insurance / third party compliance thing in our case)
especially when you realize that being high doesn't carry over to the next day, but mounds of legal prescription drugs can cause problems but those are okay
its almost like we don't actually care about the practicality of it and its just enforcing morality
Plenty of jobs require you to NOT be on prescription meds to do the job, specifically ones that require operating heavy machinery. Accurate reporting and communication is necessary if you're prescribed medication that hampers your cognitive and motor functions. Much easier to reassign duties than clean up a squashed employee on the floor after a load drops off a forklift.
Mmmmm....toasty.
Fair nuff, and makes sense. I didn't think of how it prevents you from hiring someone you do want vs. flagging people you potentially don't want.
Would you say other hiring managers you've worked with share your opinion? I'd imagine - with what you said in mind - that most people hiring for real career-type jobs would probably feel the same way (or war on drugs propoganda).
The entire war on drugs started out as a way to fuck with minorities via the claim that drugs had to be regulated to keep black men from raping white women so, yanno, there's that. If you really wanted to take this into some dark as fuck places you could almost argue that most of the time this is just all about the further abuse of lower class but that way lies madness.
But yes, most of the time it's just more mandatory puritanical bullshit because fuck yeah, America, land of the free.*
*Mustbe18yearsorolderOffervoidwhereprohibitedNotavailableinallstatesDougStanhopeisawesome
As others have stated, it's dumb that I would have to be prepared to falsify a drug screen on a Wednesday because it fails to discriminate between what I do on the job and what I might have done the previous Saturday. I'd be alright with a mouth swab or similar test that has a meaningful window of detection (did you come into work high, are you driving the company vehicle high, etc) but the fact that they get loose on the weekends is the only thing keeping some of our sysadmins from losing their shit entirely.
Hell, I have a coworker who is absolutely useless when he's sober, and one of the best employees when he's high.
IT work wooooo...
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
yes yes those exist, but I'm talking about average jobs
if I'm working in an office what difference does it make if I was high as a kite 8 hours before coming to work let alone 2 weeks
Then your job shouldn't require random testing. This is the topic where we're taking about transit employees potentially facing random tests, yes?
My line for random tests is pretty simple - do you operate, either on a regular basis or occasional, machinery that can maim, crush, or kill you or bystanders if operated without clear mind or attention? Then yes, you should be expected to have a clean system for a minimum 24 hrs before your shift. Everything else is overkill and unnecessary.
Mmmmm....toasty.
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
Like-mindedness loosely correlates with generational perceptions about drugs. I am among the youngest and the most permissive in this regard. As you get closer to the retirement age, there are more who hold the mindset that any recreational drugs == irresponsible | undependable | etc, so better to weed them out early; but even some of those are also of the opinion that the tests are a waste of time because these negative traits would be self evident.
So you've got a little overlap between the "drugs are bad" and "drug tests are obnoxious" groups.
Hey man, one wrong button and you could hit yourself in the crotch with the drawer!
My company does staffing
We do staff a lot of stuff where safety is a legit concern - we do a lot of forklift drivers, for instance
But in our case, we are often two or three steps away from the decision to drug test.
It comes from the client, who has an insurance requirement that everybody be tested.
Corporate bureaucracy ahoy!
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I believe we employ both sorts (high at the moment, contain latent traces of drugs/alcohol). Having not been subjected to a random test yet, I can only repeat what I've been told both by the company and by my coworkers. Any employee is required to report any medication that might affect a drug test the first work day they start taking it, and it supposedly receives consideration if you get pinged.
But consider this: an operator who mistakenly shuts down a reactor operating at 100% (say, because he receives a false positive notification of a stuck valve that is vital to operation, and acts conservatively rather than awaiting a secondary confirmation) has already cost the company several million dollars. Unsurprisingly, it's not a trivial thing to start a nuclear reactor back up once it's been shut down (and in order to ensure safety specifications, it can take several weeks before it's back to 100% power). Even if they're not directly involved in plant operation, what if said person was in component testing or design? Latent mistakes in plant design can take years to identify. If someone's performance has been affected, it might be that long before we could know. And then there's the security staff who patrol the plant carrying loaded guns.
You can argue that random drug testing is unfair if it's for latent drugs in the body, and it's only fair if the drugs are affecting one's performance. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to tell it's affected certain people's performance is when they've already caused a catastrophe. When a single mistake can cost the company so much money, I can absolutely understand them doing it.
(IIRC the requirement for randomized drug testing is an NRC regulation, not a station or corporate requirement, so even if they wanted to change that policy, they couldn't)
They should be meeting with their people multiple times a day and making sure they're all right.
Maybe testing will reduce drugs, but I doubt it. Oh, and all those positions mentioned so far where drugs could cause a problem? Being tired is going to be just as bad or worse than if they smoked a duby after work yesterday.
Drunk and very tired have sort of stuttering eye movements. They won't follow movement smoothly.
Not so sure about dialation. Pretty sure I'd have marginal issues depending on how my SSRIs are acting on a given day.
My main grip, aside from the pointlessness in non hazardous jobs of what I do on weekends, is that even if I had a doctor's recommendation to consume marijuana I could be fired for failing a piss test. Just bugs the heck out of me.
My experience in the working world, though, is that the higher you rise professionally, the less likely you are to be subjected to a test. Food service and retail were, for me, the places where I had to piss to get a job.
Hours of service and fatigue management programs are being aggressively pushed at the operator level - because it is identified as being such a high rush to incident occurrence. Log books and trip planning are becoming mandatory among the contractor companies, and more and more producers are making it a requirement for all contractors.
Mmmmm....toasty.
Terrendos also mentioned that they do alertness tests for basically the same reason. And even if they haven't already, the places where that shit is important are coming around to ensuring people aren't trying to do critical jobs while walking around like a sleep deprived zombie. It may have taken far too long because if you're tired you should just "man up, wussy" while drugs are a great big satan to crusade against, but companies these days are getting their shit together about ensuring their employees aren't working half asleep.
I absolutely agree, however I've noticed that in basically any sort of topical discussion that if you don't have a few guys pointing out the obvious exceptions the conversation can quickly turn into one of absolutes that don't have any bearing on reality. Gun control debates, for instance, are NOTORIOUS for that sort of shit happening. And then I role in and point out how I had to shoo a bear out of my front yard and how you bet your ass I keep a 12 gauge loaded with slugs around because of that exact reason and like magic the discussion drifts back towards sanity as people realize the issue isn't as black and white as they think.
Same thing here, having heavy industry guys around to keep things in perspective is a good balancer.
EDIT: Ah, shit. meant to edit not start a new post. Oopsy.
Hell, when I had cancer he was the one who told me I should look into "alternative medicine". And he's going on 78 years old.
Most bosses aren't that involved/smart/ accommodating though.