how drug testing situations really play out

a reply to: TinySickTears
Agreed
I've been self employed for years now, can hardly sack myself lol

originally posted by: theatreboy

originally posted by: Grambler
a reply to: TinySickTears

The obvious reason for the test is god forbid he kill someone because he was high. Then the company would be sued out of existence if they didnt require a test like that.

But in spirit I agree with you.

Surely there is a medical way to be able to determine whether trace amounts of thc in a system would impair judgement to a degree to make people unsafe.

I dont think the average person smoking in the evening and then 10 hours later going to work is really a danger any more than someone who, say didnt get enough sleep.

Strangely, some companies, I think walmart may do this, actually wont fire people for failing a drig test, and make them go to rehab instead, which tey help pay for.

Not the best solution in my mind, but still better than firing a good worker for a lsight amount of drugs in their system.

They have instant mouth swab tests...if you smoked in the previous 6 hours, you fail...otherwise, you are clean...

That’s not accurate. Those swabs will detect THC if you smoke it on a regular basis everyday. 6 hours won’t help you.
Since legalization here in Canada there is a lot of up roar over these roadside swabs, because many drivers may not be high while driving, but take their medicinal pot every night to fall asleep and deal with pain.

It is the same with the workplace. Unfair , when an alcoholic or coc aine user can get away with their usage prior to 3 days before testing, but someone using medicinal pot will get the shaft.

originally posted by: Sheye


It is the same with the workplace. Unfair , when an alcoholic or coc aine user can get away with their usage prior to 3 days before testing, but someone using medicinal pot will get the shaft.

alcohol users get away with doing it the night before

last tuesday there was a christmas party for the management and salary people. my buddy went and told me about it
open bar

all of them drinking

some of the people were piss drunk. the quality process manager couldnt #ing hold his head up. he was trashed
the gm was there. president. vice

and the next day theyre back at work

it is crazy that that is ok but burning a joint at night is not

a reply to: TinySickTears
Middle class ethanol users are the biggest hypocrites in my opinion.
Look down their nose at a pot smoker while doing two bottles of wine on an evening.

a reply to: TinySickTears

I totally agree with you TST.

What’s even crazier is if a serious alcoholic avoids drinking for work, he will have extreme withdrawal shakes that could diversely effect the safety on his job site.

originally posted by: Sillyolme
a reply to: Fools

Companies get sued because stones #ed something up... so the company makes sure no stoners work there.
I tested to hire but I did not random test after that. But the test was on my premises and done by my HR girl.
No purses or knapsacks allowed in the stall. A male employee accompanied male applicants.

So let me get this straight if you smoke weed at home and not on the job, say once every blue moon you are classified as a stoner? Now if you get sloshed between each shift and sober up by the time you go to work, you are fine cause we all know alcohol is OK. There are lots of high functioning, productive employees who partake of weed every now and then. Should they not be allowed to work because of this while the nightly drinker is ok, cause as we said alcohol good, weed BAD. Wonder if these drinkers # things up? guess it doesn't matter since they aren't stoners.

a reply to: keenmachine
I've always argued that, since ecstasy rave days in the 90's, the people who looked down on me for recreational drug use were all doing ethanol every night.
#ing hypocrites.
So one drug is legal yet my preferred drug was not, 'it's the law' was the mantra like the law is some moral absolute. Heck the law means nothing to me, I follow my own code of ethics, it was not illegal to rape your wife in the UK until the 90's, the law as a thing is just a distraction in my life.

originally posted by: TinySickTears
and Grambler some companies do not fire you straight away

i worked for a place that would send you to rehab and i worked at a place that would suspend you for up to 30 days. if you cold produce a clean test in that 30 days you come back to work

i like the idea of the 6 hour test.

thats the # right there.

the state should mandate that #.
they should mandate that because a LOT of people get fired for being dirty then go right to human services and get medicaid and food stamps. help with job searches and all sorts of stuff.

so the state should make the company come out of their end a little bit for a more expensive test that shows much more accurate results.

fire a dude for smoking 10 days ago and then have the state give him free #?

yeah i dont like that

I agree with all of this

originally posted by: Sheye
a reply to: TinySickTears

I totally agree with you TST.

What’s even crazier is if a serious alcoholic avoids drinking for work, he will have extreme withdrawal shakes that could diversely effect the safety on his job site.

A huge portion of executives, CEO's and high level white collar workers are heavy alcoholics.
I worked in the industry, the things I saw... Many many of them hid booze in their offices. Many of them reeked of booze in the morning. They would even joke about being alcoholics. In my early days I was an executive admin. I would process expense reports. I'll give you an example, a "business meeting" for three people, alcohol expense was $1500. It got approved, this was when I worked for Big Pharma! That's one reason why your medicine costs so much.....

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: keenmachine
I've always argued that, since ecstasy rave days in the 90's, the people who looked down on me for recreational drug use were all doing ethanol every night.
#ing hypocrites.
So one drug is legal yet my preferred drug was not, 'it's the law' was the mantra like the law is some moral absolute. Heck the law means nothing to me, I follow my own code of ethics, it was not illegal to rape your wife in the UK until the 90's, the law as a thing is just a distraction in my life.

I know I'm touchy on this subject as I have dealt with alcoholics and have also had friends who smoke and smoked weed before myself. I never understood the reasoning behind alcohol being perfectly acceptable and other drugs being looked down upon by most of society(see silly's stoner comment). Alcohol will change a person completely when they are intoxicated and is known to produce violence and crime. When's the last time you heard of someone smoking a j and then beating their wife or smacking the kids around. Doesn't happen. I have seen alcohol make even the most mild mannered people violent, among other things. Yet this is our world's acceptable drug.

I'm in kind of a grey situation. Pot is legal in my state of WA but my company has Government contracts, and many of us have clearances. Even with that said I have never been tested, and I think we would lose 1/2 our engineering department if they were tested. As far as my company is concerned it goes by whether you are drunk or high on the job. Having THC residue is a big difference between burning one out at noon.

Are you sure he wasn't high at the time of his injury? I would think a drug test due to his injury would have been one along the lines of a sobriety test for legal means in the case of the injury and not a zero tolerance one we see in the military, as example.

As far as a great worker, I hear you. I had to let go one of my top performers due to having porn on his company computer. You might think this is a "ok no sh@t", but it happened while he was in Afghanistan for 4 months and when he came back it set off alarms in our system. I tell people just buy another computer for 1000 bucks and have at it...keep your company computer for emails, time card and door stop...

In the end I loss a hard to replace guy and if there was anyway I could have kept him I would. The bottom line with your company is if they want to fire people like your situation then they can expect to feel the pain in production and profit, so tell them to enjoy their decisions.

We also have to remember that weed is the only drug that stays in your system so long. You could go on a crack binge or spike speedballs on Friday night and by Monday you're clear. I had to go in weekly to a pre-trial program that had random testing and I was still using infrequently, so I'd just time my doping to max three days before my testing. Had to stop smoking weed though

It's ridiculous and should be abolished - or weed needs to have a better way of being tested for, a test that can prove the time of ingestion. Without that, I don't see how they can be used as proof one is impaired at the time of any given drop.

originally posted by: Grambler
a reply to: TinySickTears

The obvious reason for the test is god forbid he kill someone because he was high. Then the company would be sued out of existence if they didnt require a test like that.

But in spirit I agree with you.

Surely there is a medical way to be able to determine whether trace amounts of thc in a system would impair judgement to a degree to make people unsafe, and so we can stop firing people unless they were high as a kite when an accident happened.

I dont think the average person smoking in the evening and then 10 hours later going to work is really a danger any more than someone who, say didnt get enough sleep.

Strangely, some companies, I think walmart may do this, actually wont fire people for failing a drig test, and make them go to rehab instead, which tey help pay for.

Not the best solution in my mind, but still better than firing a good worker for a lsight amount of drugs in their system.

Its a funny thing with marijuana though. People who dont smoke it, or have only smoked short term. For a person like that, they take 2 or 3 hits and theyre in lala land and probably shouldn't even behind the wheel of an automobile... So the majority perception is based on this observation, I feel.

Now take someone like me who has smoked nearly every single day since before the age of 18... Someone like me would potentially be Less able to focus on a day when I hadn't smoked at all for a day or two. It becomes a part of you and you get used to this "new you" and this "new" way of thinking. I think thats why teens and other new smokers act "like goofy idiots", while a veteran smoker would be undetectable in a crowd of nonsmokers...because their brains are still getting used to being opened up in new ways. Everything thats funny is a Lot more funny, food and music and other things are enhanced. It makes me think if our brain went from 10% to 80%-100% functionality, we wouldn't even be able to handle it at all. We are too emotional. Thats why beings of "higher" intelligence are perceived as being cold and emotionless... they Have to be in order to handle those levels of thinking. If their emotions were hightened as ours, they would be laying on the ground either laughing or crying uncontrollably... just like, a human on ELL ESS DEE.

What if someone came to ATS, and their initials were... |_ S D? They would be like "what the heck? On every internet post I've ever made, I sign my post with my initials at the end. But here at ATS it shows up like '___'. Almost like they hate me...they want to delete every sign that i was ever here..."


Even when weed is fully legalized there will still be corporate policy. He wasn't fired for breaking the law, right? He was fired for breaking corporate policy.

I could see some leniency but there will always be hazardous jobs whether youre a soldier, cop, astronaut or foundry worker, people will want you "sober".

But its not fair to ask someone to do a stressful (mentally Or physically) job and then dictate how they deal with the stress, which they must take home with them...a job like that should come with extra pay if they want you behaving as if "on the clock" while at home. Seriously someone would have to pay me to even think about quitting. But that's me.

I read the comment about mouth swab tests. They are a lot more expensive from what I hear. Thats supposedly the reason they do pee tests as opposed to mouth swabs at my methadone clinic. Maybe double or triple the cost of a pee test i think? I'm sure Pete would've happily paid that cost to keep his job. *shrug* But to be honest, I dont know how those mouth swabs work, I just know one of the reasons they dont use them at the methadone clinic is because of the cost of doing over a thousand of them each month.

a reply to: Xtrozero

As far as a great worker, I hear you. I had to let go one of my top performers due to having porn on his company computer.

I worked for a company that it seems almost impossible to get fired from. One day they had an emergency meeting. A high level manager was fired for watching excessive weird porn at work. They stressed it was excessive and weird. Like just ol' normal porn would be OK. talk about disturbing! The other part that bothered me was that the other managers went around saying how bad they felt for him because he had four children! Sure I get empathy, but this dude was watching 8hrs of porn a day, at work, while we were all busting our chops!

a reply to: keenmachine
Every cop I've asked has laughed and said they'd rather deal with stoners than drunks and coke heads.
It is something I ask cops on the rare times I see one, I actually ask it like a question for a survey lol

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: TinySickTears
Agreed

I've been self employed for years now, can hardly sack myself lol

sooooo how would you rate yourself as an employee

originally posted by: keenmachine

I know I'm touchy on this subject as I have dealt with alcoholics and have also had friends who smoke and smoked weed before myself. I never understood the reasoning behind alcohol being perfectly acceptable and other drugs being looked down upon by most of society(see silly's stoner comment). Alcohol will change a person completely when they are intoxicated and is known to produce violence and crime. When's the last time you heard of someone smoking a j and then beating their wife or smacking the kids around. Doesn't happen. I have seen alcohol make even the most mild mannered people violent, among other things. Yet this is our world's acceptable drug.

It's illegal in many places, not much more to say... The illegality of it goes back to the 1930s with a bunch of anti pot movies and the 50s with a Cold War thing that it might turn someone into a commie.. This is funny that it is the same time that 9 out of 10 doctors said cigarettes were go for you.



I don't smoke pot, but I was glad to see Sessions go with his 50s mentality.

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: TinySickTears
Agreed

I've been self employed for years now, can hardly sack myself lol

sooooo how would you rate yourself as an employee

Lol could do more days instead of being lazy just covering my bills.

originally posted by: JAGStorm

I worked for a company that it seems almost impossible to get fired from. One day they had an emergency meeting. A high level manager was fired for watching excessive weird porn at work. They stressed it was excessive and weird. Like just ol' normal porn would be OK. talk about disturbing! The other part that bothered me was that the other managers went around saying how bad they felt for him because he had four children! Sure I get empathy, but this dude was watching 8hrs of porn a day, at work, while we were all busting our chops!

I have no problem firing someone like that. In this case my employee is flying a plane on the job and his porn watching was off job hours, but on a company computer. We had a guy get fired because they found out he was playing WOW on the job for hours lol.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

Are you sure he wasn't high at the time of his injury? I would think a drug test due to his injury would have been one along the lines of a sobriety test for legal means in the case of the injury and not a zero tolerance one we see in the military, as example.

i am sure he was not high at the time of the injury
you are wrong about the test


if you get hurt at work and have to go to the hospital or clinic you are tested as you would be for a pre emplyment