and no one irl even has the decency to agree with me because it’s so fucking drilled into the culture that these fucking BuNsInNesSes have a Right to do this because it’s a bSUsniEss. like oh yeah they have an office building so they definitely get to analyze my piss because they say they want to. sick fucking freaks.
preaching to the choir a bit on lemmy (or i would hope so at least) but still
My company does not do drug tests and never has. Someone asked the owner why and he said ‘Id lose a lot of good people’
Sounds like you work for a good company, at least with respect to drug testing.
They’re good people who take good care of me.
This is what companies used to be like and why people worked at a job for 40+ years
I worked for one place like that. I worked in another place, in the same industry, where they decided to drug test all their employees one day. They lost everyone from 3rd shift, and everyone from 2nd shift except my supervisor and myself.
After that, they rapidly started to lose customers…
Did they really expect 3rd shift people to be clean lol
That’s an American thing.
This. In Canada, most drug testing is considered a violation of rights and freedoms because your employer should not have a say in how you live your life. There are exceptions for high risk jobs where an impaired worker could cause death by negligence.
Bingo. If my boss asked for my piss I’d go straight to HR. Americans put up with so much insane stuff when it comes to work.
Which is crazy when you think about all the people that migrate to the US for jobs/opportunity. Makes you wonder how bad it is in other places.
In some cases it is, yes, worse. But in many cases it’s just the press the Americans spew about themselves living in the “land of the free” while the jackboots march in unison ever closer.
Thanks Reagan. Fun fact, in the mid 80’s Reagan’s administration did a big study to show how effective drug testing in the workplace was, and how much it raised productivity. When they got the results back, it found productivity had dropped, and workplace safety hadn’t changed. The results said the program was a complete failure. They tried to bury the report and not release it. Rolling Stone magazine sued the government to get a copy, since it was made with public money, and won. They were the only media outlet to publish the results.
I run a manufacturing business; you oversimplify.
Quite coincidentally my HR person came to me just an hour ago and told me that two people have complained of a coworker smoking on breaks and at lunch and being high on the job.
He drives a heavy forklift. Am I to ignore the situation? If I do I expose my employees to danger and my small business to lawsuits.
How are the employees that reported it supposed to react if I say “Whatever, that’s his business.”
To a large extent businesses have their hands tied by the rules and laws of society.
It really depends on the position and what they’re testing for. Do you really want a heavy machinery operator to be a cokehead or heroin addict? There is a real risk of them killing someone. Testing someone in a job like IT for smoking weed? That’s a different story.
Also a lot of the time they only test you post-hiring if you fucked up somehow.
It can definitely be used against people (usually the disenfranchised) though to prevent them being hired or to get them fired.
The place I work will fire you on the spot if you test positive for marijuana. Marijuana is legal in this state. If I smoke on the weekend, and then test positive on Wednesday, I lose my job.
However, if I get ripple-dee-doo-dah shit-faced Tuesday night, come in on Wednesday miserably hung over, I’ll pass that piss test. And still be more impaired than I would be from that joint I had Saturday night.
Just because a drug is legal doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tested for in scenarios where that is applicable. Many jobs do in fact test for alcohol.
I wouldn’t want my bus driver under the influence of anything (preferably not even sleep deprivation), but honestly couldn’t give less of a shit if the cashier was high out of their mind, so long as they do their job. Some jobs are more gray area. For instance, a chef or fast food worker fucking up could mean someone dying from anaphylactic shock.
You should see how they do it in the service industry. No tests to get the job, but if you’re ever hurt at work and entitled to workman’s comp they give you a test and if you’ve smoked weed anytime in the last month the presumption is that you were high at work and not only do they not have to pay you for your injury but they just flat-out fire you.
The worker’s comp drug tests are such a disgusting example of late stage capitalism.
Imagine that you made a lot of money and lived comfortably off of the hard work of others. Then when one of those others got hurt while making money for you, you go out of your way to make sure you don’t have to help them cover the medical costs. Also, you take their only source of income away from them so they couldn’t even cover it themselves if they wanted to.
I can’t imagine being that heartless, and its literally just standard pretty much everywhere in the US. It is very saddening.
This is the intersection of two elements of our culture:
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everyone must always do everything they can to make as much money as possible regardless of the consequences
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if someone uses drugs, they’re not a person anymore and it’s okay to hurt them as much as is within your power
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The main thing is, as long as you don’t show up to work blitzed I don’t see how anyone should give a shit. Whatever you do at home is your business, provided you leave it at home.
That’s the policy at my business. IDGAF if you spend all of your off hours at the bottom of a bottle or on top of cloud nine, just don’t bring it to work.
Additional problems include: If there is a workplace accident and someone gets injured, both OSHA and insurance companies immediately come knocking to try to do drug tests on everyone involved purely as an attempt to shift blame and deny claims. We don’t have any heavy equipment here or anything so I’m not too worried about that, but there are businesses in America that would get fucked in a situation like that so they’re kind of forced to enact drug bans even if management doesn’t want to on a personal level.
If you’re driving a bus I don’t want you even “buzzed” in the slightest
Which is a problem that pre-employment drug testing does not correct in any way, shape or form.
It’s especially frustrating as someone who needs cannabis for severe anxiety, because it’s anxiety inducing in itself to have to hide it and that pretty much cancels out the benefits for me- it’s something we absolutely need to destigmatize at work especially.
Please try therapy. Anxiety is curable with therapy, whereas meds or cannabis are temporary symptom relief, but the symptoms will always come back as soon as you’re sober.
Lmfao. Anxiety is curable with therapy is not a rule. Some anxiety is curable with therapy, but not all of it.
For example?
I have Generalized anxiety disorder, It’s chronic and therapy doesn’t “cure” it. I will most likely struggle with it for the rest of my life. While this may be an anecdotal example I’m not aware of anything that “cures” anxiety disorders, therapy is mostly there to manage the symptoms effectively. Therapy helped me understand and somewhat mitigate the problem, but it’s not something I can ever be rid of, and that’s how it is for a lot of people who have an anxiety disorder.
And just like that, the entire American medical system, as well as kittnpunk’s mental health, began to heal!
Psychotherapy is the single most evidence-based treatment for anxiety, the literature stands up across the world. Not sure why you’re bringing the American medical system into this, but while we’re on the topic, our medical system absolutely encourages people to seek solutions in substances. Kittnpunk is saying they’re so anxious that they cannot function without being high. Psychotherapy can 100% help them decrease their reliance on cannabis to feel less anxious
Lots of jobs where I’d really like people to be drug tested though… Heart surgeon? Teacher? Taxi driver? Basically any operator on machinery?
Come to think of it, do you want the administrative guy who handles your salaries to be stoned out of his ass?
I honestly agree, when you work, you gotta be sober, period. What you do in your free time is your thing but asking a little bit of responsibility and not arriving off your cracker at work really isn’t that crazy.
If you don’t like your job, get another job
I don’t think you know how drug tests work
I guess I don’t but that is not my point. My point is that nobody should go to their job being high or drunk, whatever the job is.
when you work, you gotta be sober, period. What you do in your free time is your thing
if drug tests in any way proved that you were high at work I’d be in favor of them, but the fact is that they don’t. The drugs that actually cause problems (coke, dope/fetty, amphetamines) are out of your system before they can realistically be tested for and drug tests for other things like marijuana only prove that you’ve used within the last month or so. The fact is you can’t support drug testing at work and allowing people to do what they want on their own time. The two are mutually incompatible due to the nature of our current testing.
I can’t say if drug tests work well or not, I don’t know that. I don’t care if anyone gets high in their free time either, I just don’t want someone high on anything while working as with almost all jobs that will be a problem. Yes, weed is also a problem, just like alcohol too.
I also think that if you so desperately need to be high that you have bigger issues.
If, on the other hand, you need it literally and really just for medicinal reasons, pain control, whatever, then we can talk but still.within reason. You can’t operate a car while high, for example, pain or no pain.