Sunday, November 4, 2007

Just drink like the rest of us.......

One of my regular duties at work is post-accident drug testing. Usually the associate pees in the cup, the negative result shows up within 5 minutes, and I can send them back to work. Usually......

The safety officer pops into my office and says there is an associate who needs a drug test and for me to send him home afterwards, or the safety officer adds as a afterthought, send him back to work if its negative. Weird.

A manager escorts the associate to my office and says the exact same thing, and leaves us to the test.

I smile at the associate and say, "Everything's going to be ok, right?"

I get a sideways glance and silence.

"Please don't tell me you did some weed or something this weekend."

Again, I get silence.

"You know you are going to lose your job, right,"

The associate finally responds, "I know."

"Ok, here's the cup, go pee."

The associate goes to the bathroom, shoulders slumped and a resigned look.

Not surprisingly, the test is positive for marijuana. So, I do my thing to send it off to the lab for confirmation and send the associate home.

A few minutes later the safety officer sits down in my office to tell me the story. The associate dropped nearly $4000 worth of product. When told that there would be a drug test, the response was, "I won't pass."

Apparently the associate had been under a lot of stress at home and smoked a dime bag the night before to relax.

Now this person (who was a really good worker) has gone from making $35K a year (not a small amount in the rural community where the plant is located) to being fired for drug use.

2 comments:

Strings said...

That does NOT suprise me. There are a LOT of folks in the country who can't seem to leave drugs alone, regardless of what they can do to your life (either directly or indirectly)...

Anonymous said...

I worked for the RR for forty one years. I was subject to random drug tests for most of that time. Any accident would get you time off for good behavior. Drugs or alcohol would get you a little more. On call 24/7 with no time off ordinarily, made you wish for something to happen.