Comment On Are You Cool, Man? and More

lburch:

Go ahead and test the airline pilots if you must but testing to work at McDonalds is just lawyer induced paranoia and excessive puritanical behavior.

geeze, i sure as hell would not want some pothead working near the deepfat fryer. or worse, making a burger with a bun between two patties, special sauce all over the place.

qv http://www.marijuana.com/urine-testing/30250-does-mcdonalds-drug-test.html

loki:

Yes, we are a freedom-loving country. And you are missing the point - "smoking" a controlled substance is ILLEGAL in the US; (whether it should be or not is a subject for a different forum).

It's also against the law and potentially dangerous to other motorists to exceed the speed limit. Perhaps all employers should check driving records as well while we're black-listing.

loki:

Employers do not want to hire someone who may be going to jail soon, as that defeats the purpose of the hiring.

Brilliant assumption: recreational drug use == going to jail soon. Nearly every office has recreational drinkers. I suppose we can use your logic to assume they will all get behind the wheel and kill a bus-load of nuns, babies, and very cute kittens soon.

loki:

Employers also do not want to hire pedophiles [more ridiculous crap snipped]

And to think you may have been hired over a clear-thinking dope smoker.

Jason:

The ACLU are a bunch of morons.

Jason is a moron.

Wow, I just found out that ad hominem argumentation is incredibly easy!

AdT:

Jason:

The ACLU are a bunch of morons.

Jason is a moron.

Wow, I just found out that ad hominem argumentation is incredibly easy!

No, no, no.

Getting the lyrics of classic Punk songs wrong is incredibly easy.

Ad hominem argumentation is incredibly difficult.

To start with, you have to remember the name of the hominem in question.

Next, you have to understand that "argumentation" is not a real word.

Next, ???

Profit may or may not ensue.

Ytram:

I've worked with an alcoholic or two in my day, and that's not really pleasant. However, I've known a few potheads/ex-heads, and I'd take them any day over an alcoholic.

To be honest, none of it's my business until it starts affecting their work. Unfortunately, with some of the jacked up laws around employment, you pretty much have to give a drug test to new applicants if you ever want to fire them for failing at their job due to drugs.

THis is why you would fire them due to incompetence, and not due to drug use.

"In my experience, being a woman is a red flag. Women tend to be bossy and mean, especially to us passive geek types. They win arguments by ignoring logic, and they screw over employers by being whores. I didn't always think this way, but two decades of being run over by the XX express have changed my perspective."

How does being a whore screw over your employer?

"It should also be noted that for some reason, they also have an obsession with getting as many people as possible hooked on "anti-depressants" (usually amphetamines)"

What? "Anti-depressants" are most certainly not amphetamines. They're not stimulants of any kind. Whole different animal.

"I for one would much rather work with someone who smokes pot or drops some home-made pills on the weekends rather than work with an alcoholic or someone on anti-depressants."

And I'd work with any of those than someone who isn't on anti-depressants but should be.

Wayne:

"In my experience, being a woman is a red flag. Women tend to be bossy and mean, especially to us passive geek types. They win arguments by ignoring logic, and they screw over employers by being whores. I didn't always think this way, but two decades of being run over by the XX express have changed my perspective."

How does being a whore screw over your employer?

"It should also be noted that for some reason, they also have an obsession with getting as many people as possible hooked on "anti-depressants" (usually amphetamines)"

What? "Anti-depressants" are most certainly not amphetamines. They're not stimulants of any kind. Whole different animal.

"I for one would much rather work with someone who smokes pot or drops some home-made pills on the weekends rather than work with an alcoholic or someone on anti-depressants."

And I'd work with any of those than someone who isn't on anti-depressants but should be.

I'd rather work with Wayne than the guy who can't handle the ride on the XX Express.

Wayne:

"In my experience, being a woman is a red flag. Women tend to be bossy and mean, especially to us passive geek types. They win arguments by ignoring logic, and they screw over employers by being whores. I didn't always think this way, but two decades of being run over by the XX express have changed my perspective."

How does being a whore screw over your employer?

Whore => pregnant => loss of production. Yeah, probably too much of a stretch.

TomatoQueen:

I'd rather work with Wayne than the guy who can't handle the ride on the XX Express.

And I'd prefer to not work with a PMS'ing bitch. To each their own.

I had a call from a London IT recruiting agency last year where they asked why I had a 10yr blank period in my employment history. They hadn't figured out that it was in the usual reverse chronological order.

Quite honestly, I think the guys question was totally legitimate, and Scott's response was extremely rude. Admitting drug use is NOT the same thing as being stoned AT WORK. To simply assume that the interviewer wouldn't be a good worker just because he admitted to using drugs is shallow and rude. Do you also fire people for taking prescription Vicodin?

Experiments:

Quite honestly, I think the guys question was totally legitimate, and Scott's response was extremely rude. Admitting drug use is NOT the same thing as being stoned AT WORK. To simply assume that the interviewer wouldn't be a good worker just because he admitted to using drugs is shallow and rude. Do you also fire people for taking prescription Vicodin?

I hate to keep harping on this, but could point to where, exactly, in the story the interviewee "admitted to using drugs"? Perhaps you could illustrate your point with a quote from the original post.

Uh... right. Like here in Europe... I very much prefer our system thank you very much, and prevention is always better than late intervention when situation is catastrophic...

hitmouse:

I had a call from a London IT recruiting agency last year where they asked why I had a 10yr blank period in my employment history. They hadn't figured out that it was in the usual reverse chronological order.

Well, like Leary said -- if you can remember the '60s, you weren't really there.

scott, i hope youre reading this - youre an absolute cock. i hope someone fires you because of your personal habit/religion/sexual orientation.

also, this is just another problem with recreation drugs being illegal - companies can either claim liability because of it, or deny an otherwise qualified and dependable worker from a decent job.

and re: working with dj's; my boss was a dj :p

jk:

lburch:

Go ahead and test the airline pilots if you must but testing to work at McDonalds is just lawyer induced paranoia and excessive puritanical behavior.

geeze, i sure as hell would not want some pothead working near the deepfat fryer. or worse, making a burger with a bun between two patties, special sauce all over the place.

qv http://www.marijuana.com/urine-testing/30250-does-mcdonalds-drug-test.html

What on earth makes you think that a stoner is going to get meat and bread confused with each other?
I think you've been watching too many Hollywood portrayals of what the effects of drugs are... The only people I've ever seen that resemble hollywood's "stoners" are arrogant rich-kids *pretending* to be stoned.

Even if you pumped me full of pot to the point where I was physically sick, I'd still be able to assemble a freaking maccas burger (with extra vomit of course), but if I did that with beer you'd probably end up with my roasted thumb instead of a meat-patty!

Blobster:

"Scott"s reaction to the interviewee's question seems a bit extreme. Technically asking the question doesn't indicate that he is a drug user though from the context it appears to be likely.

But should that affect whether or not he receives a job offer? Any effects that drug use would have had on him would have already been reflected in his abilities, which is the basis for comparison - so the presence or absence of drug use isn't relevant since it's already factored into the appraisal of ability.

damn...

Will you be my project manager? That has to be the most precise and well thought out answer to this situation ever!

Sounds like Scott is the real WTF. I hope that guy dies of the pancreatic cancer that I'm wishing upon him right now.

I have a prescription for Vicodin. I am allowed to be totally hammered at work.

I'm allowed to drive hammered, too, right up to the point where I hit somebody. As long as I drive safely, my state of intoxication is not relevant, because you can't punish me for taking a legally prescribed drug unless you can prove I also did something else that was actually illegal.

It's sort of like I get to take personal responsibility for my choices and their results, instead of being automatically guilty for things I might have done (even if I didn't do them) because of my blood chemistry.

But you, you don't have the magic signature. So your drug use is unholy, and that makes the baby Jesus cry. (It would be even worse if you were a DJ, though, that the baby Jesus vomit.)

people are whining over drug tests but write stuff like MMPI or CPI happily...

Actually (if I understand what my lawyer told me a few years ago), in the state of Oregon, it is illegal to "drive under the influence" of *any* intoxicating substance.

The question the officer will ask is "Do you feel any effects from the beer/wine/pot/....?" The only legal answer is "None." As in, "None at all, sir."

Even if the substance is legally prescribed.

Incidentally, we've been having fun breaking new legal ground with medical marijuana, employment law, and (yee-haw!) gun laws!. ;-)

ClaudeSuck.de:

JackBlack:

PS $5000 every 15 min is peanuts. 5 years ago the website I used to work on made $1000 USD (profit) per minute. Places I've worked since would lose millions in that time. Yes, my d1ck is bigger than yours.

You should smoke less or how do make millions in 15 minutes out of 15 x $1000?

HTH.

Everyone seems to be assuming that the guy was a drug user, then overlaying their personal feelings all over like a Jackson Pollock piece.

What if the guy was concerned about second-hand smoke from the venues in which he DJed?

A perfectly reasonable request for information which would be directly pertinent to his life.

Plus, this should be the kind of thing which is indicated far in advance (the policy, not the actual testing instance).

Me too (in reply to mtu).
What a fcuk'ed up place the US seems to have become.
I even considered accepting a job offer in the US a few years ago. As I prefer to live in a country where individual freedom and privacy is respected, I thank god that I decided against it.

I would have answered "yes" to the DJ's question and let him finish the interview, but he probably wouldn't have gotten the job after that.

nowInEurope:

Me too (in reply to mtu).
What a fcuk'ed up place the US seems to have become.
I even considered accepting a job offer in the US a few years ago. As I prefer to live in a country where individual freedom and privacy is respected, I thank god that I decided against it.

Good luck, pretty much every European country screws over individual freedom too, just in different ways.

Americans freak out over sex and drugs and overregulate them; Europeans freak out over guns and "hate speech" and overregulate them.

Absolute garbage. It amazes me to hear this kind of polarised rubbish from the Republican camp.
Saying that, I do agree with the point that the Interviewer was somewhat hasty in his assumptions. Surely, if the man was qulified and wasn't obnoxious and his "supposed" drug habit didn't affect his performance/personality, it shouldn't make a difference?

jk:

lburch:

Go ahead and test the airline pilots if you must but testing to work at McDonalds is just lawyer induced paranoia and excessive puritanical behavior.

geeze, i sure as hell would not want some pothead working near the deepfat fryer. or worse, making a burger with a bun between two patties, special sauce all over the place.

Most fast-food joints have procedures in place which ensure food safety. I wouldn't worry about the pothead injuring him/herself. I would worry more about a customer dying from a food-borne illness. Robin Cook used that theme in a book once; the title escapes me now.

Cheers, Kuba

[quote=akatherder ]Why did they think he graduated in 1996 when that was the year he started school? Did I miss something or did the interviewers just completely misread common English?[/quote]

I'm guessing he graduated high school in 1996 and that's what they saw. Entry-level candidates are more likely to include this information on their resume.

akatherder:

The Article:

"They'd looked at my resume and where it had said "University of Missouri — Rolla 1996-2000," they only saw that I had graduated in 1996."

Why did they think he graduated in 1996 when that was the year he started school? Did I miss something or did the interviewers just completely misread common English?

I'm guessing he graduated high school in 1996 and that's what they saw. Entry-level candidates are more likely to include this information on their resume.

As horribly late as I am posting on this...

In a lot of companies, drug testing policy has nothing to do with "liability" issues or the dangers of drugs. It's a simple matter of being backed into a corner.

Let's say that John Q. gets hired on with Big Corp. He does his little recreational thing on the side for 6 months without it impacting his work in any way. Great. Then something happens in his personal life and he ends up showing up to work one day - just once - stoned, messes up on his work, and costs Big Corp a contract or a project, or just a pile of money. Now, thanks to all this liberal "drug abuse is a disease" bull, not only can Big Corp not demand reparations from John Q because of a screw up that was FULLY his choice, they can't even fire him AND they have to pay for his drug treatment. Why would any company want to deal with that when they can just drug-test and, to a decent extent, rule out the possibility?

It's not such an issue in other parts of the world because, unlike North America, most of the rest of the world still has some concept of personal responsibility. YOU screw up, YOU pay for it.

Everyone seems to be assuming that the candidate was worried about testing positive for pot. Maybe he's using something more serious, like heroin or crystal meth. Maybe he's not using anything at all, but his question was pretty stupid.

lonewolf:

ryan:

KR:

Alan:

I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

DURRR HURRR

pretending not to understand common English phrases is not an argument. It's also not funny

It's not common phrase, it's f***ing common lie. What's a differance if you pay for it with you own money, you own insurance, or you will let a bunch of crooks known as goverment pay for you!?

</rant>

Because everyone gets taken care of, rich or not, and this is better/cheaper for society as a whole?

Bear in mind that healthcare in the USA costs the government MORE than in other countries AND delivers far less to the few people who can afford it and nothing to those who can't. In the free system, hospitals, doctors, and drug companies are prevented from practising blatant exploitation on mandatory commodities and letting people die for the sake of greed.

"It's nice that the US wants to introduce democracy to Iraq - but shouldn't they implement it in the USA first?
"

jpers36:

Rootbeer:

A private insurer representing 100,000 patients could get more favorable pricing from healthcare providers than a single individual representing himself could.

A government representing 100,000,000 patients could get even more favorable pricing from healthcare providers than a private insurer could.

A private insurer representing 100,000 patients is (theoretically) competing with dozens of other companies of similar size, so faces market pressures to reduce rates, reduce cost of business, and increase service.

In practice, insurance goes up because 'increased service' and 'competition' means paying for any quackery that clients are perceived to desire, such as osteopathy, chiropractry, iridology, color therapy, etc. In the hands of government, only real medicine gets paid for.

Konrad:

A contractor I once worked with used to regularly invoice the company for debuggering code.

A lot of the code I have had to debug was completely buggered...

loki:

Sarge!:

I'm from Canada, but worked in California for 6 years. When a small company I was working for was bought out by a big one they had all the employees take drug tests.

One of the best guy on our team did test positive. He was *really* *really* good at his job, plus I never ever even think he could be the kind of guy to use drugs. (And I worked there for 3 years with him) So needless to say, not only it wasn't an issue with his ability to do his job... if it wouldn't be for the test, you wouldn't know he used it.

He was let go.. just because of that. When I asked him, he just plainly said, that yes... he smoked once in a while during week-ends.

To this day (5 years later) I fail to see *ANY* use in those drug test policies... I actually think they are bad. Sure way to loose some really creative people on your team!

Way to go US... freedom loving country ;-)

hahaha.

Yes, we are a freedom-loving country. And you are missing the point - "smoking" a controlled substance is ILLEGAL in the US; (whether it should be or not is a subject for a different forum). Employers do not want to hire someone who may be going to jail soon, as that defeats the purpose of the hiring. Employers also do not want to hire pedophiles (hey, man, he is a super coder - he just likes to rape little girls on his own time) or murderers (he's a super sysadmin, and he only kills those he feels deserve it). I'm sure that with a little thought (and you are apparently only capable of a little thought) that you can understand that an employer may not want the company's image to be associated with illegal actions of any kind - it makes sales more difficult, even to Canadian companies...

hahaha

The problem is, these tests are arbitrary - no companies are mandatory testing employees home computers for illegal downloads to make sure they are not pedophiles... why draw the line at an arbitrary point (when the money spent is large for bugger-all gain)?

dan:

My team is fairly international. We were working through a design for a GUI, and a Spanish colleague of mine announced that a button should be "f*cksy". My english colleagues and I looked blankly at her and asked her to repeat herself, and she did. An Italian colleague turned to us and said "you know, f*cksy".
Eventually, we worked out she was trying to describe a colour, and we quickly realised she meant 'fuchsia'.
But, unfortunately, the description had stuck.

Well, it is pronounced 'fooksya', so she was closer than most people (who came up with 'fooshia' anyway?)

koni:

fbjon:

KR:

Alan:

I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

"Free" has nothing to do with funding. Everyone over here knows that health care costs, and a lot, but it's still free.

If you buy e.g. a car, and get a pair of sunglasses free with the purchase, would you say "no it isn't free, someone's gotta pay for it"?

Free in the monetary sense always means free-for-me, no other meaning is sensible or even possible. Thus, even if health care is funded by taxes, it's still free, because if I don't pay any taxes, I still get health care.

That's the point, exactly! Why the hell should YOU get free anything (free as in paid for by taxes) when you don't pay taxes? Go to Australia if you want free, otherwise, go fuck yourself - YOU are NOT my responsibility.

And, you would be first to volunteer to go without life-saving medical procedures should you become unemployed through no fault of your own?

Most people don't realise the amount of blind chance involved in their prosperity. They think they are wealthy because they 'got it right' - a comforting illusion in a scary world.

"Free in the monetary sense always means free-for-me, no other meaning is sensible or even possible. Thus, even if health care is funded by taxes, it's still free, because if I don't pay any taxes, I still get health care."
Wrong. There is really only one sense in which "free" is meaningful - when no human work was involved. Examples would be wind and sunshine - these are 'free' energy sources.

Pretty much every use of the word "free" in political & economic arguments is fraudulent - there really is no free lunch.

Gullible fools like to be comforted by the notion that provided it is 'free' to them (ie. they pay nothing personally), it is good overall. They dare not allow the inkling that they are complicit in theft to disturb their adolescent haze.

what makes you say that? our NHS isn't intrusive; it doesn't have my DNA and i only go there if i feel shit. I don't understand how people see a public health service as a bad thing, it's saved millions of lives in Enlgand.

Rboy:

Forget the drug test, have you ever hired anyone who DJ'd? Even worse, one that DJ'ing is their first love? Expect someone to punch in every day, and not do a darn thing...

But who puts an end date to their schooling when they are STILL IN SCHOOL? The correct way denote that is 'Current', and add in an expected graduation date.

Meh. I used to be a DJ, when I was still living in Europe I did the occasional weekend joint and I never got anything but good scores on my Performance Reviews. With the exception of a single year, which was ermm. A long story.

Anyway, I think that in back in Europe, drug testing would not even be legal.

He may have felt that drug testing itself was invasive.

However there was a clear implication is actually not that he was using drugs, but as a DJ could be exposed to e.g. smoke, and potentially be a borderline failure on a blood test or show as badly as a user on a contamination test (hair, skin) despite not ever being under the influence of drugs.

A bit perverse. Anyone with any management skills or nous would have told him what the policy was, and then asked if that would be a problem. It's strange that this would be considered unacceptable instant.

Would asking if employee insurance covers winter sports be OK?

Exactly, I realize posting on an old thread but ... an employer has no business trying to enforce laws. Does the employee have the skills to do the job? Do they get the work done or does their personal life affect their work? Who (should care) if a snort a kee of coke and bang 20 hookers everynight as long as I'm smart and get my work done during the day?