- Mar 25, 2007
- 1,310
- 10
- 181
Oh goodness, do I feel older than dirt--remember three-martini lunches?
I know this won't make me popular, but I am against job-related drug testing. Wait, wait--I'm older than 25 (I'm older than Methuselah, apparently), and my drug use consists solely of 6 Advil at That Time Of The Month. Does my opinion still count?
The reasons I'm against it:
1. There are plenty of prescription meds, legally given and legitimately prescribed, which mentally and coordination/alertness-wise will mess you up as much as any illegal drug. No one tells cancer patients their morphine prohibits them from keeping their jobs, no one tells ADHD people their Ritalin dose makes them too jittery to work, no one tells employees with clinical depression that their Paxil withdrawals are disorienting them too much to work. So testing for illegal medications isn't really the point, if legal meds can (and often do) produce the same effects. Anyone here ever gone to work while taking Darvocet or Percoset after surgery? Congrats, you've gone to work stoned, whether you realized it or not.
2. There are plenty of non-drug sources of workplace hazards and disoriented employees, a major one being lack of sleep. Employees working double shifts, swing shifts, excessive overtime, new parents, employees going through a lot of stress for other reasons, all will be at least as disoriented, uncoordinated and affected by poor judgment as a heroin addict. However, the same employers who insist on random and pre-hire drug testing still make employees work absurd hours and give precious little time off or even unpaid leave.
3. At what point do you draw the line for privacy? Nowadays some employers also won't hire tobacco smokers. A few are looking into forcing overweight employees to pay higher health insurance premiums. Some employers won't hire anyone gay if they can help it. I don't smoke anything, I'm happily married and I'm a size 4, but neither do I think it's my boss' business if I have a slice of cake at lunch. Some employers have even refused to hire employees whose genetic testing shows susceptibility to cancers, to keep their health care costs down--not employees who actually have cancer, but healthy people whose genetic profile suggests that at some time in the future (could be 20 years in the future or never) they have a higher-than-average chance of getting cancer. Employment should be about getting tasks done for some fairly negotiated price. It should not be about owning people. Employees who do their jobs well are about all employers can reasonably ask for or expect. If they want more than that, they better get to work on robots.
4. I've seen far more employers than I ever wanted to, who did NOT give a rat's behind about on-the-job safety in many many ways, but thought that somehow drug testing was a magic bullet that was going to solve issues like: no basic chemical hygiene, machines with no safety guards on them, no personal protective equipment, no training on how to handle hazardous chemicals, hiring people who didn't have any training or education and couldn't read the safety manual to know what they were supposed to do, no air quality testing, people operating equipment without licenses, poor engineering, antiquated engineering, faulty equipment, bad morale to the point that employees were sabotaging work and equipment...They couldn't solve those basic problems, but they seemed to think that drug testing would "weed out the bad apples" and fix everything else. And they were always surprised to find that nothing particularly changed. Tsk, tsk.
5. If you're a manager, a drug test is not a substitute for effective supervision. If your employee is not performing up to par, re-train 'em, send 'em to HR for the Employee Assistance Program, or tell 'em their services are no longer required. It really is that simple. If you can't supervise all your employees well enough to observe which ones aren't pulling their weight, which ones seem to be accident magnets and which ones are falling asleep on the job, then you need fewer direct reports and more time management skills. I've seen a lot of managers who think drug tests, personality tests and so forth are an adequate substitute for a $30 reference check, a serious job interview and actual direct supervision.
I know this won't make me popular, but I am against job-related drug testing. Wait, wait--I'm older than 25 (I'm older than Methuselah, apparently), and my drug use consists solely of 6 Advil at That Time Of The Month. Does my opinion still count?
The reasons I'm against it:
1. There are plenty of prescription meds, legally given and legitimately prescribed, which mentally and coordination/alertness-wise will mess you up as much as any illegal drug. No one tells cancer patients their morphine prohibits them from keeping their jobs, no one tells ADHD people their Ritalin dose makes them too jittery to work, no one tells employees with clinical depression that their Paxil withdrawals are disorienting them too much to work. So testing for illegal medications isn't really the point, if legal meds can (and often do) produce the same effects. Anyone here ever gone to work while taking Darvocet or Percoset after surgery? Congrats, you've gone to work stoned, whether you realized it or not.
2. There are plenty of non-drug sources of workplace hazards and disoriented employees, a major one being lack of sleep. Employees working double shifts, swing shifts, excessive overtime, new parents, employees going through a lot of stress for other reasons, all will be at least as disoriented, uncoordinated and affected by poor judgment as a heroin addict. However, the same employers who insist on random and pre-hire drug testing still make employees work absurd hours and give precious little time off or even unpaid leave.
3. At what point do you draw the line for privacy? Nowadays some employers also won't hire tobacco smokers. A few are looking into forcing overweight employees to pay higher health insurance premiums. Some employers won't hire anyone gay if they can help it. I don't smoke anything, I'm happily married and I'm a size 4, but neither do I think it's my boss' business if I have a slice of cake at lunch. Some employers have even refused to hire employees whose genetic testing shows susceptibility to cancers, to keep their health care costs down--not employees who actually have cancer, but healthy people whose genetic profile suggests that at some time in the future (could be 20 years in the future or never) they have a higher-than-average chance of getting cancer. Employment should be about getting tasks done for some fairly negotiated price. It should not be about owning people. Employees who do their jobs well are about all employers can reasonably ask for or expect. If they want more than that, they better get to work on robots.
4. I've seen far more employers than I ever wanted to, who did NOT give a rat's behind about on-the-job safety in many many ways, but thought that somehow drug testing was a magic bullet that was going to solve issues like: no basic chemical hygiene, machines with no safety guards on them, no personal protective equipment, no training on how to handle hazardous chemicals, hiring people who didn't have any training or education and couldn't read the safety manual to know what they were supposed to do, no air quality testing, people operating equipment without licenses, poor engineering, antiquated engineering, faulty equipment, bad morale to the point that employees were sabotaging work and equipment...They couldn't solve those basic problems, but they seemed to think that drug testing would "weed out the bad apples" and fix everything else. And they were always surprised to find that nothing particularly changed. Tsk, tsk.
5. If you're a manager, a drug test is not a substitute for effective supervision. If your employee is not performing up to par, re-train 'em, send 'em to HR for the Employee Assistance Program, or tell 'em their services are no longer required. It really is that simple. If you can't supervise all your employees well enough to observe which ones aren't pulling their weight, which ones seem to be accident magnets and which ones are falling asleep on the job, then you need fewer direct reports and more time management skills. I've seen a lot of managers who think drug tests, personality tests and so forth are an adequate substitute for a $30 reference check, a serious job interview and actual direct supervision.
