Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Mandatory drug testing

As previously posted, I am not a fan of this. For starters, there is a presumption of guilt and one is always forced to prove ones innocence. How UnAmerican! It is banned in several states including the ones that the megacompany that took over our company is incorporated in and where the majority of the employees worked.
But we were forced to show up within 2 hours  of receiving a phone call or be fired. This could happen up to 3 times a year. How many people did they catch? Who knows? My guess is zero but I do know it promoted a culture of hatred towards our conquering hostile take-over company and it was a huge waste of the stockholders investment. But if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?

Because there are false positives! This was brought home to me in a story from one of Julia's friends who recently had a baby in another state. When admitted to the hospital, she was asked to pee in a cup with no explanation for what the urine was for. She assumed they were testing for glucose or protein and didn't think much of it until 3 hours after the birth in which she was visited by the State speaking to her about 'child endangerment' and threatening to remove her newborn. Why? The urine was positive for THC. She was outraged. She had the baby without any drugs, uses cloth diapers so her baby will not be exposed to whatever that is in paper diapers, is married to a doctor, is a well-educated professional herself. She demanded a retest, which was negative. She was told that there are up to 5% false positives..sorry.

The company downplayed the false positives and said that testing positive for opiates from eating poppy seeds was an urban legend. Well it isn't..it happened to Steve who was being screened for being a guinea pig for our former company. He was a fan of these particularly rich in poppyseed bagels. Once we were taken over, we didn't dare eat anything with poppyseeds or take that over the counter stuff for turista.

I haven't googgled yet to see if that state tests all OB patients or just does it randomly but it would be a good reason not to have a baby in that state.

The possible rain went right over us. Argh! No rain in sight.

1 comment:

Cheryl said...

Sue, this is an interesting one for me having not worked in a workplace that does test routinely. Must admit that I do think there is a time and a place for everything.
I was certainly unaware of the poppy seeds although we eat them regularly. Love them on bagels or bread rolls although we need the little Dirt Devil to clean them up.

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