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Comment by Run_DOS_Run | Hacker News Reader

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests.

I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US?

Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to control my private life I see as a personal attack.

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In the US it’s fairly common policy to have when the employee could present a liability issue, such as driving a company provided vehicle, or operating heavy/dangerous equipment. Drug tests are a “cover our ass” measure and also make getting rid of “that fucking guy” easier.

In practice it varies heavily on how it’s implemented, generally a company isn’t really keen to spend the money and time on that shit until after they’ve been burned by incidents.

- Could be once on hiring, then only if you really fuck up. This is what my company does.

- Could be “random” testing that just so happens to “randomly” catch the obvious fuckwit who walked in after driving to work while probably blitzed and now wants to hop in a sprayer.

- Could be genuinely random testing.

I work in Agriculture, and my company provides me a work pickup truck (funny enough, my ATV in the back is my actual “work” vehicle if you consider time spent driving) along with fuel, which I can make reasonable personal use of. The tradeoff is they demand the ability to get notified of tickets/points added on my license, and if I start repeatedly getting speeding tickets and ignore the “hey, stop that shit” talk they give me, they’ll ultimately rescind the free vehicle they’ve provided me. Getting a DUI would very likely result in immediate termination. Which I consider fair enough

If I worked a desk job and don’t have a situation where altered states of mind would present a massive danger to myself, others, and company equipment, then yeah drug tests can fuck right off.

>also make getting rid of “that fucking guy” easier.

Very much so. An ex-coworker worked for a cardboard factory, attempted to unionize the workforce by providing lunches to workers during talk shops. He was taking liquid cannabis, had a doctors permission, script to get his medical card, only dosed enough for his aliment, and HR was aware.

Management had him take a urine analysis, supposedly workforce wide, of course failed due to the cannabis use, fired him the same day.

Never missed a day he scheduled, good guy.

Working for the city we do routine tests, especially CDL drivers, but from what I understand, they don't look for positive tests for cannabis, so I'm unsure if we're seeing a shift due to the legalization across nearly half the US, or they're specifically looking for opioids.

Just figured I'd share a perspective.

Not a lawyer, but seems like a slam dunk medical discrimination case.

First source I could fine, but I’m sure you can find more:

https://www.rkpt.com/business-and-corporate-law/employment-a...

That's a good source, however the issue that I see is that they already knew about it and kept him on.

You can't say it's okay to use marajuna and then later say, I had no idea he would test positive for marajuna. They should have reasonably known that he would test positive for marajuna.

Maybe it's not a medical discrimination case, but it's definately a case.

It's a National Labor Relations Act case. Employees have the right to talk about unionization with their coworkers.

The employer constructed the other evidence as an excuse (which is what basically any employer knowledgable of the law does), but the previous approval would undermine the validity of that evidence.

My first “real” job demanded a background check where they could “interview my neighbors to get a sense of my character” and other egregious things. I tried many times to get in touch with the background check provider’s (backcheck in Canada) privacy team, never ever got to a human or anyone to return my voicemails.

The employer was completely incredulous I would refuse to submit to the background check and thought I had stuff to hide. I was laid off in short order. I do t regret anything, this was invasive and unnecessary. I’ve never had to do a background check again beyond providing an extract of my police file that says I have no convictions.

What kind of job was this for? because interviewing neighbours is something that sounds like part of a top secret clearance not a private company background check

They probably don’t do it but it was in the paperwork I had to sign to authorize the background check and it felt way too intrusive for just a regular job, which is why I always refused to sign it.

> Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test.

Some companies have contracts with the Federal Government and even if you won't be working on those projects or won't have to get the security clearance, there are certain clauses in the contracts which requires the company to not have employees drink at work, to drug test employees and other stuff like that.

I once was asked to do a drug test as the offer was contingent on the drug test to clear because of this kind of contract. I rejected the offer from other reasons, but the recruiter told me we can schedule the drug test weeks in advance, to make sure 'everything is out of your system, just in case'. It was a urine test, and I got the feeling that the company was trying to make sure the test was going to clear regardless of my lifestyle outside of work, no questions asked.

Also, the recruiter told me it was a one-time thing for me and other 'general purpose' employees, but persons directly involved in the whole security clearance government stuff were subject to random testing.

I heard a (likely apocryphal) story that selling govcloud service would require drug testing for employees that had any access at all to those systems. The story goes that the engineering leader laughed their sales counterpart making the proposal out of the room because they expected to lose approximately a third of their employee base to such nonsense. This was before marijuana legalization became so widespread, I assume some kind of reality has taken hold now such that the requirements are achievable by a tech population that, anecdotally, smokes a lot of weed off hours.

weed is still illegal under federal law, so its a no-no if you're doing federal work. state-level is a different story.

in most cases no one cares if you did it last year, but you gotta be clean while on the gub'mnt / contractor payroll.

unofficially after the drug test i don't think anyone asks too many questions. just make sure you don't have to lie on the background check cuz I've seen people upgrade from a Secret to higher, and the higher clearance investigations went deeper and found stuff. RIP job in that case.

but seriously tho, knew a dude who did GIS work for the DIA and he was ripping a bong the second he got home. he eventually got really into the cult-y motivational speaker world, not sure where he is now, but was making fat stacks while blazing for a while

When I started each of my last 2 jobs, I had to take a drug test. They are both US Fortune 500 companies. They are just normal computer operations type jobs.

The previous company won their case in Colorado Supreme Court to fire someone using medical marijuana even while off-duty.[0]

Additionally, even though we passed a law (constitutional amendment) allowing recreational use in Colorado, employers are still allowed to test and fire you for it.

[0] https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/colorado-...

Intel had me do a drug test just for an internship that I was almost going to take in 1996 or 97. I'm not sure if they still do that, I haven't had a drug test since getting my Chinese work visa (which required a drug and Aids test).

No drug tests at Intel for SWE blue badges circa 2015-2017.

Intel used to come up regularly in discussions as requiring drug tests of all engineer new hires - and people either not bothering to apply based on that or trying to never show up for the test. Good to hear hints that this changed.

fwiw: That was in Oregon where pot was legal. I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat more strict in say, Arizona. Also, I knew that fab folks, both blue and green badge (people wearing bunny suits) were drug tested.

I was a contractor for Motorola and had to take a drug test, I have never consumed so much water in my life.

AIDS (HIV?) test? Were they going to discriminate against people with HIV? I don't get it. What about other STDs?

Many countries do this for immigration. In New Zealand they say your test result doesn't affect your application. Whether that's true I don't know.

you want to know of any potential carriers and be able to trace potential vectors. plus if you offer socialized medicine you want to know that in order to adjust things like supplies of drugs and coverage for foreign travelers.

Canadian immigration wanted my full medical history for Permanent Resident status, and there was a medical check, blood work, and a chest xray for TB. I was in the US military with injuries from that, and they asked for all of the paperwork.

From the US Government USCIS Form I-693 Instructions:

The civil surgeon is required to perform specific tests for tuberculosis, syphilis, and gonorrhea. The medical examination also requires the civil surgeon to evaluate for other sexually transmitted diseases and Hansen’s disease (leprosy).

Furthermore it suggests that physical and mental disorders may be grounds for disqualification. Finally, drug addiction and substance abuse generally must be disclosed.

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-6...

Disease control is one of the primary tasks of customs and immigrations agencies around the world. This authority was exercised quite prominently in 2020. But it is also exercised pretty mundanely on daily basis in regards to the transport of agriculture that carries diseases of agricultural concern... much to the frustration of travelers with foreign snacks.

Weird. I was not asked for any drug test for my Chinese work visa (only the Aids one).

High security jobs. Jobs in finance. Anything involving driving or operating machinery. Maybe customer-facing jobs. Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company.

> Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company.

Does the C-suite also get regular, supervised piss-in-a-cup tests, or do they actually not have as much impact on the success of the firm as they claim to?

And do they get paid off for drinking at work? Masters of having it both ways

No, but they only do performance-enhancing coke, so no worries there.

Depending on the legal environment, maybe. But it's not as if c-suite positions have zero job screening. They have a different screening process which includes other things that lower level positions don't have to do.

I've seen even at home background check and interview. To answer, who really is this person and how does he live?

Companies have weird requests sometimes. A good decade ago or more, I was asked to sign a disclosure that I was not a member of a certain faith (that has/had anti-tech sentiment at the time). That would definitely not happen these days.

> I was asked to sign a disclosure that I was not a member of a certain faith (that has/had anti-tech sentiment at the time)

Ye that sounds both illegal and pointless.

I'm super curious, what was this faith? the only ones I can think of are the Amish and Mennonites, but neither of those are going to take tech jobs in the first place.

My company drug tests everyone they hire, regardless of the position. They say it's for a discount on employment insurance, but I have not verified that. They only test once, on the start date. They'll only ever test again if you fuck up on the job and hurt someone, or yourself.

> I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US?

For software jobs? No, they aren't very common. But they are not unheard of.

As part of the vetting procedure, my government job (not dealing with highly classified material) asked my former employers if they knew any of my sexual fetishes.

Unless your former employer was Cloudflare or Mindgeek, I'm not sure how would they know lol

People often talk. Jim used to date Jenny in Accounting, and he said she's really, like REALLY, into S/M, etc.

Plus you'd be surprised (or maybe not) as to the number of DNS queries we get from employee workstations that are to questionable websites. I couldn't tell you all of my coworkers that are gay, but I can tell you a few that are hitting gay porn websites from their work laptop.

I interviewed for a random postdoc in the USA and then they offered and they asked for drug test and I told them no I have body autonomy and you don't get to decide what I do with my body when I'm not at work. And from the mysterious aether a directive came suddenly that it wasn't required only recommended that I take a drug test.

Seems like drug tests are just a strange tool of humiliation

Yes. Lots of jobs require drug tests. Used to be more common.

Many jobs give you lots of warning. So it isn’t so much “are you doing drugs” as “can you stop doing drugs.”

The only time I was drug testing was when I was hired to work at a gas transmission pipeline company and I felt that was a totally reasonable request.

I had to do a drug test prior to my start date for an F500 some years ago, but never again afterwards.

>I would quit immediately

Not everyone has that privilege.

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