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RE: Companies Mellowing Out on Hiring Pot Smokers Workplace Drugtesting May Soon be a thing of the Past
As a employee you do represent your company to some degree even if you are off duty. I would guess there are plenty of substances aside from weed that your boss for example would not like to see come up on a test if there was one.
What if you are involved in a lethal accident at your workplace, even tho you were not influenced at the time, it would not exactly look good for either you or the company if you tested positive for a set of drugs.
@ilte you bring up a good point, but let's assume someone isn't an idiot posting pictures of themselves smoking joints on social media and isn't doing any reputational harm to the company, having to take their pee to find that out seems to me to be invasive and extreme, assuming they aren't bringing any issues into the workplace.
With that in mind where do we draw the line. How about people who participate in extreme sports, they are more likely to die and leave a vacancy at the company. How about people who don't get 8 hours a sleep each night, they aren't going to perform their best. It's a slippery slope when we start granting permissions to employers to control you outside of your 9 to 5.
It is a hard line to draw, I don't see it being particularly useful spending times and resources enforcing frequent drug tests for the majorities of lines of work. As for work related accidents, be it major or minor, a drug test will most likely be enforced by the relevant authority. At least it is here in Norway.
And is the test positive the consequence will obviously differ from the one if it was negative. Both for the company and person.
I agree, if someone's work performance isn't up to par, if they are showing up late, if they are bringing issues into the workplace I think then maybe what they do out of work becomes fair play but assuming someone's work performance is good what they do in their own time shouldn't be their employers busienss at least IMHO