Disclosing because I have left this position and have no ties to the company. Be me, it’s 2022, your son just turned one year old and you’re making $13/hr at a manufacturing plant. You live with your parents and you can’t afford to move out along paying for supplies and support for baby. Smoke weed.
I quickly realized that I needed more money, but I have no degree. So what did I do? I started studying for a certification. It would be ~20 degrees in the plant and I’d be studying at my desk, taking breaks to wrap my hands with pocket warmers. I scoured every entry level tech type of job I could find. Finally, I found a great position offering $25/hr, no experience necessary. Took their aptitude test, passed it, passed the interviewing stage, recieved job offer. Now I was excited, I live in LCOL area and this was my shot. But there was one thing I needed, to pass a drug test.
Now I knew I was screwed. I wouldn’t be able to detox in the time frame and I got desperate. I needed piss. Found some from a government employed friend. Kept it fresh, heated it up, wrapped it in a pocket warmer and stuffed it in my boxers. Go in, make the move and submit my sample. Now that week was the most anxious and tense 7 days of my life. I hear nothing back, then I finally get the email with my start date and orientation. I breathe a sigh of relief.
I start the job and it is great. I’m able to move out of my parents, put my son in daycare, but a new car, wonderful. I make my rent in less than a week. I’ve built such a rapport with my plug he’ll give me free test packs just for me. The job is union protected, great benefits, great managers. Now I had to work very hard, in very dangerous and stressful conditions. I don’t regret it at all, but I remember thinking to myself during training (which I got paid travel, hotel, and food for) that man, this is the life I’m being kept from for something as asinine as weed.
So I’m feeling guilty but not like crazy guilty about what I’ve done when we get a new manager. Now let me tell I love this guy, best manager I’ve ever had in my entire working career. The empathy and respect show by someone who was in my same title and position just a year earlier, man. Now the job isn’t just physically demanding but there are also performance goals to meet. But come to find out, as a tech, my manager basically broke/bent some rules to get immaculate results, which led to his promotion as manager. And I come to the realization, that to be successful at least to the point of full on self sufficiency, you gotta bend the rules a little. Also that drug tests are arbitrary as hell, I can only speak for myself when I say that I’m not stealing company property to buy some weed.
But with one year under my belt, I have left that job, and have accepted an offer for $32/hr doing essentially the same work but in sweet sweet AIR CONDITIONED offices. Which I wouldn’t have got without the experience from that one job. And also with the skills learned, I’m the asset these companies need. I’m not advocating for my actions but the people above get away with things much more consequential than a slick drug test. Do what you gotta, because they already are.
TL:DR, fuck drug tests.