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Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you.

The one thing I can never figure out is why managers of some types of companies run them the way they do. Why couldn't a call center employee work with a headset from a van and wear whatever they please? There's all sorts of strange practices that some of these companies do. Never in a million years would I ask an employee to submit to a drug test before being employed for example- yet that's what things like call centers do.

I want my employees to be happy, because they are the people that make the company work. When I talk to a manager of a company like this - they act like I've never managed anything before and just 'dont get it'.

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Why couldn't a call center employee ... wear whatever they please?

Presumably the managerial types are trying to help cultivate a "professional" environment.

Never in a million years would I ask an employee to submit to a drug test

I understand the personal freedoms angle, but I can also sympathize with employers who are tired of discovering that guy they hired last week is actually a raging meth head.

What does it matter if their employees are meth heads, they shouldn't have to be tested.

If they are unproductive, look like shit, have poor time management, have mood swings etc then they are a liability to their employer because of those things, not because they "do drugs".

On the other hand if they are productive, are professional, [any other positive attribute] and contribute to their employer, does it matter if they are on drugs at the time?

Granted, I've never meet anyone that are actually functional members of society once they start abusing something like meth, but my point is that employees should be judged purely on their performance in the workplace or how they contribute.

I assume it's more about predicting these things before employment begins - someone might look ok at the interview but if you found out traces of drugs in his blood that could be an indicator that this is not their usual state.

Basically we're talking about low-skilled jobs that always have plenty of applicants, filtering a bit too many people isn't that big of a deal when there're still plenty of others remaining afterwards.

It's just a cheap initial filter, as long as it's better than completely arbitrary it's probably beneficial to have.

That depends, Pot is detected by a drugs test if the person has used within around 3 weeks.

So you would get a positive reading from somebody who went to a party 2 weekends ago and took a couple of hits from a joint.

Not that it matters much, and this is only anecdotal but I had friends who would smoke pretty frequently. A lot of call centers, and retail spots would drug test. My friends would still get the job if they got past the initial interview. It seems like most companies are more interested in harder drugs, which I can understand.

On topic: I think that if you're looking for a cost effective way to live, do what someone said earlier and move to a less prominent neighborhood. This seems like it would be more along the lines of "fun to do for a couple weeks".

Because employers believe that P(workplace violence/poor time management/etc | meth head) > P(workplace violence/poor time management/etc).

Do you disagree that this is the case?

You've never had to deal with someone who came to work while on drugs, have you?

Someone can go from comparatively normal to crazy enough to freak everyone out and maybe get someone hurt in no time flat. That's a bit of a problem, especially given that some people work at places where accidents like slitting one's wrist wide open, crushing one's hand and being killed by an item dropped by a forklift happen a little too regularly, even to people who are not thus impaired.

I think the GGP was referring mainly to workplaces that don't involve dealing with dangerous equipment. Besides there's a big difference between smoking some pot outside of work hours and coming to work under the influence of meth.

When I worked in low paid (mainly call centre) jobs, people coming to work high was a pretty common thing. The jobs were easy and repetitive enough that it didn't affect performance at all. In fact if they had started drug testing they would probably have lost many of their best employees.

Drug tests are much easier, cheaper and quicker. You don't have to risk putting them in the workplace and then wait till they screw up. You don't have to wait for the manager to look at their behaviour and make a call. You don't have to worry that the manager might know the person and be easy on them. One quick test and it filters out lots.

I work for the largest (I believe) 'callcenter in the cloud' companies. http://www.liveops.com/

You can work from anywhere, as long as you have a good phone line and good Internet.

The call center I used to work at had no dress code and no drug tests. In fact, almost everyone who worked there, other than myself, was constantly stoned.

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