General / Off-Topic Your Brave New Work World
- Thread starter Ralph Vargr
- Start date
I hear ya, brother. I'd love to retire, but I'm probably 5 years away unless the stock market suddenly skyrockets. The way things are going now, it might be 10 years.
But on the topic of drug screening, it's just a price we pay for getting the work, I've had to be tested (random tests and pre-employment ones) pretty much everywhere I've worked for the past 35 or so years. It's not that big of a deal for me, but I've seen others fail the test and the door was shown. Avoid illegal drugs (and in some cases, legal ones) and it's just a minor inconvenience.
Deleted member 110222
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By legal, do you mean tobacco and the like, or prescription such as the stuff I have to take for my mental state?
Well, since you're not an American, it won't affect you. But in general, they check for opioids and stimulants. In general, mental health medications like serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or lithium wouldn't be screened here.
Deleted member 110222
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Oh right. Admittedly my knowledge of workplace laws is limited, even in Britain, because I was put on the sick near immediately after getting kicked out of college.
The laws there do more to protect the workers. The laws here are decidedly in favor of the employers. For instance, you can be fired without any reason here unless you're in a government job.
We need to make sure we're adding more value to the company than we're being paid or we'll see the door on our backsides. That, or be a relative of someone with decision power.
I'm simply insane. Nothing extra required. 
I don't drink, or do "recreational" drugs. Saved lots of cash.
Once they have full biometrics in place, expect them to be hacked from the back end, or sold to the highest bidder.
Would Robin be OK with that?
Same for me, everywhere I need to use my security clearance. And, the flu shots make me sicker.
I don't drink, or do "recreational" drugs. Saved lots of cash.
Once they have full biometrics in place, expect them to be hacked from the back end, or sold to the highest bidder.
Would Robin be OK with that?
I've been living in that environment for as long as I can remember. We even got mandatory flu shots, however I always escape and I will never take any flu shots as long as i live.
every 6 month we need to go through a test for (insert all kinds of chemicals here) and this one we can't escape because our ID badge is just blocked if we don't
Same for me, everywhere I need to use my security clearance. And, the flu shots make me sicker.
Orwell and Lang were optimists.
In the cold light of day, i would say that is not actually likely to be wrong, but i would add we can make the changes to avoid much of what is already here and down the line; we are not quite out of the equation for making change just yet. Let's see how it looks in the next 10 years if we don't 'collectively' smell the coffee.
Cowardly wage slaves, is better
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I don't know about cowardly. Perhaps realistic. What can you do? Go union? A company down the highway was unionized and was bought out by a foreign company. They laid off all employees and invited them to re-apply and convince the new owners that they should be rehired. No more union. Most of the former employees had to find other work because the new owners brought employees from their country.
My dad owned a company and his employees decided to go on strike (for good reason). They didn't have a union, but wanted better working conditions. He closed the company immediately, making the workers unemployed. He then opened back up under a different name with his customer base intact.
Both of the above were perfectly legal.
Fighting "the power" isn't always a fruitful fight. There are ways around collective bargaining and companies aren't afraid to use them.
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Lets not go down that road, no politics remember
Kardashians, internet attention ats and outrage culture then
So, I got another gig. First thing they do, before anything else, is a background check, and a drug screen. SOP.
Forty years ago, they weren't doing that drug screen at all. This shows just how little trust exists in the modern workplace. I'm just going to be an engineering consultant, for a university. No money being handled at all. A simple task of RF engineering. You can't fake the work. You either get it right, or not.
So someone with a metric boatload of creds, and references, is venting REDACTED, because no one trusts anyone else.
Note: LabCorp fired their receptionist, and replaced her with an IPad. The rest of the visit was even more cordial....
I had to shower, afterwards. The whole process is degrading. Lab tech was hostile to every client. I would not like the job, either, but I have had to do a lot of nasty, hard work in my time without dumping on others.
The US military was better than this.
What have we become?
If you go lower-rung they don't even drug test you and assume you're using (helpdesk call center - when I first started HD work it was respectable if low tier). I dunno what's going on.
Job, nothing. What Vargr described is the normal procedure for finding a place to live, in much of Washington state, ganja legalization notwithstanding. This is before they find out whether or not you can afford the rent.
It's THE fight we have always fought down the ages. People vs Tyranny.
It is a constant war that always needs fighting. IF you decide to give up you will end up like those workers in China that make i-phones etc, it is just a matter of time. So it becomes a case of how bad are you willing to let your life get before saying enough is enough?
In a real Democracy you also have a clear advantage because you can not vote for those that aim to enslave you, it's your choice. And that is part of the perplexity of the modern age as we seem (in the west) to be fine allowing the world as it is, have we become sadists perhaps? Yet at the ballot box we pass up the chance for a better life for our families and children that follow us. So how free can we really be?
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We are also guilty of our situation of slaves, because by our excessive consumption, we maintain the system
For myself (and the choices i make) that was my biggest awakening to the situation. I can make better consumer choices, so i do most of the time.
enough with this catastrophism!. we're imperial slaves, brainwashed into volunteering! there's a difference!