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So basically you're testing people before they start work for the day to ensure they are currently safe to operate heavy equipment? And the same person will get tested again tomorrow by someone else at a different site?
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 03:00 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 14:09 |
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The Lone Badger posted:So basically you're testing people before they start work for the day to ensure they are currently safe to operate heavy equipment? And the same person will get tested again tomorrow by someone else at a different site? As for every day- the thing is trying to test all 1200 people at a heavy construction site every day isn’t really feasible. For my biggest client I’ve ever worked with, everyone was tested after their orientation, since that’s one or two times a week and less than 40 people, they finish at 2ish so getting them all done by 5 is easy. This eventually flipped to before orientation because of issues with people trying to drag out tests. Then there’s the reasonable suspicion and post incident tests, which are exactly what they sound like. Most places typically have a pretty ironclad set of paperwork for these that two managers/foremen have to sign off on. The randoms aimed for 10 percent of the site population a month, and we’d try to get the heavy equipment people like crane operators either first thing or after lunch, since that was the highest potential for someone being unfit for duty. If you tested more than three times in a month something was going seriously wrong, because that would be like a pre-employment+a random+ a reasonable suspicion. I have only ever had one reasonable suspicion come up negative, usually people are pretty good about spotting someone being clearly messed up.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 03:10 |
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Were people seriously having lunch-beers when operating heavy equipment? I love a beer as much as the next guy [who really loves beer], but I'm strict about being stone-cold sober when I need to be.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 04:37 |
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How often do you run into somebody hosed up on some new research-chemical that you don't even have a test for yet? Are the new opiod analogues (carfentanyl etc) a challenge to test for given how low a concentration is needed to make someone unsafe to work?
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 05:01 |
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PT6A posted:Were people seriously having lunch-beers when operating heavy equipment? On the “working EHS” side of things I once busted six people having a “happy hour” in the afternoon with the Budweiser margaritas on the side of a heat recovery steam generator like 150 feet up. The Lone Badger posted:How often do you run into somebody hosed up on some new research-chemical that you don't even have a test for yet? Thats one of those things where it would be hard to know since you don’t know what ones you’re missing, but, as far as the opioid analogues, the testing can be so incredibly sensitive I’m not tooooo concerned. The THC metabolite test has a cutoff of 50 nanograms/mL. If someone is regularly using an opioid analogue they’ll still come up. The RCs are where it gets dicey, since there’s so many and they change so much it’s unlikely there will ever really be tests for anything but the most common ones.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 13:00 |
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Employment tests are basically always for active impairment. You see metabolites (AKA the 80-hour test) in parole/probation/DCFS tests which are something I don’t really deal in. Interesting. I think that's my biggest bugaboo with testing for weed as well. That there's no way to differentiate between someone who smoked over the weekend and someone who got high before or during a shift. My understanding of the matter is that even if you have a legit medical marijuana card, you can still get clipped from your job at the employer's discretion but I expect more challenges to that as we move forward and as MM becomes more commonplace and mainstream. I don't typically work in areas where safety is a huge concern but do sometimes run large cutters, plotters and flatbed printers. Most of my work is in Adobe CS and the only thing I might crash is my hard drive but my last boss randomed everyone and called weed "garbage". Just seems hosed up that if you have a legal script for, say, Xanax, pain medicine or pot that a company can deny you employment at their sole judgement but I think it varies by state. Like, what if you take an anti seizure medicine (like my son does) or have manic, anxiety or depression issues and some HR manager decides he doesn't want to hire people with epilepsy, bipolar disorder or arthritis? What if you took birth control or legally prescribed steroids and some person didn't like it? Seems like it's a wide open discrimination case to me. This is a cool thread.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:55 |
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BiggerBoat posted:l Those are all protected health information, so if you have a perscription for it all an MRO report will say is negative. It won’t say that anything came up on the test, though obviously an MRO report means something did (on a non-DOT test). The medical marijuana and opiates are the two main exemptions, one because it’s federally illegal and the other because there’s a demonstrable safety risk involved.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:22 |
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We've heard a lot about the opiod crisis in America, how did you see that play out? Did you notice more and more people with opiods in their system as it got worse?
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 12:29 |
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:We've heard a lot about the opiod crisis in America, how did you see that play out? Did you notice more and more people with opiods in their system as it got worse? That had fully kicked in by the time I started doing it, but there’s definitely more positives from states that were hit harder like NY/MA/KY/FL.
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# ? Mar 5, 2021 00:53 |
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That had fully kicked in by the time I started doing it, but there’s definitely more positives from states that were hit harder like NY/MA/KY/FL. Have you noticed trends in drug use before they get reported in the media?
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# ? Mar 5, 2021 01:37 |
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Not really, since I by and large just test for standard stuff (one place makes me test for ketamine, but that’s the only oddball.) I guess I would notice if Quaaludes were making a comeback since those are in the ten panel but no one in the US has done that in like thirty years and I don’t think you can even get them here anymore.
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# ? Mar 5, 2021 02:47 |
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I know you're limited in how much you can talk about this, but does the standard bulk test include various biomarkers to confirm that this is real bodily fluid from an actual live human being? Or is that a 'deluxe' feature?
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# ? Mar 5, 2021 02:55 |
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The Lone Badger posted:I know you're limited in how much you can talk about this, but does the standard bulk test include various biomarkers to confirm that this is real bodily fluid from an actual live human being? Or is that a 'deluxe' feature? Density and creatinine, with a strip to detect oxidizers like bleach. That’s really it.
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# ? Mar 5, 2021 03:12 |
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Since you've presumably done a quite a few tests, what's the best drug?
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 11:40 |
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Do you watch the people pee? And are there any rules/policies in place that ensure the testee is comfortable with the gender of who's watching them?
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# ? Mar 10, 2021 18:18 |
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Do you watch the people pee? And are there any rules/policies in place that ensure the testee is comfortable with the gender of who's watching them? Typically no, unless one of the clearly defined reasons to has come up. quote:The employee attempts to tamper with his or her specimen at the collection site. Those are the DOT procedures and basically any employment test somewhere reputable will follow those even if it’s not a DOT test. Parole/DCFS tests are often always observed.
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# ? Mar 11, 2021 01:25 |
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Thanks for the thorough reply! I had to do random pee-testing during counseling after my DUI, and the way that worked was the counselor sat outside the bathroom door, with the door cracked. She could theoretically peek to make sure you weren't ripping a piss-filled condom off your thigh, but generally we had "privacy but you never know if she was looking". To my knowledge no one in my group ever tried anything shifty. I was wondering also because: what if you're stealth trans? Being trans has its own host of problems with getting employment without having to worry about being outed due to a pee test. Has a situation like that come up for you, or do you have any anecdotes on how that's handled?
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# ? Mar 11, 2021 19:11 |
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If i'm reading those guidelines correctly the proctor doesn't actually see the donor's genital area, just their thighs. So you could stay stealth.
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# ? Mar 12, 2021 00:24 |
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The Lone Badger posted:If i'm reading those guidelines correctly the proctor doesn't actually see the donor's genital area, just their thighs. So you could stay stealth. Nope, everything is lowered to mid-thigh. quote:
It’s not a situation ive run into yet.
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# ? Mar 12, 2021 01:28 |
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How much do you know about the employer side of tests? For example, why would a video editing studio, bagle shop or any other business without heavy machinery/medical kinds of immediate risks care about drug testing when hiring? The "common knowledge" is that some insurance demands it for unspoken reasons, but is that real? If so, why do they only care when hiring and not any time after?
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 15:16 |
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Insurance often does demand it on hiring for lower rates, and the reason comes down to money. If someone can get it together and not do drugs for long enough to pass a drug test, they are X% less likely to be fully addicted and X% less likely to cause a workplace incident requiring a payout.
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:28 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 14:09 |
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Spikes32 posted:Insurance often does demand it on hiring for lower rates, and the reason comes down to money. If someone can get it together and not do drugs for long enough to pass a drug test, they are X% less likely to be fully addicted and X% less likely to cause a workplace incident requiring a payout. It’s exactly this. And you would be shocked the ways hosed up people can find ways to mangle themselves even in places you would think are completely safe. A huge amount of serious workplace injuries (both what most people would consider serious and the OSHA definition of serious) are from same-level falls.
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:47 |