Do you work with a bunch of drunks?

[tree MDS]

I don't think so.

By saying there would be a shortage in manpower if they had a drug and alchohol testing program, is that to say the industry is loaded with abusers?

Sounds pretty scary.

What have you been living under a rock or something dude??

Its always been like that with treeworkers ... I'm not saying its a good thing, but it is a fact.

 

[jefflovstrom]

:monkey: How did we ever survive?
Jeff

 

[tree md]

I don't think so.

By saying there would be a shortage in manpower if they had a drug and alchohol testing program, is that to say the industry is loaded with abusers?

Sounds pretty scary.

I did monolithic foundations in my late teens and early 20's. It was what I mostly did before I got into tree work. Most crews were all out drunks and addicts. I was no saint but I was a saint compared to most of those guys. Most of that work is subcontracted but a very large, multi state, residential home builder decided to go in house and do his own foundations. He bought equipment and put three crews to work. You had to pass a drug test to work for this company and they had a hard time filling positions.

I was actually already doing tree work when the GM got my name from one of his foremen that I had worked with in the past and called to recruit me. He offered me too much money and benefits to pass it up. I gave two weeks notice where I was at and started doing my orientation for the other company. While I was doing my orientation the GM got me alone and said that he had been told by the foreman that I was very good at the job and he wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to pass the UA and told me to take more time if I needed to clean up. I was not smoking weed at that point, it was no big deal and told him I would have no problems. He told me he knew many great workers but they were having trouble filling positions because they couldn't find people who could pass the UA.

I'll tell you that the money and working conditions were much better working for that outfit than any other; even if you did have to work with a bunch of green hands that had no idea what they were doing...

 

[highpointtree]

I agree, ignorance is on display. People who smoke pot have to listen, because it's a mind and mood altering, illegal narcotic. I know certain states have 'legalized' it, however, if you look at the foreign countries that have, crime has risen sharply. I personally drug test all employees. I make sure they all know it's zero tolerance. This job is dangerous enough, we don't need delayed reaction times, and a lax mental attitude.

BTW, the argument that lawyers/Docs, and other people do it, so why can't I? Is a little ignorant. I know doctors that cut themselves for pleasure, so shouldn't we all? I know a Lawyer in my town, that just got brought up on Rape charges, C'mon mom, I wanna too! A small minority of a group should never be taken as a rule. Also, again, I stress, it's illegal.

So, that's why we strap you dope-heads down and make you listen with a gun to your head.

Jeff



FYI, I thought I should mention this so I don't get the typical, response, "you just never tried it..." I used to do all kinds of illegal narcotics, for all the same reasons, most people do. Then I grew up and stopped the childish behaviors. Been drug free over 3 and a half yrs now. God Bless

nothing worse than a reformed drug addict or alchoholic.. yea in my hayday I smoked more pot than most people did cig's. and these days I save it for camping or fishing. (so about 3-4 times a year ) no time or place for it around work, chainsaw's and equipment. and since I'm signing the check's, I insist everyone else is straight also. I do drug test, but more for insurance reason's. other than that there's no test nessassary. been there done that and I will know when your doing it...

 

[highpointtree]

I went out and purchased the AL-7000 because I hired a man with an alcohol problem. I was working with him with his complete consent, just to keep him at work. Unfortunately, I discovered that I could not keep him sober, and he continued to defeat my efforts to keep him sober.

Having discovered that I could be fooled about when he was drinking, I eliminated any chance of being fooled by acquiring a foolproof test. At this point I was already obliged as an employer to accepting his condition. I was honor bound to not fire him for being a drunk, only for being drunk on the job.

My efforts to keep him sober were so extensive, I only gave him $30 on payday, and withheld the rest of the money. I would parse it out to him at $7.00 per day for living expenses, and would make larger advances upon request. Toward the end, if he tested with any alcohol in his system at all while he was on the clock, he forfeited the entire days pay.

None of my efforts made any difference. He would still slip out and find something to drink. After several warnings, and having caught him repeatedly operating a machine under the influence, he blew more than twice the legal limit after driving down the road in a rented backhoe.

I fired him.

Now I am still parsing out all $6,000 he had saved up in small increments to him. He has gone through $2900 in 6 weeks, and is not paying for any rent, utilities, or vehicles. It will be very sad when he runs out of money, because then he will probably be a ward of the State.

BTW: he spent 18 months in prison for driving drunk. Even though he was eligible for reinstatement, I never got him his license, because I knew he would go back.

Since then, I like having the tester for other purposes. Like DOT compliance and keeping the other drunks out of the trucks.

sounds like your his mom or parole occifer (hiccup). you don't change people, they change themselves...

 

[jefflovstrom]

Lots of things were illegal, depends if they can tax it to make it leagal.
Jeff

 

[jefflovstrom]

Lots of things were illegal, depends if they can tax it to make it legal.
Jeff

 

[jefflovstrom]

Lee-gal
Leagal
legal
What-ever
Jeff

 

[EdenT]

I would be interested to know how many of you anti-drug people out there use alcohol. It is a legal narcotic (because it is easily taxed) and as such accepted in society. A person having a drink at lunchtime is something most of us wouldn't even notice unless they were obviously drunk. This legal narcotic leads to many adverse effects and terrible events occurring. Nobody bashes their wives or gets into fights because they're stoned on pot. When people drink and drive they think they can drive faster. When people smoke and drive they drive slower.

As far as the other drugs go, well if it makes you think you can fly, then stay the hell away from me. People should be free to do whatever they want in their own time (as long as it stays in their own time), provided they do not have an adverse effect on others. If some idiot wants to kill himself with heroin that's fine by me as long as they clean up their needles and #### so no-one else has to be adversely affected by it.

The problem I have with alcohol, cocaine and meth is that the user tends to share their problems with the world. They are the unpredictable crazy ones who can be fine one minute and a PITA the next. They are the ones who have violent outbursts, outrageous self confidence (particularly when doing dangerous things), and talk #### constantly.

All that aside it seems there is a consensus of opinion, at least in this thread that drugs do not belong in the workplace and that is a good thing. To those who say I am still affected by pot for 30 days after I smoke it, BS! I work harder, smarter, longer, and safer than any non-smoker weight for weight that I have ever worked with in any industry. Work ethic and attitude is about who you are as a person, not about how you waste your leisure time.

 

[pdqdl]

sounds like your his mom or parole occifer (hiccup). you don't change people, they change themselves...

That is exactly what I told him.

The only reason I was doing all that crap was because he said he needed help, but wanted to change. When I fired him, I told him I was tired of waiting for change to happen.

 

[highpointtree]

That is exactly what I told him.

The only reason I was doing all that crap was because he said he needed help, but wanted to change. When I fired him, I told him I was tired of waiting for change to happen.

I stuck it out with a good guy that lived on the dark side. It took two years, but he finally did the rehab thing (on his own) Now we both benifit greatly. sometimes ya win, sometimes ya don't.

 

[pdqdl]

Man Pdqdl, you have quite the eye when it comes to spotting drug use! It's almost as if you copy and pasted that stuff off another website!

However, like I said earlier, maybe page 1 or 2, I think forcing a grown man to use that little gadget before you allow him to work is absurd. If you recognize that someone is hungover and needs to go home or drag brush all day, ask him if that's the case.
...

No copy and paste, I never did anything but started typing. Like I said, I have hired LOTS of chemically dependent employees.

It's not a "little gadget", it is a DOT compliant blood-alcohol detection device. Not only do I require my men to blow in it "upon reasonable suspicion", I will fire anyone that refuses to blow.

To date, I have never asked anyone to blow in the contraption who has not been drunk. The only guys that I tested besides my bad drunk came to me and reported that they probably shouldn't work. We simply agreed - "Let's find out".

Four years ago, I fired a guy for being staggering drunk and obnoxious at work. He was told to leave at first, and it went downhill after that. When he applied for unemployment insurance, the person doing the evaluation of the case asked me how I could be sure that he was drunk when I fired him. All the descriptions of staggering, slurring words, and unruly conduct were not persuasive. I had to get another employee to state that the offender admitted to being drunk at the time. He was denying ever saying that at the time of the telephone hearing.

20 years ago, I sneaked up on an entire crew and found them drinking beer in a public park they were supposed to be mowing. None of the accused would admit to drinking, and I was doing "breath in my face" tests, which they still denied. They only became honest when I threatened to take them back to their halfway-houses to find out for sure. I sure wish that I had had my pocket tester then.

So not only will the tester help you find out if someone has been drinking on the job, it will protect you from all sorts of legal complications and expenses.

Shucks guys! The biggest market for these devices is the people that want to go drinking, and need to know who can still drive. If you are a drinker, you need one for yourself, just to keep your license safe.

 

[banshee67]

That is exactly what I told him.

The only reason I was doing all that crap was because he said he needed help, but wanted to change. When I fired him, I told him I was tired of waiting for change to happen.

are we talkin about obama?

 

[pdqdl]

I would be interested to know how many of you anti-drug people out there use alcohol. It is a legal narcotic (because it is easily taxed) and as such accepted in society. A person having a drink at lunchtime is something most of us wouldn't even notice unless they were obviously drunk. This legal narcotic leads to many adverse effects and terrible events occurring.
...

That is very true [except that alcohol is a depressant, not a narcotic].

I never drink enough to get drunk, but I genuinely enjoy a wide variety of alcoholic drinks. Beer, wine, hard liquor, mixed drinks. I like them all. I can't drink too much because I get terrible hangovers. A six pack would ruin me the next day.

I would give it all up and go back to the prohibition days if I thought removing the booze from our society would work. No wine with a steak dinner, no cold beer after work, never again a gin and tonic to end the day. I would vote for prohibition just to get it out of the hands of people that shouldn't have access.

I have seen just as many lives ruined by alcohol as I have by drugs. On the other hand, I do believe the drugs ruin the lives of a higher percentage of participants than the booze does.

Some history on why booze is legal: The illegality of most drugs is not based on the governments inability to tax it. Coca-cola once upon a time was laced with cocaine, and laudanum (tincture of opium) was sold at the corner store. Speed was once a common ingredient in diet pills. All of these products were removed from the market because of the problems they caused, not because the government couldn't tax them. Alcohol, on the other hand, is deeply ingrained into our society, culture, and is even a critical component of many of our religions.

Beer and wine were originated in pre-history, as much as a method of preserving food value as they were for getting drunk. In addition to storing almost indefinitely, wine and beer tasted good and could be consumed straight from the jug with no further preparation.

People that drank bottled wine and beer didn't get sick as often, mostly because of the poor sanitation up until modern times. 500 years ago, drinking water was synonymous with getting dysentery, or worse.
Concentrating the alcohol by distillation is thought to have been discovered by the desire to save the alcohol and reduce the shipping weight of wine. The discovery that you could make some really good hootch out of spoiled wine or rotten potatoes was a big advance in food production hundreds of years ago.

Eliminating thousands of years of alcohol consumption by a society would not be much different than asking those people to give up or change their religion. Some would go for it, and others will fight to the death to resist change.

 

[EdenT]

The history lesson continues....

Cannabis was not made illegal because it is a drug. It was made illegal by two powerful industry lobbies campaigns during / just after World War II. The first of these lobbies was the then brand new nylon industry which wanted the hemp competition for the rope market removed. The second industry was the coal industry. Pound for Pound hemp burns hotter and produces more energy than coal. All of the crap about it's harmful effects on health were simply an added on marketing ploy.

As far as alcohol is concerned, the only reason they gave up on prohibition is that anyone at all can make their own alcohol. By enforcing prohibition you are supporting in effect the illegal provision of alcohol and creating fertile grounds for organized crime to flourish. This is my problem with prohibition of any illegal drug. As soon as it is prohibited the market moves underground. Price goes up, quality goes down and everybody loses except the big time suppliers. Problems like El Salvador, Columbia, and Afghanistan would not exist but for the illegal drug market.

Incidentally alcohol is more correctly called a suppressant. The way it affects the brain is that it inhibits function centers one at a time as the dosage increases. The first to go is speech, typified by the slurring drunk. The next are what are called the inhibition centers. These are the bits that help you make rational decisions. That's why you sometimes wake up with that scary stranger going 'WTF, oh god my head!' It's also why people fight more, do stupid things and drive cars. It is like losing your civilization. After this you begin to lose balance, sight, taste, smell and finally consciousness. Sometimes you can even inhibit your ability to lose consciousness (which is a self preservation reaction against self harm in this case poisoning) and with continued drinking you will experience alcohol poisoning and then death.

You sound like a responsible drinker PDQDL and I do not begrudge you your daily relaxant. Please don't think that I am a lesser person because I enjoy mine - in the comfort and privacy of my own home affecting nobody else.

 

[Toddppm]

Lots of things were illegal, depends if they can tax it to make it leagal.
Jeff

Lots of things were illegal, depends if they can tax it to make it legal.
Jeff

Lee-gal
Leagal
legal
What-ever
Jeff

Were you smoking?

 

[fishercat]

I don't like the gadget idea myself.

Seems kinda socialist or communist to me.I have more problems with alcohol than weed.I don't care for either but from what I see,weed seems to cause folks a lot less problems.

I figure let them come to work,if they suck,get rid of them.If they work and leave the crap at home.

I find that the best screening process is whether they can sharpen a chain.If they can't,I don't think they should be running saws and other dangerous tree equipment. It's really a simple task to learn and it seems that folks who know how to sharpen a chain are a lot less likely to dull one.

 

[ForTheArborist]

I have a balded tire that I wore out on a chunk of cement when I got stuck in the sand during a bid. Loading that truck up with tons and then going traveling on the free ways when the tire is like that I'm sure is a free ticket to a horror show. In the liklihood that that tire pops on the road, the truck is going to be doing flipping, and the travelers near by will be meeting the doom I have brought their way.

So what do I do? Grab a new tire.

It's the same thing with the drunk and high guys. Boss can ride on them for a while, but they're prone to failure. You swap 'em out like my tire.

And the people say that it's every bit of their liberty to live and work clean and drunk/high. That is what they say in so many words. I never hear anything about the liberty to be alive just to exercise the liberty to stay alive in one piece. If drunk and high guys get us killed, which liberty has higher presedence here "in reality"? I think that is all that has to be said.

There is a lot of stress that comes with the world, but I think some people just have to "sack it up" a little more, and stop reaching for the stuff so much. Moderation is the key, and I know there is a whole class of impressive workers out there that live by that key. Their fans though believe that they can all of a sudden transform into a "stud on the grid" because they see that those guys can pull down a few booze here and there and then pull down some major jobs all in a weeks work. Rangers of dangers.

Those naive guys get stuck in the farce that it's the booze and things that put guys on that level and status, so they hammer away at the stuff like they were eating out a dump truck full of brown popcorn with cracker jack painted on the lid in hopes of finding the gem inside. People make a lot of money off guys like that, and the moderate drinkers make a living and a legendary impression, while ones that abuse the stuff basically sinch themselves up in some hefty bags, worthless, and then thrown overboard by the bosses. Even worse they are a danger to everyone besides all of the other dangers in just doing the job in the place because they are not sharp enough or conscious enough to moderate.

At the end of all of this being the let down is far from the legendary impression that they originally set out to make. Their distributors take as much money as they'll put into their stuff, and then they disappear somewhere like to live in a camper somewhere on a side street or middle of nowhere or just in your bushes sometimes.

Personally I figure how often I want a drink depends on how much bite I want have. The more drink, the less bite. The less drink, the more right, the bigger the bite. Now, I'm hunting for a big ol' piece of the pie, so I neat a big ol' bite. Besides, that stuff is known as the leading cause of brain decay like sugar on teeth.

 

[jefflovstrom]

Were you smoking?

 

[Toddppm]

You were definitely high to write all of that brain ooze.

I have a balded tire that I wore out on a chunk of cement when I got stuck in the sand during a bid. Loading that truck up with tons and then going traveling on the free ways when the tire is like that I'm sure is a free ticket to a horror show. In the liklihood that that tire pops on the road, the truck is going to be doing flipping, and the travelers near by will be meeting the doom I have brought their way.

So what do I do? Grab a new tire.

It's the same thing with the drunk and high guys. Boss can ride on them for a while, but they're prone to failure. You swap 'em out like my tire.

And the people say that it's every bit of their liberty to live and work clean and drunk/high. That is what they say in so many words. I never hear anything about the liberty to be alive just to exercise the liberty to stay alive in one piece. If drunk and high guys get us killed, which liberty has higher presedence here "in reality"? I think that is all that has to be said.

There is a lot of stress that comes with the world, but I think some people just have to "sack it up" a little more, and stop reaching for the stuff so much. Moderation is the key, and I know there is a whole class of impressive workers out there that live by that key. Their fans though believe that they can all of a sudden transform into a "stud on the grid" because they see that those guys can pull down a few booze here and there and then pull down some major jobs all in a weeks work. Rangers of dangers.

Those naive guys get stuck in the farce that it's the booze and things that put guys on that level and status, so they hammer away at the stuff like they were eating out a dump truck full of brown popcorn with cracker jack painted on the lid in hopes of finding the gem inside. People make a lot of money off guys like that, and the moderate drinkers make a living and a legendary impression, while ones that abuse the stuff basically sinch themselves up in some hefty bags, worthless, and then thrown overboard by the bosses. Even worse they are a danger to everyone besides all of the other dangers in just doing the job in the place because they are not sharp enough or conscious enough to moderate.

At the end of all of this being the let down is far from the legendary impression that they originally set out to make. Their distributors take as much money as they'll put into their stuff, and then they disappear somewhere like to live in a camper somewhere on a side street or middle of nowhere or just in your bushes sometimes.

Personally I figure how often I want a drink depends on how much bite I want have. The more drink, the less bite. The less drink, the more right, the bigger the bite. Now, I'm hunting for a big ol' piece of the pie, so I neat a big ol' bite. Besides, that stuff is known as the leading cause of brain decay like sugar on teeth.