Urine

Well, I've done it. I've used a picture. I shall be damned for all eternity.

Damnation aside, I was sent this by a friend who seemed to find it either funny or true. I find it dubious on both counts. And "Riddle" seems like a strange place name to me too, but that's not important.

I have seen urine tests required for all sorts of jobs. I hope they are all for drugs; I'd hate to think that urine was being used to test for something else, like poor genetics or hygiene, or maybe health of the bladder. For some jobs, I guess non-high-ness (I can't really say sobriety, for reasons which will, I hope, become apparent) is important. For others... I'm not so sure. Certainly, drugs are illegal, and so if an employee is using drugs, that could violate his or her contract, just as murdering prostitutes (have you noticed I like to talk about murdered prostitutes? Really? You don't say) or bank robbery might. But one has to wonder why the paranoia is necessary.

I'm not going to get into drugs' legality. They're illegal, and that's the bottom line until someone says differently. But urine tests aren't just to maintain decorum (another euphemism for non-high-ness which sounds better) in the workplace; they detect any drug use within a certain period of time. This begs the question: why not just keep an eye out for employees who are poor employees because of their use of drugs.

The reason is simple: remove "because of their use of drugs" and you've got the formula that all businesses should follow. Don't continue to employ people who aren't good employees. But drugs give companies a convenient scapegoat so they can fire people for poor conduct; a drug test is a known quantity, whereas employee performance is a judgement call.

But it is naive to assume that employee performance, or indeed many of the ills of our society, can be blamed on drugs. Urine tests will not detect alcohol abuse, which is a far bigger problem. Nor will they seek out and destroy various other human failings.

I'm beginning to sound like I'm not in favor of urine drug testing, which isn't true. I don't really care one way or the other; until the government makes everyone in the country do it, it's something you sign up for when you take a job. What began, and should rightfully end, this essay, was something which wasn't all that funny: urine tests for welfare.

Never happen. Sorry Leonard. Not only would it be seen as a gross civil rights violation, but the massive bureaucracy would turn it into a losing proposition. And since you seem so sure that everyone on welfare is a no-good, drug-using bum, what would it prove? What would it eliminate? Most people don't "sit on their butt[s]" and collect welfare anyway. And can you imagine the thousands of gallons of welfare urine? It makes me ill just to think about it.

In conclusion, ladies and gents, urine testing has always seemed to me to be a little silly, a lot paranoid, and mostly for show. People who don't do drugs don't care, people who do either stop in order to keep their jobs or find some way of getting around the test. And lots of people get caught because they're too stupid to figure out in which camp they belong. If it's performance-enhancing drugs polluting a sport, by all means, test away. If we're worried about hiring potheads at Wal-Mart, give me a break. If they piped pure THC through the vents, would it really destroy the quality of Wal-Mart?