Maryland Hospital Bans Employees From Smoking Anywhere On Earth

dailycaller.com ^ | 7/8/2014 | Tristyn Bloom

[rktman]

Starting next year, Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis will require potential employees to pass a drug test–detecting nicotine.

This so-called “job screening” will bar any applicants who smoke cigarettes, cigars, pipes, snuff, hookah, and even e-cigarettes from being eligible for employment. While the hospital already has a smoking ban on the premises and surrounding sidewalks, this policy forbids new employees from consuming tobacco anywhere, at any time.

[Still Thinking]

I agree that that should be the law. However, there are numerous restrictions on how you can make hiring decisions. So, unless they’re going to remove all those restrictions, then it should be the same across the board. Liberals don’t trust people to make their own decisions, they shouldn’t get to make THEIR own either.

[cva66snipe]

Years ago I worked at health care facilities. I had two different supervisors accuse me of drinking on the job at different places of employment. Both were middle age women who wore a bottle of cheap cologne to work and then proceeded to interact with patients.

The first one found a beer bottle in a common box truck used by maintenance, laundry, and dietary, which usually remained unlocked with both the dietary and maintenance supervisions orders. It was a shared back up truck. She decided to write up the maintenance dept working the day before which was myself and another guy. I looked at her and said" you had best not write me up. I seldom drink and when I do I am at home. So help me if I ever apply for employment anywhere and this write up is brought up I will come after you legally and personally with all means legally at my disposal". The issue was promptly dropped. No one had ever stood up to her because she was the administrator. My boss just sat there letting her do this.

Second time about 8 years later another facility I was the evening maintenance mechanic. It was my supper time and I ordered a pizza. I had just finished my meal and my boss who had left two hours earlier and another guy who had also left walked in the shop. My boss finally said I guess I better tell you why I'm here. The Director of Nursing and assistant D.O.N. said that they got on the elevator as you stepped off and said you wreaked of alcohol. He said you don't have to do this because I know it's B.S. and you don't drink but can I smell your breath? I said sure I just ate pizza LOL. His words after checking were "the ****h" and he apologized even though it wasn't his place because he wasn't accusing me. The accuser had went home and did not have the guts to be there.

The director of nursing was 250 pounds overweight and she too wore a bottle of cologne to work. IOW how would she have even smelled alcohol. She was so incompetent she could not take a blood sample. I know that fact personally when I had to be checked for a year due to a puncture exposure from waste. The witch never apologized and she tried the same crap on an orderly later. Who should have been fired? She was never even reprimanded. An employer and supervisor if they make such serious accusations on ones character should be liable if proved false fired themselves. If the owner? The owner should do right by the employee. Only at one job I had required any form of drug testing and I was driving a tractor trailer.

The idea that an employer OWNS you on and off the job was ended in the early 1900's and rightfully so. They are paying you for work. If they want 24/7 control of an employee then they should pay that person 24/7 wages. Fair is fair.

I'm anti union but I am as strongly against employer demands for employees activities off site of their business not during a persons working hours. I even support the right to fire a worker for DUI conviction off the clock if the person uses company vehicles at any time. That said you come to work stoned or drunk it should be cause for dismissal without liability. However if the employee immediately goes and has testing done proving innocence then the employer should be liable.

Firing someone for those issues destroys their work record. A simple dispute or disagreement may get you fired that's fine as is simply an employer firing someone. It's different because it doesn't label you a drunk is what I'm saying.

I believe in coming to work on time, sober, ready to work, do what is asked, and give an honest days work. That said if employers want responsible workers for critical jobs they should be willing to pay reasonable wage for reliable skilled workers. In health care facilities most do not.

I wouldn't work at the facility in the article nor take a family member there. If cutting overhead mean that much too them what other ethical lines will they cross elsewhere?

[Still Thinking]

No one had ever stood up to her because she was the administrator. My boss just sat there letting her do this.

I had a boss like that once. Useless pansy waste of skin. I'd be in meetings where he and I were the only reps from our department and somebody would be trashing us (the department) inaccurately, and I wouldn't say anything for a couple beats because I'm sitting there assuming he was about to enter the fray, but he just sits there and says nothing. Causing me, incredulous, to have to tackle the bullshitters and make them take back their lies. OTOH, one of the best bosses I ever had was completely inept at the actual work performed within the department, but if anybody messed with any of his people, he'd be dragging them out in the alley for further consultations about the matter.

[cva66snipe]

Neither one really would stand up for our department. Weirdest thing to happen was a patients family bought a telephone and had a line installed. The line nor the phone was our responsibility. The family decided for some reason to take out the phone a day later and thought they threw away the box and receipt in the trash can in her room.

The son goes to the administrator. Rather than simply saying like a man that is your responsibility he brings the man and the issue down to our shop because maintenance for some insane reason was also the ones who took out garbage off the floors rather than housekeeping department. My co-worker and I stepped out of the shop and went outside figuring our boss could handle it.

We stood there a minute thinking what if they come out and want one of us to check the dumpsters?. The dumpsters were full of medical waste. We had decided we were going to simply flat out refuse to do it and take whatever happened. We weren't paid that great for our skills anyway.

After about 20 minutes our boss walks out madder than a hornet and the patients son leaves the building. Boss was mad at the administrator and son and told us there wasn't no pleasing him. he then said I offered to go outside and look in the dumpsters. Boss was a USMCR Gunny. You'd think he wouldn't take no stuff but he was too programed to follow and not question orders. That caused us a lot of grief as we got shafted many times with other departments jobs they didn't want. We were Boiler Operators, HVAC mechanics, electricians, plumbers, jack of all trades, all rolled into one. You just don't find that kind of worker anywhere.

[Still Thinking]

I don’t know what ever happened with my guy, but I have to assume he’s now serving as a Republican Congressman or applied for French citizenship. What other options are open to someone without a spine?

[nightlight7]

Private employers should be able to restrict whatever they want.

Try that concept with skin color, ethnicity, religion,...

[nightlight7]

We have plenty of freepers all in favor of employment at will (hire and fire whomsoever you choose for whatever reason), and then we have the freepers commenting on this thread.

The two positions are not mutually exclusive.

Namely, the issue is the fairness of the laws. If it is free for all, great, but then it should apply to all equally. There should be no favored groups which can't be discriminated against. The present scheme opens path to selective discrimination against anyone with politically incorrect views (position on guns, abortion, religion, party, etc), too.

Smokers are merely a canary in a mine, but the progressive nazis will come eventually after you and your job, your apartments, your pubs, bars, restaurants, parks beaches and other favorite gathering places, too. Extending the common justification applied nowadays against smokers, the nazis will declare that children should be protected from even seeing people like you, too.

[CSM]

“All we want is a non-smoking section in a restaurant.”

[dmz]

Namely, the issue is the fairness of the laws.

<><<>

I could not agree with you more, but my conclusino is 180 degrees opposite.

It is an undeniable fact of underwriting that the claims experience of smokers is considerably higher (as a group) than that of non-smokers.

Where is the fairness in non-smokers underwriting (paying for) the health care of folks who choose to engage in a behavior that, as a group, creates higher claims experience.

Simple question: do you have a similar opinion for 16 year old boys having higher insurance premiiums for auto insurance, which is based entirely on the fact that they use the insurance more than 40 year old people? Or does that make sense to you? See the connection?

[fwdude]

It should apply across the board. Race, ethnicity, religion, whatever.

[hal ogen]

After all...maryland is THE Freak state.

[nightlight7]

It is an undeniable fact of underwriting that the claims experience of smokers is considerably higher (as a group) than that of non-smokers.

The same collective cost issue applies to some other minorities (racial, sexual orientation, women of child bearing age, religions, people above 50, people with pre-existing conditions or disabilities, etc). Yet they would get sued and lose if they tried to save money by collectively firing or excluding any of those groups.

The law should be fair -- either allow collective punishments or exclusions (in any role) of minority groups by businesses or not, as long as the law is the same regarding any group a business may target for whatever reason.

Note also that the above exclusion doesn't provide option for an individual to pay out of his pocket for any extra insurance costs or deal with health insurance on his own. For example, since I smoke but haven't seen doctors from 1991 for anything, not even for checkups (their nagging about smoking started to annoy me and diminish my wellbeing), I would be better off to just get the cash the company pays for employee health insurance and keep most of it (maybe divert some on catastrophic insurance).

[longtermmemmory]

Given the contracts and detail to language involved, I would suspect the dealer is 100% correct in firing all the drug users.


The destruction of the brains ability to function is well documented.



PET scans show long-term changes in glucose-metabolism in the brain of a marijuana abuser compared to that of a normal brain.



Over time pot users will be generally relegated to menial work where the brain damage will cause the least risk to the employer. In addition if a pot user is hurt at work, their use of the drug will be used to absolve the employer from any responsibility for damages or harm. (much like an alcoholic today)

[Eric Blair 2084]

Yep. All we want is a non-smoking section in the restaurant or on the plane.

Incrementalism does work. Now, much like the late-night infomercial sales pitch guy would ask “how can I use that information to work for me?”

What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.

We only want to restrict abortion clinics that have doctors with admitting privileges. We only want warning labels so that mothers can hear their children’s heartbeat and see the ultrasound. Just like the warning labels on cigarettes.

[Still Thinking]

If they want to pay me round-the-clock, then where do I sign? (I don’t smoke anyway). But....if they think this is just a freebie fringe bene they get for paying me for 8 of thpse hours, then Still Thinking bans himself from working at Anne Arundel Hospital.