Employee Antics

One thing I do not have any tolerance for is drug abuse. At BMI, we have a drug free workplace policy. Basically, you are tested as part of pre-employment and then we randomly drug test when needed. Our policy allows the employee to take a 30 day suspension with no pay and retest at the end of that period. If upon restest, the employee tests are clean, then he is able to return to work. If the employee has a second occurrence within their entire employment period, then they are immediately terminated.

One of our employees, was hired in 2006. In early 2007, he tested positive for marijuana during a random drug test. In early 2009, he missed 2 days of work due to being in jail. When I know this, I always look on the Mobile County Sheriff's website and review the bookings for those days. So I did this...And sure enough, he was at the top of the list with several charges. One of those was being in possession of marijuana. So, upon "reasonable suspension", the employee was called in and sent for a drug test. His tests (yes - tests!) took forever because it took him over an hour to drive 3 miles to the drug testing facility. And then his first test wasn't enough to even sample and his second test was "watery" and below 90 degrees. So it was obvious they were going to be able to get anything else out of him. The tests were sent to USA medical lab for better testing. It, of course, came back positive for marijuana. He was immediately terminated. The exit interview was almost comical because he denied all of it and blamed the Mobile County Sheriff. Whatever!

Fast forward a month...Our former employee files for unemployment (for all of those who don't know...You CANNOT get unemployment if you were discharged because of misconduct!). Therefore, our former employee says that he was laid off because of no available work. (That's what they all say...) So I send the employee information back to the Unemployment Office. He was denied benefits. He reapplies. I call the Unemployment Office to get an understanding of why an employee can apply for unemployment benefits again after already being denied. They basically tell me that their computer system does not keep up with a person only a claim. So an employee can go and claim whatever they want to claim on anybody that they want to claim it on and then it becomes the employer's responsibility to provide the necessary information to have it denied (and therefore, the employer not get charged if its not due). So, the employee was denied AGAIN because drug use is not even looked upon positively by the state either (imagine that)! Our former employee then filed an APPEAL! What the crap? An appeal? So I receive a Notice of an Unemployment Hearing with the State of Alabama on May 21st for Tuesday, May 26th at 8AM. So I have all of 2 business days (because of the weekend and Memorial Day) to call in and provide my information for the appeal. I just don't understand it...It's just not fair. I don't understand why a drug abusing person can be given every opportunity by us and the state and we have to suffer by dropping everything to deal with him.

SO FRUSTRATING! I better when my case or I may need to just give up because its all a lost cause!