Originally published at: Amazon welcomes delivery drivers who smoke weed | Boing Boing
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These guys?
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Of course, otherwise they’d lose half of their eligible drivers in Washington.
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Other delivery companies are continuing to screen applicants, concerned about the insurance and liability implications in the many states where weed use remains illegal. They also worry that ending drug testing might prompt some drivers to toke up before going out on a route.
For two years, during community college, I held down a job as a package delivery person (bulk shipping), and not once did I get high on the job. I’m insulted they would even assume that. Many drinkers of alcohol manage to not do so on the job.
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Seriously, get no benefits, no union, expected to make deliveries from 5am to 10pm, Amazon management would be high to think anyone respects them enough to be sober to do such crap abusive work
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Most people who enjoy a couple beers in the evening don’t get hammered and then go drive around. Probably people failing tests have an edible on their day off. They wouldn’t be able to hire ANYONE here in WA at that rate.
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Based on the meandering path of the folks who delivery our packages (and the number of times we neighbors have to redeliver them to each other) I just assumed they were already impaired. Maybe this will make an improvement?
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Yeah, certainly not for $15 an hour when our cost of living is so high
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Marijuana does not actually make you stupid. That’s just immaterial.
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Props to Amazon for setting a sensible example for employers everywhere.
(never thought I’d say that)
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No, I assume they were impaired far worse than weed. I am quite hopeful this new development will actually attract a better quality of driver.
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They’re just aware if they didn’t allow it, they’d have no employees. These jobs suck a lot and are abusive as fuck, and are only really tolerable if you cope some way.
For a lot of people that’s smoking weed.
For some people that’s being super religious and feverently believing this world isn’t real, but the afterlife is.
For some people it’s throwing your amazon garbage at your door as hard as they can, and I can’t blame them either.
For the last 2 years I’ve been working in the mail and shipping center of a large corporate campus.
We sometimes get the same Amazon delivery truck coming by 10 times in the same day.
Bruh I bet Sysiphus woulda been a lot better off rolling that rock up a mountain after smoking a J
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Agreed.
I just hope other companies will stop wasting time/money and losing good workers to antiquated thinking about drug use.
Usually, when a large corporation implements something shitty and gets away with it, others follow. It will be nice if the same holds for a positive change favoring workers.
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Are they screening for alcohol use? Not if they are drunk but use in general?
Nobody wants wake and bake then jump into the car. But smoking weed or drinking beer when it is appropriate should not preclude anyone from work.
The hard part is that weed is detectable long after the effects have worn off.
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I never cared to do things I didn’t want to do after smoking. 
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Me neither, but at least for me it can make something that’s completely intolerable at least something I can cope with.
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I want to understand this! How can not screening boost applications by 400%, but doing the screening only cuts applications by 30%? If they stopped screening, then started again, then stopped again, then started again, then stopped again, they would get a net 60-fold increase in applications!
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One reason why these tests are used is that there isn’t a good way to test for “is someone high right now?” As I understand it, the standard marijuana test is a metabolite trace check, and one of the reasons it can take so long for the drug use to be undetectable is that they stick around so long. Since the goal was to determine if someone had ever smoked pot, there was no incentive to develop an equivalent of a field sobriety (breathalyzer) test or, say, reduce the sensitivity to a “have you gotten high lately” level. There also seems to be a lot of confusion about what exactly would constitute an intoxicated level of the different chemicals they could test for and what the adjustments for BMI, age, gender, etc would be. Without a clear equivalent of a BAC (Blood Alcohol Content), legislatures are fortunately so far reluctant to start stating thresholds and penalties, relying on cops and courts to define a standard first. I believe we are still waiting for the first conclusive case to make any such definition, assuming one ever will.
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