What type of drug test is done for pre employment for a county power lineman trainee?

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Ninmmkmfdm

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Hello guys, new to this. I have an aptitude test on tuesday and wanted to know how difficult it was? Its for a riverside county power lineman apprentice trainee. I also wouls like to know what type of druf test they do have for pre employment? I use pre workouts and have been sick lately and have been taking penicilian and wondering of those type of meds like sudafed affect anything on a drug test? And what type of test is it? Urine? Hair? Swab? Thank you.
 
Ninmmkmfdm said:
Hello guys, new to this. I have an aptitude test on tuesday and wanted to know how difficult it was? Its for a riverside county power lineman apprentice trainee. I also wouls like to know what type of druf test they do have for pre employment? I use pre workouts and have been sick lately and have been taking penicilian and wondering of those type of meds like sudafed affect anything on a drug test? And what type of test is it? Urine? Hair? Swab? Thank you.
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As important as the specific drugs they are testing for is the sensitivity threshold of the test. The more sensitive it is, the more expensive it is, and there is a point of diminishing returns, economically speaking, in testing to lower and lower thresholds. I wouldn't worry about normal dosages of penicillin and pseudoephedrine, though.
 
It is very hard to fool drug tests anymore. The thing you want to worry about is how long it takes the drugs to get out of your system. They pretty much don't ever come out of your hair. If you do drugs and your prospective employer does a hair test and you haven't shaved your hair since then it's probably going to show.

Unfortunately the most common drug is pot and THC is the active compound in pot and it is fat soluble. It can stay in your system a long time maybe months depending on how much you use and how fat you are. There are a lot of scam artists selling people various kinds of potions that are supposed to either mask the byproducts that the urine test actually look for or supposedly Purge your system. I doubt any of them work.

Other drugs that are more water soluble actually can work their way out of your system fairly quickly. Maybe a few days.

Some people believe that you can fool the test by diluting the urine by drinking a lot of water but nowadays the test can pick up on that too. Really the only way to pass a modern drug test is not to do drugs long enough before the test that the level of the drug breakdown products which is what they actually test for in your urine is below a certain level. Different drug test use different levels that you might be able to pass at one company and not at the next company on the same day even.

One time I went to take a drug test so I can get into a car company to do some work. The gal that was doing a drug test said about a third of the people that took it failed. And this was all Tradesman. She said some had driven a thousand miles or more just to come and fail the drug test.
 
Ninmmkmfdm said:
Hello guys, new to this. I have an aptitude test on tuesday and wanted to know how difficult it was? Its for a riverside county power lineman apprentice trainee. I also wouls like to know what type of druf test they do have for pre employment? I use pre workouts and have been sick lately and have been taking penicilian and wondering of those type of meds like sudafed affect anything on a drug test? And what type of test is it? Urine? Hair? Swab? Thank you.
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well, you can try honesty, and make a list of the drugs you are taking,
and any other chemicals. they are gonna find out.

now, DWP does urine tests, and they do them in house, as they have
so many instances of needing them, and they want accuracy. most places
outsource them. at the time, DWP had the most comprehensive UA available.

when i took mine with DWP, i was interested in what it would show.
not only will it show current levels, with alcohol and some other things,
it'll show long term usage and quantify it. so i was quite candid, which
is a lot easier if you've been sober over 20 years. so i tested their test.

liquid alcohol i'd not really used much, so it didn't show. i was interested
in powdered alcohol a lot more, and was wondering if that shows. it doesn't.

so, if you are concerned, stop using everything for 20 years, and you can
ace the test. at 34 years sober, i'm just grateful to be alive.

none of the folks i socialized with made it, that i know of. i went to a lot of
funerals, none of them mine.
 
Prescribed medication can make a total mess of blood tests. I had a test that came back saying I had a particularly nasty STD. The medication I take for a thyroid problem threw the test totally off track.

If you’re on prescribed medication, tell them first, it saves time and embarrassment later.
 
Tony S said:
Prescribed medication can make a total mess of blood tests. I had a test that came back saying I had a particularly nasty STD. The medication I take for a thyroid problem threw the test totally off track.

If you’re on prescribed medication, tell them first, it saves time and embarrassment later.
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A number of years ago (maybe 20) when drug tests were just taking off as the latest fad, an acquantaince had to take one for some kind of government job.

They told him there was something wrong with it and made him come take it again.

And again.

After the third test they told him they had judged his test as positive because he was using supplements to mess with the results. So they refused to hire him.

So he looked into it. Back before the Internet and doing any kind of research like this was a lot harder. Turned out he had some kind of kidney problem and would have ended up needing a transplant. His kidneys were being messed with by the "natural" supplements he was taking that were supposed to be beneficial in some way (I think it was some kind of male enhancement potion). He was lucky that he failed the test because he would never have discovered his kidneys were being screwed over by the supplement he was taking. The tests are far more reliable these days and would probably skip right by such a thing.
 
The tests we take are oral alcohol, pee for pot, coke, poppies, lsd, you know the illegals.
Do tell all drugs your on or used. I did fail one but they retested and I passed. I asked why the fail and was told could be a bad test equipment, not turned on long enough, out of calibration, so they used a different gas spectrometer. I know the tech. He said he would do 3 at the plant and send out offsite for a test if I had failed more; now they send all pee test offsite.
If your doing drugs you need to decide if drugs are more important than making a good living.
Good luck.
 
There's a common misconception about blood tests. They can't simply throw your blood sample into a machine and get a printout of everything in it. Not that simple at all.

Most every substance they want to test for requires a specific chemical test which then destroys that sample. If you want to test for the next substance, you need a fresh sample of the blood. That's why they often take 2 vials or more, they need enough "stock" to do all the tests. So unless they are specifically testing for a substance they may not find it.

Now prescription drugs can certainly skew test results and even create false positives. So it's important to disclose any and all medications you take including over-the-counter stuff. If it's legal, you have nothing to worry about.

The reason I know this is I had a company training class on drug test legalities.
 
Fulthrotl said:
google is amazing, but that wasn't what i was referring to.

"powdered alcohol" is a euphemism for anything that you might consider
taking if liquor wasn't your favorite flavor.

"unprescribed hydrochloride salts" maybe is more accurate.
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That's what I thought you meant; a friend of mine once referred to his intoxicant of choice as Peruvian Marching Powder. :D

That someone is making "powdered" (encapsulated) alcohol is a new one on me.
 
ggunn said:
That's what I thought you meant; a friend of mine once referred to his intoxicant of choice as Peruvian Marching Powder. :D

That someone is making "powdered" (encapsulated) alcohol is a new one on me.
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yeah. freeze dried bourbon? i never had any bourbon last long enough for spoilage
to be an issue. the cap was largely to keep from spilling it on the way from the liquor
store to the car.

i heard once that god created cocaine because electricians make too much money.

now, they are mixing cocaine with carfentanyl. christ on a crumpet.

there is no pharmacological antidote for a cocaine overdose. phenobarbital, a ventilator for
the respiratory arrest, and try to keep the engine ticking over until it metabolizes out of
the system. naaaahhhh..... that is not bad enough. lets mix it with carfentynal, so you
can't even use a sedative to treat it.

john belushi is turning over in his grave.
 
Slightly off topic: Does anybody buy their own drug test kits to use on employees? I'd like to know the pros and cons. I want to start drug testing my new hires. Of all the companies I worked for, only one did the drug test in the office. Everybody else sent us to a 3rd party.

One in my group of new hires was a bit surprised by this. He failed the test because he didn't know he was supposed to sneak his baggie of clean pee into the contractor's office.
 
This of course leads to one other question. The question of CBD oil, taken orally. It doesn't get you high. It does make an old mans knee pain go away along with inflammation of same. Federal laws say its an illegal schedule 1 drug. 50 state laws say baloney to that, CBD (3%or less THC per whatever size being sampled) is legal in all 50, or so I have read.

Will a drug test pick up on that?. Will it be able to determine the difference from CBD oil usage to Pakalolo smoking?, something not even considered by your's truly since the start of the 1980's by the way. Not that I'm actively seeking employment , but you never know ............
 
Coppersmith said:
Slightly off topic: Does anybody buy their own drug test kits to use on employees? I'd like to know the pros and cons. I want to start drug testing my new hires. Of all the companies I worked for, only one did the drug test in the office. Everybody else sent us to a 3rd party.

One in my group of new hires was a bit surprised by this. He failed the test because he didn't know he was supposed to sneak his baggie of clean pee into the contractor's office.
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ya might want to check labor law there.
this stuff varies a lot from place to place.
carefully consider any labor precedents you may be
setting for your business BEFORE doing them.

california is now legal to smoke recreationally.

that doesn't mean i'm ok with working with folks who smoke a lot.
the loco weed that is currently being sold isn't anything like grandpa's dope.
i remember what potent stuff did, and that was 35 years ago.
there has been a lot of species breeding in that time.

and i've been on jobs doing lighting certs, and the crew is three bong
hits past functional. communicating with them is like 'splaining
parallell parking to a grape. not safe, not profitable.

and, one of the single best crews i've ever worked on, when the sun came
up on them in the refinery parking lot, and they were asleep on car hoods,
and wherever, in yesterdays clothes. they closed the bar, and in san pedro,
that's a whole 'nother thing.

none of them could have passed a drug test from 30' away. it's a clue
when your work truck has "smoke creek express" lettered on the rear
tailgate.

and they did phenomenal work. consummate professionals. it would
have been a shame not to work them 'cause of a test.

it's really a person by person call, and a policy that locks your decision
for you might not be helpful.
 
Fulthrotl said:
it's really a person by person call, and a policy that locks your decision
for you might not be helpful.
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I agree which is why I have not done any drug testing since I opened. But my recently departed employee seemed stoned some days and probably was high and functional most of the time. He had two vehicle accidents in 6 weeks. He also was very forgetful and acted in other ways a sober person would not. There might be some correlation there.
 
Coppersmith said:
I agree which is why I have not done any drug testing since I opened. But my recently departed employee seemed stoned some days and probably was high and functional most of the time. He had two vehicle accidents in 6 weeks. He also was very forgetful and acted in other ways a sober person would not. There might be some correlation there.
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For the record, I support drug testing for cause and the "drug free workplace", meaning I don't want anyone stoned on the job. I believe that anyone looking for work should expect to be tested as a condition of employment and therefore should act accordingly before the fact. IMO, it's pretty much an IQ test.

I am, however, against random drug testing after hire. I don't think it's an employer's place to police an employee's behavior on his own time.

By the way, just because pot is legal where you are does NOT mean that a company cannot deny you employment or fire you if you fail a drug test for marijuana.
 
In a related story...

Someone who knew whereof he was speaking once told me that because of its fleeting presence in the bloodstream and the difficulty in detecting it because of the low serum concentration necessary for it to have the desired effect, the drug of choice for many submariners on tours of duty when he was one was LSD. Yeesh.
 
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