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stealth intelligence test. For a variety of interesting historical reasons, the government hates intelligence tests as a hiring criteria and this is the blue collar stealth/workaround IQ test. Its the blue collar equivalent of fizzbuzz or a gitlab repo.

Look, you got one task, one task only, it's not even hard to figure out, do not, repeat, do not, get high the week or two before your pee test. That simple. There are human bipeds burning valuable oxygen right now, who can't follow a test that elaborate and complicated. They are literally the kind of people where if you told them not to lick a circuit breaker, would turn around and an hour later electrocute themselves and probably a coworker or two by licking a circuit breaker on the jobsite. Whats the minimum IQ and discipline level necessary to pass a pee test? Not much, but there are failures out there walking around...

Its interesting that as far as I know this is the first strictly chemistry based IQ test. AFAIK there is no "pee in a bottle to determine if you can fizzbuzz" test for code monkey work. No chemical marker that can identify if you know the modulus operator... not yet...




> ...do not, get high the week or two before your pee test.

In case someone is wondering, hair follicle tests are apparently problematic [1]; had to look that up because I remembered correctly that follicle tests can show use over the long-term, but didn't know some of the intrinsic challenges with that method. Come to think of it, I've never been asked to submit a hair sample when I've had to pass FBI interviews and drug tests to gain admittance to extremely-sensitive data centers at some of my clients in the past.

The "week or two" needs contextual guidance. An article on Wikipedia [2] gives a good run down of the detection periods. I would imagine detecting pot is the most common request, so that's about 100 days on the conservative side for a heavy (daily?) user, but apparently three weeks is fine for more casual users (what, once a week?).

[1] http://www.fleetowner.com/driver-management-resource-center/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_test#Detection_periods


> who can't follow a test that elaborate and complicated.

There's also the possibility that giving up an addiction is not an intellectual activity (if you think about it a little!)


Maybe ...

But the process of getting addicted certainly involves making some choices poorly.


My addiction to coffee involved no poor choices, I don’t regret it and it makes me a better person. Lack of it makes my performance much worse, I get a migraine with vertigo and vomiting.


You seem to be confusing physical dependence with addiction. By your definition, you'd be addicted to food, as I'm sure you'd have adverse consequences, including worse performance, in its absence.

Addiction is continued use in the face of adverse consequences. [1] You may have a physical dependence on coffee, but it doesn't sound like you're experiencing negative consequences in your life from its use.

[1] https://www.addictioninfo.org/articles/2216/1/Addiction-Do-Y...


Some smokers are smart, though. I wonder if it's another kind of test?


If you are unable to refrain for 2 weeks, then you are not the kind of person who they want to hire, because it means you will also not refrain when you are on duty.


Its a different sort of refrain problem. We expect you'll refrain from activity X when we tell you to for a short reasonable period of time. When X is smoking weed this is seen as a big problem, mostly by weed smokers. When X is applying electrical power to this machine's cabinet someone is working in by hacking around the lockout-tagout locks, this seems a common sense test for a jobsite. We can't test for the latter but we can proactively predict by testing for the former. There are plenty of blue collar jobs where lack of awareness and self control and logical analysis of cause and effect mean someone dies. Weed smoking is a simple test of self awareness and self control and intelligence (WRT understanding the whole problem situation)




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