Here’s a story. An old-fashioned kind of story, set in Australia in the 1960’s. It’s a common story, a true story, a story that many of us know and may even remember well. And for those who don’t? Well, it’s the kind of story your parents have talked about. How it was, and how it used to be. The old times… the times when work and life operated just a little…shall we say, differently. This is a story about the time in Australia before drug testing and alcohol testing was introduced.
Once upon a time there was a dad. An ordinary dad. He lived in a nice Sydney home, a brick federation home with a garden and a lawn to mow. On Saturday afternoons after watching the kids play sport, he’d get out into the garden with the mower and he’d mow. Yes. He liked his garden and he liked his mowing.
It was like a rite or ritual, an outdoors version of mass on a Sunday morning. A time to commune with nature, to look up at the sun, to wipe sweat from the brow and to think, “Yes, this is my garden and my lawn. This is where I live. This is my place and my beautiful buffalo grass. Those kids under the sprinkler are our kids. That tree is the wattle tree w grew and that gum tree there is the tree we planted when we moved here. This is simply how it is and how I want it to be.”
During the week this dad worked in a factory. He worked hard. He brought his pay packet home every Thursday night in a yellow envelope filled with cash. An ordinary kind of dad with no extraordinary aspirations. The kind of person who is a bit like you and a bit like me. And at lunchtimes, he did what every other dad in that factory did. He bundied off for 40 minutes to an hour, left the factory grounds, and made his way to the pub across the road, next to the milk bar on the corner.
The Liquid Lunch
You see, these were the old days. The days of the liquid lunch.[1] Everyone did it. It is simply the way it was. A meat pie bought at the milk bar and then into the pub for two or three schooners, downed as quickly as possible, before heading back over to the factory to the assembly line. Normal behaviour and nobody thought anything of it.
Today’s workplace and drug testing
Today the scenario is very different and the idea of drinking and then going back onto the assembly line is against most workplace policies and procedures. A greater understanding of the effects of drugs and alcohol means we now guard against substance abuse and related accidents and injury in the workplace.
The effects of alcohol are well documented and it is now known alcohol disrupts concentration and the ability to perform tasks and operate machinery.
One way to guard against this very real threat to your business is to develop an onsite screening programme. In Australia drug testing is becoming an effective and accepted response to such problems.
Telephone Mediscreen. 1300 797040.
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=liquid?lunch
