Off The Rails On Day One

I work for a public transportation system. The first couple of days at my agency are orientation, there are normally people from multiple titles there, so it’s usually close to a hundred people.

One of the things that’s made very clear to us right away is the safety-sensitive nature of some of our jobs. We knew this when we took the oath of office, but they go over it anyway. This includes random drug/alcohol testing, as well as post-incident testing, at least one annual test, and even testing if someone suspects you’re not fit for duty.

On the first day of our orientation, one of the people running it called someone up by name. The next morning, they called him up again, but this time, no answer. I don’t think anything of it. After a couple of days, we’re split up into classes based on our titles. Some titles require only a couple of weeks of training; others, several months.

A couple of months into training, it happens that our class is at the same railyard as another class. During the day, we get to talking, and at some point, a guy in the other class brings up the guy they were calling up during orientation. Apparently, he was sitting right next to the dude, and it was clear that he was either hungover or still drunk from the night before. His eyes were bloodshot, and he reeked of alcohol.

When they called him up on day one, it was to give him instructions to report for drug and alcohol testing the next morning, instead of orientation. When they called for him on day two, it was because he’d failed to show at either location. Of course, he was fired immediately (I have no direct knowledge of this, but there’s absolutely no way they would have done anything else). 

The kicker was, according to the guy from the other class, when they brought up the testing policy on day one, the drunk guy got offended by the idea that he’d have to be sober to move vehicles with hundreds of people on them, saying:

Guy: “What’s the big deal? My old job let me show up drunk all the time.”

Yeah, this guy got himself sent for fitness for duty testing on his very first day. It’d be almost impossible for anyone to break that record.