The use of narcotics by members of the workforce has a staggering impact on cost and product quality. It takes a trained eye on part of the manager to see if someone is using narcotics; to prove it is a little more difficult. There are legal issues, of course, since our legal industry seemingly doesn’t concern itself with the loss of public funds due to the impact of poor performance, absenteeism, and declining individual health resulting from the use of illegal narcotics.
But regardless of how our legal industry condones the use of drugs in the work- place as an impact on cost and product quality, this is nevertheless a very great
2See Chapter 12, on leadership.
problem to quality, schedule, and cost in the American workplace. The legal indus- try must somehow care about the danger the drug-free worker and engineer finds himself in when there are no controls in a workplace. The sad fact is that a person talking with a colleague has no idea who he is talking to, a conscious state of Dr. Jekyll or a Mr. Hyde.
While still in the U.S. Army, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a scream for help from the house next door. I jumped out of bed and ran up the fire escape to where the screams for help were coming from. It was a young woman in the corner of her kitchen with a young man, his back to me in the door, about to attack her with a meat cleaver.
When he heard me, he turned around with a fantastic grin on his face, and came at me. Lucky for me, I was 32 and at the height of my physical and mental strength;
he weighed about 150 to my 175 lbs. I was able to disarm him quickly, but to hold him down on the floor until the sheriff’s deputy arrived was terribly difficult and required all of my strength and skills as a Green Beret captain. It is worth mention- ing that it took the deputy about 20 minutes to get there, and when he came in, at about 2:00A.M., he stood in the door, laughing happily, hands on his hips, saying,
‘‘Howdy Cap’n! Don’t you recognize me?’’
I replied that I didn’t, and that I needed help fast; I couldn’t keep this guy under control. He insisted I recognize him. ‘‘No I don’t, who are you? Give me a hand, please!’’
‘‘Well, I’m so and so, remember? I was the Orkin Man, just got this here job last week!’’
Great! I needed police help, and I get the Orkin Man who is going through on- the-job training in hopes of becoming a policeman. ‘‘You got any handcuffs on you?’’ I yelled.
‘‘Yes sir, I think so!’’
‘‘Well give them to me,now!’’ He finally gave me the handcuffs, and I put them on the guy. Thank God my friends, a couple of Georgia State policemen, were in the area and arrived shortly thereafter; I was finally off the hook. One of the interesting things about this incident was that there was not a muscle in my body, including my facial muscles, that didn’t hurt after this. I can remember clearly that I was in pain for something like two weeks. The Georgia State policemen later told me how lucky I had been. The guy had been high on PCP.
This is a serious problem, and workplace safety is a serious matter. And, it is an ethical matter. The employer is required to provide a safe working environment for the employees and can be held liable if he does not. I am surprised that state and muni- cipal governments, as well as companies, forbid cigarette smoking but do not bother with going to the trouble of mandating checks for narcotics and other habit-forming drugs in the workplace. Even for the security of the employees they do not bother.
It is a matter of ethics within our legal industry, which is probably the reason for this neglect. Narcotics are so widespread that they pose a threat to the health of our industry, our country, and our national security.
I am not sure if the problem of narcotics in the workplace ranks with poorly qua- lified management; I suspect it exceeds it. In any case, it threatens our productivity
NARCOTICS USE IN THE WORKFORCE 175
in all of our industries, not just software. It takes a very experienced manager to identify the user of illicit drugs in the workplace. We modern Americans like to make light of the issue of narcotics by calling them drugs, which makes them sound less harmful than if we call them by their real names. If one considers the kinds of legal drugs some of us are prescribed by our physicians, and remain under for the rest of our lives, it is bad enough. The side effects of these legal drugs are often terrible. For my conditions of dengue fever, malaria, and Marie-Strumpell disease3, the Army was ever-ready to provide me with all the painkillers I needed:
Darvon, codeine, quinine, etc. Eventually, I threw them out because they made me even sicker, and I needed to work with a clear head. So, I decided to live with the pain; I exercised and used nothing stronger than Bayer aspirin.
We have become a nation of junkies and are loving it. The leading heroes of the sports and entertainment industries are narcotics addicts. Okay, they entertain us, but in the workplace it makes the environment unsafe, the quality of the product poor, and the cost go through the roof. Let’s not kid ourselves. If it is true that
‘‘America’s business is business,’’ then we are losing our livelihood to those nations and workers overseas who are not as addicted to drugs (narcotics) as Americans are.
If we must support a large segment of the population because it is drugged up, it is still cheaper than keeping such people in the workplace, ruining our products and productivity. Out of the simple reason of national and corporate self-preservation, we need to eliminate narcotics from the workplace.
There is a lot to be said here about languages and the play on words, as a teacher.
What do the words ‘‘drug’’ and ‘‘narcotics’’ mean in other languages, and how is it connected to the way we treat ‘‘drugs’’ as opposed to ‘‘narcotics’’ and places where people sell and buy drugs? This has teaching and relational implications as to how we label things that are ‘‘good’’ and things that are ‘‘not good.’’ It is important philosophically because that is how we learn as children. Does it mean that if some- thing is ‘‘bad’’ then we won’t touch it? By no means. However, some of us will not touch it if it is bad. I have personally never touched mind-altering drugs. People will immediately say, ‘‘But you like booze, and that is a drug.’’ That too is a philoso- phical issue open to debate. A drunk clearly does not belong in the workplace. One can smell the alcohol on a person’s breath, and tell him to go home. But cocaine, morphine, and the others like cannabis are not so easy to detect. Only by knowing a person’s performance and programming pace and style can I detect that something is wrong.
The German word for narcotics, for example, isRauschgift, which translates roughly into ‘‘a poison that causes a ‘rush’ or a ‘high’,’’ which is accurate. So, should the young German take drugs, he is at least alerted to the fact that it is a poison.
We start going to ‘‘drug stores’’ when we are kids for a soda or a milkshake, and get used to the word ‘‘drug’’ in a very benign way. So calling a spade a spade might help.
3Marie-Strumpell disease, a.k.a. ankylosing spondylitis, is a degenerative rheumatoid arthritis, primarily of the spinal column.
The use of narcotics among the managers and workforce will destroy a company. One has to ask how many of the great American companies and corporations that went belly up during the past 40 years did so as the result of narcotics use. The use of narcotics is a mortal danger to a company, far more so than alcohol. There is nothing to it if it is just a glass of wine or a beer at lunch. But the use of heroin, cocaine, angel dust, marijuana, etc., is much more dangerous. The reason why they pose such danger is that the inexperienced man- ager, team leader, or even a fellow worker is not really aware of to whom, or with whom, he is talking. This is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome. You make a serious correction, counsel an employee for performance, coming in late to work, absenteeism, or you make a remark in jest, thinking that you are talking to Dr. Jekyll, but you are actually talking to Mr. Hyde. You have placed yourself and maybe the entire workplace in mortal jeopardy. The manager is responsible for the physical safety and welfare of all employees. You must assume the respon- sibility and accountability for everything around you that falls under your authority and ensure that you are aware around the periphery of the organization as well.
The fraggings in Vietnam were not done by clear-headed people; they were done under the influence of narcotics. I can assure the reader, that having spent 34 months there, half of which was as a rifle company commander, I know what I am talking about. On combat operations there were fewer problems with the troops because they seriously policed themselves and beat up very badly those they caught using drugs. Everyone knew that drug use by even a single person jeopardized the safety of the entire unit and the lives of their fellow soldiers, due to inaccurate shooting, slow reflexes, carelessness, falling asleep in night ambush positions, or getting lost on patrol. But once in the rear area, which was usually a Landing Zone (LZ) or Fire Support Base, a company commander’s hands were full.
You could, of course, ‘‘outfox’’ the potheads, and that was a challenging task that kept me busy night and day.