A farm, a drug test, and a halfway house person...

I am going to share a story with everybody that I have never shared on any form of social media, but this is an incident that still haunts my memory to this day, and I would like to receive some outsider opinions on it.

A few years ago, I worked on a farm. It was a fairly large, organic family-run farm with dairy cattle, pigs, chickens, and a vegetable operation. The farmhand crew was very much your typical "earthy crunchy granola munchers" if you will, most of whom were herbal tokers.

Before I get to the story, I am going to share a few quick memories from working there that will give people a better idea of the work atmosphere;
-I remember smoking with my co-workers by the river on our lunch hour, and then getting a quick swim in before going back to harvest.
-I remember the vegetable manager giving us hits off his one hitter in the far ends of the field.
-I remember eating brownies on 4/20 with the herd manager whilest milking cows
-I remember throwing the herd manager a few nugs when I had to have her take my hours.
-I remember my boss' own cousin, who ran the farm bread shop, giving weed to some of the main employees.
-I remember, after a harvest festival, all the employees having a bonfire in the back pasture, and when our boss went in, the weed came out.
-I remember employees at the farmhand house growing plants in their closet.

We were pretty much a family there. What we had was sacred, but all that was sacred was about to be destroyed by my boss (for me at least, although I do take some of the blame for this incident)

My boss decided that he was going to take in a halfway house person who had a social worker working with him, and he didn't tell anybody. I would think my boss must have gotten some sort of benefit from doing this. This person was working in the creamery (where milk was bottled, and cheese, yogurt and butter was made) which was the part of the farm I had the least to do with. He seemed like a typical skater/snowboarder/hip hop type, kinda ADHD, but nothing to out of the ordinary with him it seemed at first, and his social worker seemed like another employee as well. He was usually wearing band t-shirts, which was one of the things that made me start talking to him (as well as the fact that I generally liked to get to know new employees, because like I said, we were a big family there). When he started talking about pot, I thought nothing of it because of the atmosphere there. He asked me if I had some one day. I was on a break, and I gave him a nug I had out of my car. Turns out, I was being watched by his social worker, and he reported it to my boss. I all of a sudden found myself under all this scrutiny, and my boss was threatening to fire me, because I "sold drugs to a 'special' person" as he said. Now he knew who smoked pot on his farm, but he didn't approve of it. Still, I feel like if I got caught giving it to a main employee, he would have just rolled his eyes, but I gave it to a "special person". Anyways, at that time, I couldn't picture myself anywhere else. I had grown such a bond with my co-workers, as well as a bond to the land and the cows I was milking. I begged to keep my job, and he said that the only way I could keep it is to give up weed and be randomly drug tested. I reluctantly agreed, because like I said, I couldn't picture myself anywhere else. I thought of ways that giving up weed could possibly be best for me, so I gave it a try. I soon realized that it wasn't worth it being held accountable for my personal life, especially since I was literally surrounded by people who smoked. Even if I was okay with giving up weed for good, I wouldn't have been okay with being treated like I'm on probation just to keep a job that didn't even pay very well to begin with. I ended up quitting before taking a single drug test. I accept some of the blame, I used poor judgement having weed out in the open at work. However, my boss did not communicate with anybody, not even his own middle management, that he was taking this person in. That is a problem beyond just weed, he brought a potentially dangerous person into our work atmosphere and didn't tell anybody.

This brings up a point that my girlfriend made when we were speaking about this situation, and that he perhaps had to sign a confidentiality agreement when he took him in and, therefore, legally could not tell anybody. This seems unlikely though, especially since he claimed after that it was a rule that we weren't supposed to talk to him, and we certainly were not supposed to be buddying up with him like he was "one of us", and how was he to enforce a rule that he could not tell anybody? Seems more like a matter of poor communication then it does confidentiality.

So I'm wondering how you guys feel about this situation. Has anyone ever had a similar experience? And also, for people who know about halfway houses, are employers supposed to sign a confidentiality agreement when they take someone from one in under supervised care?

Discuss

 

Dude this was years ago. I would rather just not go back to that farm for any reason. I have a great job now. haha

 

I was not looking for advice on what to do about a situation that isn't even relevant anymore, I was looking for opinions, similar stories and answer to that halfway house question.

 

That's really strange. So during the meeting, management realized that everyone smokes and they couldn't afford to fire everybody, so they came up with that proposition? That kinda reminds me of that Workaholics episode haha.

My current job said that they drug test on the application and they never did. The mention of a drug test never came up in the whole 5 months I've been there.

 

Pretty much yeah, except he didn't do a very good job at it because the "special person" was always out on cigarette breaks by himself. That was usually when I would have my earliest encounters with him.

 

I've heard about that. Like I said, this must have been some sort of program where my boss was getting a benefit for bringing him in.

 

I kinda feel like it is one thing to be a prisoner on work release; you can possibly be a responsible person still who made a dumb mistake. In fact, to even be considered for work release, you need to prove to the court that this is a case.

It is another thing to be a borderline sociopath with no sense of morality who needs a supervisor because you literally don't know how to be a functioning member of society. That was this dude's case, it just didn't show at first, and for some reason, my boss didn't think his employees were important enough to know this information...

 

So can anybody here answer my earlier question?

Would it have been possible that my boss had to sign a confidentiality agreement and therefore wasn't allowed to talk about this person's situation? Or was it just poor communication?