Blackmoor Vituperative

It’s 06:00 Sunday morning. I have been laying awake for an hour.

I had a job interview Friday at one of the more prestigious companies in Richmond. It doesn’t matter which one. Toward the end of the interview, they mentioned the section on my resume toward the end, where I state:

I will consent to pre- or post-employment drug testing only if I am or will be directly responsible for the lives of others, or if I must obtain and maintain a security clearance from the Unites States federal government.

The interviewer said that a humiliating invasion of my personal privacy (i.e., “drug testing”) was a requirement for the position, and that I wouldn’t be offered the position unless I consented to it. Note that I hadn’t actually been offered the job, but if I were offered the position, consenting to this debasement would be a condition of my employment.

I really want that job. I still do. It would be a great opportunity for me, with a great company, doing exactly what I want to do. I grudgingly said that I would consent, if offered the job.

I have hated myself ever since saying it. If I am offered the job, and if I consent to this pre-employment rape just to get a paycheck, I will hate the company and every moment I work there.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”

Has this phrase become meaningless? If it doesn’t apply to your most intimate of medical information, then what good is it?

I am going to start lobbying the General Assembly, to ask them to create an Employee Medical Privacy Act. The legitimate business interests of an employer do not extend to the private medical information of their employees and prospective employees. This grotesque and despicable invasion of Virginians’ privacy has gone too far. The practice has become so commonplace that only action by the General Assembly can protect us from it. If they won’t protect us from this vile and humiliating practice, then they need to be voted out of office and replaced with people who will.

In the meantime, I am going to contact that employer on Monday, and tell them that although I would love to have that job, that I will not and will never submit to being humiliated and debased as a condition of employment. If more of us stood up and said this, this despicable practice would end. But because most of use aren’t standing up against this obscene invasion of our most intimate private matters, it won’t stop until the government of Virginia puts a stop to it.

Frankly, I do not expect that to happen. But someone has to try, and I don’t see anyone else trying, so I guess I will have to be the one to start.