Help Wanted

Gone are the days shopkeepers could simply post a “Help Wanted” sign in the front window and wait for someone to happen by to fill a position. And it’s rare to see someone with pages of newsprint spread out, with classified ads for potential jobs circled in bright magic marker. Heavy-duty paper with a flawlessly typed catalog of professional experiences, fastened securely with a staple seem to be a thing of the past.

Soul-less websites ask you to upload your applications and autoresponders verify submission with no indication of your chances. You could send hundreds of inquiries out in a single morning, or spend most of a week using AI tools to tailor your requests to each of 5 job sites for which you actually have some chance of being hired.

If considered, you might need to interview with several decision-makers or a whole group at once. You might be subjected to psychological evaluation, or have to do several work samples in order to continue to be included in the race for employment. When the pool of candidates is reduced to a small handful, a final hurdle that might knock you out of the competition is a drug screening.

Since recreational marijuana use is legal for adults over 21 in Arizona, although employers can require a pre-employment test, they aren’t currently able to refuse to hire an applicant based on a positive test for marijuana alone. So, if there is one job and one applicant and that applicant tests positive for weed, the employer cannot refuse to hire them on that basis alone.

What great news for jobless recreational marijuana users! No need to stop smoking weed to get a job! You can feel free to sit at home on your computer or smart phone and submit applications for jobs you won’t be excluded from based on your use. You can even be high on your Zoom job interview, or show up to sign hiring paperwork having just recently smoked.

 

Never mind that the weed will make you forget you had an interview scheduled, or cause you to laugh at something your potential employer didn’t mean as a joke. Don’t worry that your weed-fueled sleep schedule of rising at noon will cause you to miss opportunities the more sober applicants will have snapped up hours ago. In fact, weed will help you realize that you don’t really want to work in the first place, a topic you may discuss at length with the Door Dash dude that brings your sandwich to your parents’ house where you still comfortably live in your childhood bedroom, despite that you graduated high school 3 years ago.

If you find that it’s you that Wants Help, the process to get the help is very simple. Not easy, but simple. Just go to https://marijuana-anonymous.org/ and either just “find a meeting” and jump right in, or interview yourself with the 12 questions of MA:

1. Has using marijuana stopped being fun?
2. Do you ever get high alone?
3. Is it hard for you to imagine a life without marijuana?
4. Do you find that your friends are determined by your marijuana use?
5. Do you use marijuana to avoid dealing with your problems or to cope with your feelings?
6. Has your marijuana use led to financial difficulties and/or legal consequences?
7. Does your marijuana use let you live in a privately defined world?
8. Have you ever failed to keep promises you made about cutting down or controlling your use of marijuana?
9. Has your use of marijuana caused problems with your health, memory, concentration, or motivation?
10. When your stash is nearly empty, do you feel anxious or worried about how to get more?
11. Do you plan your life around your marijuana use?
12. Have friends or relatives ever complained that your using is damaging your relationship with them?

If you answered Yes to any of these 12 questions, Congratulations, you’re eligible for help!