<p>Parents of CC, I have seen that a lot of you do or have done hiring. I tried researching this but couldn’t find anything except for students in high school.</p>
<p>We do hair drug testing at work before getting hired or transferring positions and they look at the past ~3 months. I want to transfer, but I have been casually drinking light yummy drinks (think: Smirnoff, wine coolers, sparkling champagne) at home. I have seen that alcohol can show up in hair. </p>
<p>Do most work places take into consideration underage alcohol use, generally speaking? (I don’t think this is a question I can or should ask my bosses LOL)</p>
<p>I can’t speak for every company out there, but those screenings a primarily for illegal drugs (well, okay, often illegal drugs), like pot, cocaine, etc. If you are worried about it, don’t drink for a couple of days, alcohol dissipates rapidly as far as I know, it isn’t like pot that can be detected a month or more. The only alcohol tests I know of are usually after an accident or something has happened, and to see what the blood alcohol level is and if it is above a certain limit. I could see a religious group that bans alcohol as part of its faith checking in church run businesses, but I doubt even they would do it.</p>
<p>musicparent, alcohol metabolites CAN be detected in hair up to 90 days or so post-consumption, but as both you said, employers most likely look for and care about the presence of illegal substances.</p>
<p>OP, your employer should have a copy of some sort of employee manual that spells out what they test for (“illegal substances” or similar wording).</p>
<p>@bunsen-
That is a good point, I was thinking more blood based testing, and they did mention it was hair (which I know very little about, thanks for the info). It is interesting, any drug tests I have taken have always been urine based (which has its own problems, the Chromatography based tests are able to give false positives like mad) or blood based, never had a hair based one, and I suspect it is more expensive to do the hair based tests:). Put it this way, if a company checked for alcohol use like that, I doubt I would want to work for them in the first place.</p>
<p>I would not want to work for that kind of place either. IMO, if they ARE testing hair for alcohol metabolites, they are opening a big can of worms for themselves. I wonder how much alcohol has to be consumed for the level in hair to become detectable? Can alcohol consumption be quantified? What if a person accidentally swallowed listerine? I knew one can detect alcohol via the fatty acid esters in hair (I think I looked up in Medline after watching some crime investigation show), but I do not know the details like sensitivity, specificity, etc.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt they give a DIFFERENT test to folks under/over 21. That’s especially true if most people working for the company are over 21 and they’d have to do some special extra test that costs more.</p>
<p>Plus, in a lot of states…including New York…there are exceptions to the “no drinking under 21” rule. It’s perfectly legal here for parents to give kids over 14 liquor. It’s also perfectly legal for Cornell U Hotel School students who are taking the wine tasting course. If someone “flunked” such A test, they could say…".Well…I went to visit NYC with my parents! "</p>
<p>In my profession, (nursing) they not only test for illegal drugs, but legal drugs taken illegally (i.e. without a prescription). Diversion has been a problem in the medical profession, so they will test to see if you have narcotics or benzos in your system and cannot produce a valid prescription. Some places are testing for nicotine as they have a no hire policy for smokers.</p>