09-16-2021, 08:35 PM
Way back in 1985 I applied for a job with the Chattanooga City Fire Department. There was a series of tests (Written, Physical, polygraph) and after each round they cut down the field. The very last step was a physical that included a drug test. Back then I was just out of college and was smoking a lot of weed. I stopped smoking to clean my system in time for the drug screen. After each round of tests I would get a call back within a couple of days to let me know I had made it to the next level. When it got down to waiting for the physical I did not hear anything for a week so I figure I had not made the cut. But the very day after I started smoking again I got a call to report for the physical.
Someone told me to drink vinegar to mask the THC. I tried that but I threw most of it back up. I did not have much hope, but I took the test and was hired as a firefighter.
The wildest part of that story is that usually the city would only hire 5 or 6 new firemen a year and the only way to get on the force was to have a "horse" or some one already on the force that would recommend you. But that year they had to hire 14 and I did so well on all the tests that they hired me even though I knew no one on the force. The only reason they hired so many that year is that they had just started a drug testing program the year before and had had to fire 10 guys for multiple failed tests.
Someone told me to drink vinegar to mask the THC. I tried that but I threw most of it back up. I did not have much hope, but I took the test and was hired as a firefighter.
The wildest part of that story is that usually the city would only hire 5 or 6 new firemen a year and the only way to get on the force was to have a "horse" or some one already on the force that would recommend you. But that year they had to hire 14 and I did so well on all the tests that they hired me even though I knew no one on the force. The only reason they hired so many that year is that they had just started a drug testing program the year before and had had to fire 10 guys for multiple failed tests.
