After we got through that argument (I was young, today I would have already walked out) he asked me if I "could pass a drug screening test." He didn't ask if I did drugs he just wanted to know if I could pass a tox-screen. To drive the point home he then added "because if not we can run down to CVS and get you something to flush your system." I had long hair back then (it was the ninties!) so he repeated the question a few times.

I did end up getting a job through him and started my first non-contract gig out of college at MusicBlvd.com (which is long since defunct). They were growing like crazy so the HR paperwork was very spotty: I had to fill out a W-2 right away but it was more than a month before I was asked to sign a random drug screening consent form (and I never had to sign a non-compete). I laughed and laughed. You see the company was heavilly staffed with would-be musicians and the executives were would-be music moguls. If there had been a company-wide "piss test day" most of customer service, a chunk of tech and marketing, and the entire executive team would have shown up positive for a swath of drugs with slight variations based on the employee's salary.

This was the go-go nineties so recreational drug use was the least of the company's problems. There was a culture of playing office; it was concentrated in the non-tech divisions but even tech suffered from it somewhat. True story: there were enough conference rooms in the building for fully half of the employees to be in conference at any given time and you had to book a week in advance to get a room. A year later musicblvd.com was redirecting to cdnow.com, a year after that cdnow.com was redirecting to bn.com, and today both will send you to amazon.com. Who would have guessed?