Should I Be Stoned at Work?: Part 1

When I was in high school, the answer to this question was easy. I worked at a gas station pumping gas when I was 14 and 15 (back then self-service was a novelty) and I also had to do oil changes and fix flat tires. This means that even though I wasn’t old enough, I was driving cars around the station onto and off the lift to perform these services. I worked by myself for about 3 hours every night so I didn’t dare get stoned at that job. I was paid $1.50 an hour and received an additional $0.50 for each oil change and flat tire repair I did.

The day I turned 16, I applied for a job at the carwash that my older brother worked at. The job only paid minimum wage, which was $2.65 in 1978, but on a good day you could also make another $25.00 in tips. I started working there 2 days later and it was a dream job for a stoner like me. You were covered in head to toe in a yellow rain uniform that included a face shield so that even if the boss was there he couldn’t see your eyes clearly. He left usually around 5 or 6 so you were on your own until closing at 10 PM so you could smoke at will for 4 or 5 hours.

The best part, though, was that you could borrow some money against your tips and buy a joint or two if you didn’t have any weed or money before work. On any given night you were going to make at least $5.00 in tips, and back then a joint cost only $1.00 so you could get a friend to front you a doobie or 2 so you could be stoned when you went to work. They could stop by work later and even if you didn’t already have the money you could give it to them out of the carwash funds and replace it later. Life was good because I always had money and weed for the rest of my high school career.

See Should I Be Stoned at Work?: Part 2

Should I Be Stoned at Work?: Part 1

Finding Out the Boss Gets High

As a stoner, one of the first things you try to determine at your job is whether or which of your coworkers may get high. Of particular interest is your immediate supervisor because they are the ones who will be watching and evaluating you while you work. To me it was always pretty easy to figure this out because you could tell with most people if you had seen them stoned and straight before. Most of my bosses who smoked were always more engaged with what you were up to when they weren’t stoned. The opposite seemed to be true when they were stoned because if they didn’t know whether you smoked or not, they got paranoid and avoided you as much as possible.

The day after my 16^th birthday, I started working at a carwash where the boss didn’t get stoned  because my older brother already worked there and he got me a job right away. The nice thing about the carwash is that in addition to the $2.65 minimum wage, you also received tips. When you worked after school, the boss usually left around 5:00 PM and you were alone until you closed the place at 10:00 PM. Since weeknights were usually slow, you had a list of chores to do so you could get stoned after the boss left and tackle the chores.

After I had been working there a couple weeks, some of my friends started stopping by and we would get stoned and listen to some tunes. Soon a few friends started turning into many friends and before long we were having almost nightly parties at the carwash. We would throw all the empty beer cans and bottles on the roof so they wouldn’t be in the garbage can, which we thought was pretty smart. Sometimes when I was really stoned I would let my friends wash the cars and run the machine.

All of this came crashing down one day when the boss decided to go up on the roof for some reason. By this point there were hundreds of empty beer cans and bottles along with some empty liquor bottles up there. Needless to say, he was not happy because he had also found a package of rolling papers, which, as it turned out, led him to look at the roof. My job survived but the partying was over because he started stopping by on random nights and he knew if I was high when he stopped by so I had to stop.

Finding Out the Boss Gets High

The War on Drugs

Weed smokers today should appreciate how good they have it compared to smokers in the 1970′s, 80′s, and 90′ s. Starting actually with President Johnson in the 1960′s, the so called war on drugs made the life of a stoner miserable at some times. During this time, there were periods – lasting months – where it was next to impossible to get some decent weed. The pot you could get was also expensive in addition to being low quality.

During the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, the U.S. government began spraying marijuana fields in Mexico with the herbicide paraquat. Although studies had shown that smoking paraquat sprayed pot had little or no health consequences, the government ran a disinformation program claiming that smoking the tainted pot would cause health problems. While paraquat exposure has been linked to Parkinson’s disease, this has only happened with people who regularly worked with the herbicide such as farmers. The small amount of paraquat that was ingested from smoking weed wasn’t enough to cause any significant health problems.

In the end, all the war on drugs accomplished was to imprison people for wanting to use a substance that has never been proven to be addictive or harmful in the way that heroin, cocaine, and alcohol are. You don’t see stories in the news about people high on marijuana causing traffic fatalities in the thousands every year like alcohol does.

Luckily for me, I was busted with about a quarter pound of pot (a felony) before the war on drugs was underway. The charge was eventually reduced to possession of less than 30 grams (a misdemeanor) and I consider myself fortunate today to have beaten the war on drugs implementation. Had I been busted a few years later, I almost certainly would have received jail time because if you were caught with over an ounce in those days it was implied that your intent was to distribute. People who were caught selling drugs back then almost always received jail time.

The War on Drugs

The Ceiling Has Eyes

Our new modern high school which had been built in 1972 had drop ceilings throughout and we discovered that there was about three feet of space between floors. If you climbed up on the sinks in the washroom and were strong enough, you could pull yourself up into the ceiling and could roam at will throughout the entire floor. This created an interesting situation when it came to smoking weed in the winter. We could now smoke inside the school and no longer had to freeze our butts off outside to get high.

Once we were up in the ceiling it wasn’t long before the temptation to get into mischief when we were stoned became too great. Being stoners, one of our favorite lunch foods were the burritos sold in the cafeteria. We eventually found our way over to the cafeteria kitchen area and we were able to get our burritos for free. If we were really daring, we would drop down into the kitchen and get some chocolate milk to go with them. So now we could go up into the ceiling instead of freezing outside and get stoned. Once we were stoned, we could crawl over to the cafeteria and get some free burritos and, if we were lucky, some chocolate milk. Life at school was finally getting good.

Unfortunately, some people started peeking down into the girl’s washroom from the ceiling and they eventually got caught. The school made it so that the ceiling tiles in the washrooms were no longer removable, so as usual a few bad apples ruined it for the rest of us. We could still go up there once in a while from the hallway but that was risky because a teacher could show up at any time. Besides, since they now knew about it they would check up there occasionally so it was risky business to go up there anyway. They never did figure out that we were also stealing burritos and chocolate milk to cure our munchies and cotton mouth when we were up there.

The Ceiling Has Eyes

International Stoner: Part I

Eventually my travelling for my company started taking me on trips out of the country for weeks at a time. As this happened more and more frequently and the durations were getting longer and longer, I started thinking of ways that I could get some weed into the country with me. Some of the methods I used and the reasons why I wasn’t entirely comfortable with them follows.

Colombia Reverse Smuggling 1996

Even though they no longer contained lead, I decided to cut open a toothpaste tube at the top and squeeze out all of the toothpaste. I was able to then insert about 6 joints that were rolled and double bagged into the tube. I topped the tube back off with toothpaste and taped the top back on. I put the tube and toothbrush into another baggie and put them in my steel toed boots inside my checked baggage. I had no problems getting into Colombia, but when I came home U.S. Customs really searched everything thoroughly but I had smoked it all and tossed the tube so there wasn’t anything suspicious.

South Korea 1998

This time I decided to bring some along in carry-on baggage because I was going to be changing planes in SFO and Seoul and each plane change was a potential luggage search. This was before the days when everyone carried a laptop and cell phone so your carry-on bag would usually be used for toiletries, snacks, and camera. I carried 4 rolled joints inside my toothbrush holder and jammed them in so that they wouldn’t be exposed even if they opened it. I was working in a city called Taegu in Korea and the first thing I did when I checked in was get stoned since it was Sunday morning and I had the day to myself.

I left the hotel and since Taegu was about 150 miles southeast of Seoul they did not see the U.S. soldiers down there. All the kids were intrigued by the white giant and they would follow me and point and laugh. Their parents were all apologizing and I told them it was OK, I didn’t mind. I went into a Pizza Hut and ordered a “Chicago Style” pizza, which was crust, tomato sauce, pineapple chunks, cabbage, and a little cheese. Needless to say that was the last pizza I ordered in Korea.

See International Stoner: Part II!

International Stoner: Part I