The move is supported by the state's transport workers' union, on the grounds that if rail workers have to suffer the indignity of random alcohol tests, so should politicians.
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Tue Dec 9 04:48:37 2008
I wonder sometimes about public servants and caffeine. It's well known a large proportion of white-collar person-hours are spent under the influence of this legal stimulant. What effect might this have on the work being done? As far as I know, the principal effect of coffee is to override one's perception of boredom - the sense of the uselessness of one's current activity. So what would be the effect if public servants were prevented from working under the influence of caffeine? Logically, one expects that less work would get done, and the easy argument is that this would be a bad thing. But perhaps the worker's boredom is signalling something important which shouldn't be masked? Perhaps that filing and office admin is not as important as the coffee makes it seem! Consider alcohol: it reduces anxiety, which on the surface seems like a good thing, whereas we know that lack of anxiety causes people to act in unwise ways, and therefore we ban alcohol from most workplaces.