Is your Criminal Background KeepingYou From Working

[Holdfast]

Which is why I need your advice Zakk or indeed anyones!

Ask him what he wants out of life.

I like this as a strategy. He's almost an adult, and needs to start making adult choices. It's going to be difficult for him to accept that, but that's the challenge facing him. The pot issue is really secondary; the key thing would be for him to start making choices, rather than going with what feels good transiently.

Hell, what till yuo get this gem a couple times (as I have over the years): "Well you're criminal background check is spotless, so we're not going to be comfortable hiring you"

The logic goes, as it was told to me the last time I ran up on this, is that if you haven't so much as a parking ticket then that just means you're better at getting away with shit and they might not catch you if you want to rob the company blind.

Are you fucking serious?

Yep. Apparently not having a record just means you're talented crook.

Awesome.

Haven't come across this gem myself yet in the UK; will ask some HR friends to check to see if this bit of nonsense has crossed the pond yet...

 

[K'Ehleyr]

Which is why I need your advice Zakk or indeed anyones!

Ask him what he wants out of life.

I like this as a strategy. He's almost an adult, and needs to start making adult choices. It's going to be difficult for him to accept that, but that's the challenge facing him. The pot issue is really secondary; the key thing would be for him to start making choices, rather than going with what feels good transiently.

I have asked him want he wants out of life and he says "to be happy".

Idealistically I cannot fault this ~ realistically I despair

 

[Finn]

Nope, I'm clean

 

[tkron]

Personally no, but I can see how it could happen. If you have a criminal background, in my state (Illinois) you are automatically barred from working in certain fields or places like nursing homes. I used to work for a place that contracted with the state to provide housing, job training and other services for people with disabilities and I know for sure we couldn't hire one guy because he had gotten convicted for something or other, I forget what.

 

[Finn]

^does it matter what he did? What if he stole a pack of gum at 14?

 

[ed629]

Some experience here, the girl I've been dating has had some legal issues... felony conviction, 1 DUI conviction, 2 upcoming DUI trials.

She is finding it near impossible to get a job, everywhere she applies asks about convictions and some about DUI's. Basically she is going to have to work mediocre customer type service jobs for years until she can either get them expunged or become old enough that they will not be an issue. But it doesn't look promising for a while, especially considering she is going to be without a license for 2-3 years at the minimum.

 

[scotpens]

“Well you're criminal background check is spotless, so we're not going to be comfortable hiring you.”

The logic goes, as it was told to me the last time I ran up on this, is that if you haven't so much as a parking ticket then that just means you're better at getting away with shit and they might not catch you if you want to rob the company blind.

Is that for real? I mean, do some employers' minds actually work that way? It sounds positively Kafkaesque, or like a classic Catch-22.

 

[SeerSGB]

“Well you're criminal background check is spotless, so we're not going to be comfortable hiring you.”

The logic goes, as it was told to me the last time I ran up on this, is that if you haven't so much as a parking ticket then that just means you're better at getting away with shit and they might not catch you if you want to rob the company blind.

Is that for real? I mean, do some employers' minds actually work that way? It sounds positively Kafkaesque, or like a classic Catch-22.

Some HR people are paranoid fucks. And I've ran into quite a few.

I applied for a job with Bi-Lo (grocery store chain we had in the area) once and the HR manager sent me for a drug-test three times cause they kept coming back clean. The last one he actually went with me to make sure it was really me taking the test. He couldn't get his head around a teenager that didn't have at least have some pot in his system. He finally said he wasn't going to hire me cause "something wasn't right" about me.