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by dathinab 1439 days ago
IMHO _recent_ DUIs are more relevant then a lot of "not at all" recent much more serve things.

DUI is a sign of gross recklessness and apathy for the well being of others. Sure I won't blame a young adult for doing this mistake and there are situations where it's understandable (i.e. some kind of emergency making you DUI even through you generally are against it).

But still I would prefer to work with someone who in the youth due to poverty has committed robbery (but not anymore since 20 years), then someone who in their 40th who is frequently driving under influence of alcohol.

Anyway even if I had a company and it for whatever reason would do background checks I wouldn't want to know the outcome as long as whoever is responsible for it following some strict guidelines didn't judge it to be a problem (and no if it's not a car company it wouldn't contain DUI, and generally I don't like background checks).

2 comments

Appendix:

I just realized that I had forgotten that in the US you often do not have the freedom of not taking the car but e.g. the public transportation. This makes things more complicated. But then doesn't really change how I feel about it.

If it helps, in the US you can get a taxi/uber/lyft to take you home from the bar. Some bars even offer free rides or can help arrange one if you need it. Calling a friend or relative to pick you up is also an option.

It's true that having shit public transportation and everything so far away that you need to drive complicates things, but there are always options. In Japan the public transportation is great, but the trains stop running long before the alcohol stops being served and it's not uncommon for drunk people to wait until morning even if it means waiting/sleeping outside all night. No reason folks here can't do the same.

> If it helps, in the US you can get a taxi/uber/lyft to take you home from the bar. Some bars even offer free rides or can help arrange one if you need it.

I was more thinking about people with an alcohol addiction still getting to/from their job on a daily basis then people going home from partying.

Bars could have hives of Puke-n-Nap pods that they can just hose out in the morning after everyone leaves.
I certainly don't mean to endorse DUIs! And if a company has the viewpoint that a DUI indicates that a person shouldn't be employed in a specific role, then background checks are a good way to achieve that.

My perception is that some people who don't want to do background checks feel that way because they don't want to know embarrassing details about their employees and colleagues that aren't relevant to work. And the good news is that employers can generally set up background check reporting to simply not report issues that employers don't think are relevant. And that makes it easier to offer background checks, and easier to meet SOC-2 audit requirements.