Well, dumb-a$$es, it's like this -- He got WASTED while he was on duty.
So, Are you STILL 'puzzled', or are you better now?
Not necessarily. A long term drinker develops an amazing resistance to alcohol. A real alcoholic drinker can ingest enough alcohol to send a non drinker to the hospital and still remain cogent and rational.
So, it is quite common for heavy drinkers to get up to 1.0 or so at midnight, try to sleep it off and still wake up with a significant amount of alcohol in their system, although they themselves will not even know that they are drunk because they are so used to it.
Also, with long term heavy drinking, your body will lose the ability to rid itself of alcohol. It takes much longer for a middle aged alcoholic to recover from a fifth of whiskey the night before than it would for a teenager to late twenties. They can drink until they puke and get up the next morning with only minor ill effects. An older drinker will remain drunk much longer.
In fact, in my interactions with the police on this matter, I explained that you are just as likely to pull over a DUI from 5am to noon, as you are after dark. The drunks driving ‘after dark’, giving everyone pulled over a DUI test just because it is dark, is a psychological issue and is not born out practically by fact. People driving with a hangover are just as drunk as people beginning their drinking in the evening.
So, my thesis, my experience is, that this guy got sh@tfaced the night before, has a history of drinking, and likely drank well into the morning before his shift.
He may have been drinking on the job, but it is just as likely that he was just still wasted from the night before. His level does not prove he was drinking on the job. Now had he been on shift for 12 or more hours, it would be a different story.
Would be interesting to know if they did the drug screen as well.
For what it is worth...out
If he can ask me what I have in my MickyDs cup, I think we ought to ask them the same question.