Your old boss probably knew. Either that or he was an idiot. I used to get high before work all the time until I started working at Chicago Mercantile Exchange. That was the only corporate job I've ever loved, the action and adrenaline of trading on the floor was insane! Short day, too, from 7am to 1pm on the currency floor (this was right when Europe was introducing the Euro). At lunch, we used to walk to the Amtrak station next door, find a quiet, unoccupied spot and get lifted. I was checking out trades with a major client after the close one day, and we got into a really heated argument. He was insisting that he was up for the day, and I was insisting he lost. We argued for about 5 minutes until he asked, "Are you fucking HIGH?!" I was SO high, I was reading the trades exactly wrong, he was up. I was so humiliated that I never smoked at work again. I did pick up a nifty cocaine habit, though. There were about 4 dealers on the floor that would front you coke on credit, and came around on pay day (everyone got paid same day once a week). It got so bad that I lost track of how much I owed, and I knew I was in trouble when I started spending my ENTIRE check on coke, sometimes evening digging into my own pocket for the habit. But everyone was coked out, even in the massive men's room stalls, you could always find trading cards covered in coke residue. I remember one time I had just copped a squat in the stall, and saw a freshly opened 8 ball on the toilet paper dispenser. I tasted it, and it was FLAME! So I pocketed it and quickly left the stall. Seconds later, and huge black guy busted in that stall while I was washing my hands. "WHERE'S MY FUCKING COKE!" he screamed. "IMA KILL A MOTHERFUCKER!!!" I just looked over casually, dried my hands and left. Luckily, I just got tired of coke after a certain degree of damage and stopped. A few friends had to go to rehab for help to get off it. I just got lucky, I guess...