If you had a friend who is a surgeon, pilot, or school bus driver, and you are pretty sure he is an alcoholic, would you tell?

Yeah, I suppose I would.

Hell yes!

I would first express my grave concerns to the friend and perhaps even tell them that if they did not seek treatment and get sober I would be forced to expose their addiction. If you want to mow your lawn drunk, or bake a cake, go for it, but if you, literally, are holding anothers life in your hands, you bet your ass I’m gonna do whatever it takes to protect that persons potential victims.

Maybe. If his/her baheviour is threatening lives,it would be my citizen duty to report that. I can’t care about friends when lives are in danger. I’d report is straight away if it wasn’t any friend, but simply some drunkard I trusted my or my dear’s life to.

Maybe I’d try to tell the friend first to pipe down or seek help. If s/he doesn’t, I’d maybe report it.

Maybe. I’ve never been in this situation…

Just to add details, you aren’t sure if the person drinks all day, but you know they drink fairly heavily in the evening, and you know they drive after a few drinks without a second thought.

I would talk to the friend first but then report it if they weren’t planning to stop drinking.

This may be a bit different from what you are asking but here is a situation I encountered. A few years ago I had a co worker that was really well liked but at some point started doing drugs. Whether she had a prescription or it was street drugs, I don’t know and it didn’t matter. She would be stoned at work. She would stumble, slur, spill stuff on herself. It went on for a couple months. This was in a accounting type office setting. My worry, and I expressed it to the boss, was that she was driving like that. I didn’t want to be on the road with her and didn’t want her to hurt herself or anyone else.
She eventually got fired but I don’t know if she stopped doing drugs.
Long story to just say that I did nothing and now when I think back, I am ashamed that I didn’t. She could’ve killed herself or someone else on the drive to and from work.

Does he drink on work days or during work shifts? I would check into that before reporting him.

If I knew they were drinking and driving I would be very concerned, as far as doing what you want on your own time, well, big difference going to your job as a waitress with a hangover vs. having to fly a plane or perform brain surgery the next morning. Spilling someones orange juice is not comparable to spilling someones brains. haha
Actually, I have heard that driving with a hangover is almost as bad as driving drunk in terms of hangover impairment. Not unlike driving wile extremely tired, fatigued or emotionally overwrought.

All compromise ones ability to be remain alert and their reaction time.

Depends on how much he is willing to pay me to keep his secret, secret.

Depends on if they are drinking on the job or not. If they are then yes. If not, I mind my own f’ing business.

@janbb and all those who would talk to the friend first. You do realize he would no longer be a “friend,” after you told the company, and he would know who tipped the company off. Not having him as a friend, no biggie. But having him as a drunken enemy who might take it in his head to get revenge is different.

Yes, I would express my concerns to the company, anonymously, if possible.

I’d try not to fill in the blanks with information I didn’t have. If someone drinks and drives that’s enough to have a conversation about, there’s no need to infer anything more. I’ve had that conversation a number of times, sometimes it’s successful, sometimes not.

With a friend I also feel a responsibility to make sure they get home ok, so I make sure they know I’ll pick them up, literally anytime, and be happy to if they’re too drunk to drive. I’ve been on the other end of that one, there’s no judgement.

If I thought they were drinking at work, and it was important, I’d talk about that too. But I wouldn’t infer it from behavior on nights and weekends. That’s a step too far for me personally.

As far as not talking to them at all, but talking to their employer. If we’re talking about friends here, why in the world would I want to hurt them rather than help? That’s not how I treat anyone, much less friends.

It’s pretty common for tradesmen to drink heavily on off hours and then be straight laced during work. I see it a lot and I have only had a couple of individuals with real issues. The actual drunks don’t stay, they get found out and dispensed with quickly.

(Unless they kill someone first…)

You can’t even work at my place of employment without drug tests and background checks. If someone wants to get a heavy buzz on their own time, in their own home it is nobodys business. There is a fine line between being a busybody and bringing up a valid concern.

Not unless I thought they might be drunk on the job and I’d already talked to them about it first.

I’ve known many alcoholics who were never drunk at work.

I think @ARE_you_kidding_me nailed it. Almost every place I worked did random drug testing, especially in those fields were other people’s lives were in their hands.

Talking to them first is nothing more than breathing, with sound.
They know already about rules/laws.
I would tell, but advising that friend is useless.

@Patty_Melt Well the question’s scenario has them being my friend, so I would honor that by talking to them first if I was feeling morally compelled to report them. In practice, what I tend to do is talk to friends who have alcohol issues before it gets that bad, and would tend stop enabling their alcoholism by being their friends long before it got that bad.

I knew a physician who was licensed in one state and a convicted, registered sex offender in another state. Yes, I filed a complaint with the licensing board, complete with a printout of the man’s profile from a sex-offender registry. Yes, the medical license board conducted a thorough investigation and revoked the man’s license.

The public has the right to be protected. That very protection is hindered or impossible when information’s kept hidden.

How did you find out about it @Love_my_doggie?

The doctor that delivered my daughter back in 1987 smelled like alcohol when he came into the room to deliver her. It was a long labor and he kept checking and checking me and was at the hospital from about 5 o’ clock until I finally delivered her at 11:30 that night. When it was finally time, he came into the birthing room and when he bent over me he smelled like Whiskey. I figured he ( he was certainly not drunk ) had probably slipped out for a quick drink in between checking me all night long. Everything was fine and I wasn’t really concerned but..it was still unprofessional.

“Being an alcoholic” is one thing, and I know more than a handful of people who have been high-functioning alcoholics through my life and various career paths so far.

However, that I know of, I’ve only noticed one person who showed up to work drunk, and I had to dismiss him (from work) the night that I discovered it, so that he could be fired the next day when the payroll and timekeeping folks were on hand to give him his check.

I’ve had my doubts about some people’s performance based on speech patterns and occasional missteps or stumbles while walking, but … in the construction trades one finds poor speakers all the time, and stumbling over sometimes rough ground is part of the job. So those are poor indicators as a general rule.

I once attempted, back in the days when liquor at office Christmas parties was a regular thing, to offer a neighbor / co-worker a ride home because he was clearly drunk, and he sobered up just enough to threaten to punch me if I suggested it again. I would handle that differently these days, but back then I simply waved it off and let him do what he was going to do anyway. He lived; most drunk drivers generally do, after all. And he didn’t have any mishap that I ever knew about.

In fact, several years ago we had a different sort of office Christmas party, at a nice restaurant with a great dinner. But I had too much wine with the meal after a couple of mixed drinks before dinner, and I felt myself to be incapable of driving well enough to trust myself, even though “home” was less then ten minutes away on roads that I knew well. So after the luncheon I went to my car – in a parking garage – reclined the seat and played music for a couple of hours while I dozed. I guess I really could have been cited for “operating a motor vehicle” while under the influence, which would have been technically true, but it still seemed like a low-risk move.

So … context matters. I don’t currently know or even suspect any of my associates to be alcoholic or drug users, but if someone had an acute problem at some point, I’d still attempt to help them through the current crisis, and depending on their reaction I would act differently than I did in the early 1980s. I’d cut his tires’ valve stems, or call a truck to have his car towed, or get other friends to assist in taking his keys, if we couldn’t get him drunk enough to pass out, for example.~

But as to those who “drink a lot in the evening” but show up to work, and seem to work well, afterward, I’d still leave that alone.

If I knew they were tipsy while at work I would tell. I would certainly talk to them first and if their behavior didn’t change a would narc in hot second.

And it would be a act of love

Say the school bus driver got a bunch of kids killed while drunk. They are going to rot in prison. Better to just lose your job. And the same goes for the other professions in the OP.

Normally I am against drug testing. I had to take a drug test for a job where I sat in front of a computer for 12 hours a day. That seemed ridiculous. But I also worked in a warehouse for NAPA auto parts where I was running around dodging forklifts driven by people drinking 40’s in the bathroom during their breaks and lunch. I would be fine with drug testing those dudes.

@JLeslie Considering the fact that others are depending on this person’s sobriety, yes tell someone. Do it for the “others”.