Your badge does not work yet.

Somebody walks you through the door because the coding is not finished, points at a log beside the frame, and waits while you print your name and the time. There is a sign above the door in inch-high letters saying the room is limited to authorized employees. There is a camera in the corner of the ceiling that has been running since before you were hired.

The recording of your first ten minutes has to be kept for at least ninety days.

Here is what those ninety days are actually made of.

You have to be 21, and there is no version of the job where you are not. Minn. Stat. 342.24, subdivision 1, says a cannabis business may not employ an individual under 21 years of age. The same paragraph adds a narrower bar on contracting with someone under 21 whose scope of work involves handling plants, flower, artificially derived cannabinoids or cannabinoid products. The employment bar carries no such qualifier. It is not about what you touch.

The background check comes first, and your employer runs it, not you. Under Minn. Stat. 342.151, subdivision 2, before hiring an individual as a cannabis worker the business must submit that individual’s full set of fingerprints and written consent to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for a state and national criminal history check. The bureau determines whether the person is qualified to be employed as a cannabis worker and notifies the business of its determination. The Office of Cannabis Management’s page on employee background checks says that as of March 1, 2026, businesses and prospective employees who had not yet completed a check had to do so through the BCA process. That date is behind us now. If you are applying today, this is a step you sit through, not a step you arrange.

The disqualifying list is short, specific, and worth reading rather than dreading. Subdivision 3 says a cannabis business must not employ an individual as a cannabis worker if the individual has a felony conviction for human trafficking, noncannabis controlled substance crimes in the first or second degree, labor trafficking, fraud, embezzlement, extortion, money laundering, or insider trading, in this state or any other jurisdiction, where a full pardon or similar relief has not been granted.

Read that list again and notice the word “noncannabis.”

The statute names eight things. A cannabis conviction is not one of them. That is a choice somebody made on purpose, and it is the single most important sentence in this guide for a large number of the people we teach.

One more line in the same subdivision deserves your attention. Paragraph (b) says a business must not employ someone as a cannabis worker if the individual made any false statement in an application for employment. Your application is not a marketing document. It is the first page of a compliance file that a regulator can ask to see. Fill it out like it will be read closely, because it will be.

The badge is not a name tag. Minn. Rules 9810.1500 requires cannabis workers to wear an employment identification badge issued by the business, visibly displayed while they are conducting activities for the business, and the badge must carry a visual coding system indicating the activities the worker may perform and the areas the worker may access. Your badge is a map of your permissions, worn on your chest. When somebody upgrades it, your job changed. When you are asked to do something your badge does not cover, that is not red tape, that is the answer.

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Most workplaces hand a new hire a policy binder that nobody opens twice. A licensed cannabis business is different, and the difference is legal.

The procedures are required to exist, and you are entitled to read them. Minn. Rules 9810.1100, subpart 2, requires a cannabis business to establish and maintain written, up-to-date standard operating procedures, and item B says those procedures must be available on-site to all personnel and to the office upon request.

All personnel. That is you, on day one, without asking twice.

Here is what those procedures have to cover, because it is a description of your first ninety days. The rule lists implementation procedures for the general operational requirements of the business; worker training; worker safety; the creation and entry of accurate data in the statewide monitoring system; the safe and sanitary storage of plants, flower and products, including keeping the buildings and equipment clean; the proper segregation and disposal of product that is damaged, has a broken seal, has been contaminated, is past the expiration date on the label, or is subject to a recall; the designation of authorized personnel for specified duties and the procedure for issuing worker identification for restricted-access areas; who is authorized to access, enter and update private and nonpublic consumer data; the response to a data security breach, consistent with Minn. Stat. 325E.61 and 325E.64; providing samples for testing and research where that applies; and reporting substances used in cultivating, manufacturing and packaging to a licensed testing facility for batch safety testing.

That is eleven subjects, and every one of them will eventually be a thing somebody asks you to do at 4:40 on a Friday.

The recording is the shortest memory in the building. Subpart 3 requires the business to keep worker and volunteer training records, the security plan, security testing and maintenance records, cultivation plans and records, manufacturing procedures and verification records, sanitation, equipment maintenance and storage procedures and records for three calendar years. It also requires all records to be kept in a uniform manner and easily accessible, so the business can produce them within 24 hours of the office’s request.

The camera forgets in ninety days. The training record keeps for three years.

Minn. Rules 9810.1102, subpart 2, is the closest thing Minnesota has to a written onboarding standard, and it is worth knowing by heart because it is the list you can hold an employer to.

A license holder must ensure that cannabis workers and cannabis volunteers receive annual training covering the worker’s specific role, and the required subjects are the standard operating procedures under 9810.1100; state and applicable federal cannabis laws; state and federal data privacy and confidentiality laws; the proper use of security measures and controls under 9810.1500; emergency response procedures for fire, power loss, robbery, natural disaster and workplace violence; and product recall procedures.

The records of that training are kept, and they are about you. Item D requires the license holder to maintain worker records documenting completion of the required training and to make them available to the office upon request. Item E requires applicants to describe their employee training and education programs at application and at renewal. Your training is not a favor somebody did you. It is a line item on the employer’s license.

Now the honest part, which is about timing. The rule says annual. It does not set a deadline measured from your hire date. A good employer trains you before you touch anything; the rule’s floor is a calendar, not a clock, and floors are not ceilings. If nobody has walked you through those six subjects by the end of your first ninety days, that is information about the employer, not about you.

And if unpackaged edibles are in the building, an endorsement has to be in place before the work starts. Under Minn. Stat. 342.07, subdivision 3, any person manufacturing, processing, selling, handling or storing an edible cannabis product or lower-potency hemp edible that is not already in final packaging must first obtain an edible cannabinoid product handler endorsement — and the same subdivision limits eligibility for that endorsement to persons who hold a valid license issued by the office. That makes it your employer’s endorsement, not yours. Minn. Rules 9810.1102, subpart 2, item C, puts the duty on the license holder to ensure the endorsement is obtained for any person section 342.07, subdivision 3 applies to, and the office may not charge a fee for issuing or renewing it. The question to ask in week one is whether the business holds it, not how you go get one.

Every role in this industry is different. The habits underneath them are not. Four of them, and all four are ordinary until the day they are the only thing standing between a business and a finding.

Write it down at the moment it happens. Minn. Stat. 342.24, subdivision 3, requires an entry log for restricted areas recording each person’s name, time of entry, time of exit, and authorization to enter, and requires those entrances to be conspicuously marked. Minn. Rules 9810.2501, subpart 3, puts a parallel log on the restricted-access areas behind a retail counter, recording each individual’s name, date of entry, time of entry and time of exit, and 9810.1500 requires the business to keep the record of who entered restricted areas for at least three years. A log filled in from memory at the end of a shift is not a log. It is a guess with a signature on it.

The count closes the day. Minn. Rules 9810.1302 requires the business to update the system inventory and ensure its accuracy at the end of each business day, and requires physical tags with unique identifiers on plants over eight inches and on packaged units intended for transfer or sale. Whatever your role, some part of that daily accuracy will pass through your hands. The first time you are the reason it balances, you will understand why people in this industry talk about counting the way carpenters talk about measuring.

Eight hours, and the clock starts at discovery. The same rule requires theft or loss to be reported to the office within eight hours of discovering it, with local law enforcement notified immediately. Nobody is fired for the discrepancy. People are fired for the twenty minutes after it.

Verify the person, every time, including the time it is obviously fine. Minn. Stat. 342.27 sets the acceptable identification, any one of which is enough: a valid driver’s license or identification card issued by Minnesota, another state, or a province of Canada; a valid Tribal identification card; a valid United States passport; a valid instructional permit issued to a person of legal age; or, for a foreign national, a valid passport. It caps what may be sold in a single transaction at two ounces of adult-use flower, eight grams of concentrate, and edible products infused with up to 800 milligrams of THC. It bars sale to a person who is visibly intoxicated. And 9810.2501 requires conspicuous signage at each entry point to the retail area stating that no persons under 21 are allowed.

Emergency response is a training subject, not a poster. 9810.1102, subpart 3, requires functioning carbon monoxide detection, prominently displayed evacuation and shelter-in-place procedures, worker information about hazardous materials under Right to Know, and equipment and tool safety handling procedures. Find the carbon monoxide detector in week one. Ask someone to point at it rather than describe it.

A recall has a clock on it, and it is short. Minn. Rules 9810.1101 gives a business one day from receiving a recall notice to notify other affected businesses, notify individuals who may have purchased the product and reimburse returns, and destroy the recalled product with the destruction documented in the tracking system, and three days to notify the office of its compliance. If you have ever wondered why the batch number matters, this is the paragraph where it matters.

Waste is tracked like product, because it is product. Minn. Rules 9810.1200 requires waste-tracking records in the statewide monitoring system covering the operator’s disposal activity, and requires nonhazardous cannabis waste to be rendered unusable and unrecognizable before it leaves the premises. The trash is a regulated stream with a paper trail. Treat the disposal step with the same care as the sale.

Customer data is regulated data. The SOP rule requires designation of who may access, enter and update private and nonpublic consumer data, and a written breach response. In a state where being on a list once carried a cost, a customer’s name is not a low-stakes field.

We would rather tell you what this guide is not.

Ninety days is our frame, not a statutory period. Minnesota cannabis rules do not define a probation period, and nothing here is employment-law advice. We picked ninety days because three separate rules use it: security footage is retained at least 90 calendar days, security measures are tested and inspected at least once every 90 days, and a displayed retail sample is treated as a contaminated product and destroyed within 90 days. It is a natural unit of time in a licensed building.

There is still no general cannabis worker badge issued by the state. We said it in our guide to reading a job posting and it has not changed. A business may employ as many unlicensed individuals as necessary, provided it remains accountable for their conduct. The one individual credential that does exist is the medical cannabis consultant certificate we covered separately, issued by the office to a person. The edible cannabinoid product handler endorsement above is not a second one. That endorsement is issued to a license holder, not to a worker. Anyone selling you a mandatory Minnesota cannabis worker license is selling you something.

A business meeting the floor is not the same as a business training you well. Annual training satisfies the rule. It does not by itself make you good at anything, and the difference between those two things is most of what your first ninety days decide.

We are not quoting pay, headcounts, or how long a background check takes. Those numbers move, and a stale figure in a career guide does real damage to somebody making a decision with it.

And everything above summarizes statutes, rules and agency guidance that all change. Read the current versions before you rely on any of it, this guide included.

A probation period is two people deciding. Only one of them is usually told that.

Individual gifts fund what program grants cannot: student access, the free statewide job board, and new program development. Give any time.

Go back to the eight felonies in 342.151, subdivision 3, and the word sitting in the middle of the list: noncannabis.

Minnesota wrote a hiring bar for this industry and deliberately left cannabis convictions off it. That sentence is worth more than any encouragement we could offer, and it does nothing at all for a person who never learns it exists. Be precise about what it is: subdivision 3 is a prohibition on employers, not a right you hold. It does not require anybody to hire you. It is the removal of a reason to say no, and a reason nobody can quietly put back. A bar that does not exist still keeps people out for exactly as long as they believe in it.

Education as repair, our framework, is the design choice underneath that gap rather than a slogan about it. Name the rule. Cite it. Put it in front of the people who were told for a century that this plant made them unemployable, and let them read the statute themselves. That is why this guide is built out of rule numbers instead of reassurance.

The founding era in Minnesota cannabis is still open, the bench is thin, and ladders are shorter than they will ever be again. The first ninety days are how you get on one.

Minnesota cannabis roles post on our free statewide job board at mncannabiscollege.org/jobs, with no toll booth. When you interview, ask two questions nobody expects: where are the standard operating procedures kept, and when will I be trained on the six subjects in 9810.1102. An employer who answers both cleanly is telling you what your first ninety days will be like. An employer who cannot is telling you the same thing.

The habits are what we teach. CanTrain is our retail track, CanGrow is our cultivation track, and both are built on the same three moves this guide keeps circling: verify the person, write it down when it happens, know where your line is.

Ninety days from now, the rule stops requiring anyone to keep the recording of your first shift. Everything you learned to do in it will still be there.

Say hello anytime: [email protected].

Minnesota Cannabis College is a Twin Cities-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. EIN 86-2319307.

Discover your next career in cannabis.

Keep showing up, keep cheering each other on — and as always, our mission is education as repair! 👨‍🎓

The MNCC Team

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