That someone happened to be Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and niece of President Bush.

Nearly half (48 percent) of the 765 voters in the poll said they wouldn't have held the job open for Bush regardless of her family connections. An additional 20 percent said they would have found someone else simply because they couldn't afford to wait.

About one-quarter of the voters (24 percent) said they would have let Bush keep the job on the condition that she passed a drug test.

Only 8 percent of the voters would have let Bush start work unconditionally. That includes the 7 percent who said they would have done so regardless of her family connections and the 1 percent who wanted to avoid bad publicity for their company.

Bush, 24, had been scheduled to start work last month with Infinity Software Development Inc. But Tallahassee police arrested her the night before she was to have started, accusing her of trying to fill a false prescription for the sedative Xanax. Immediately, Infinity promised to hold the position for Bush until she became "available to return to the workforce."

Bush has since been admitted to a drug treatment program, according to her lawyer, Peter Antonacci. She will spend whatever time is needed there before returning to Tallahassee to face the charge, Antonacci said on Feb. 8.

Drug prescription fraud is a third-degree felony in Florida, and the penalties can include up to five years in prison. But as a first-time offender, Bush would likely get less if she were convicted, a prosecutor told the Associated Press.

A spirited discussion

Contrary to the lopsided poll results, the accompanying discussion in the HR.BLR.com Community section found HR people almost evenly split on the Bush case, with passionate arguments made on both sides.

There were plenty of reasons given to let Bush go.

Joy Miller, human resources/training coordinator for Louisiana Community Care in Pineville, Louisiana, said the arrest was enough to raise questions about how Bush might behave on the job. "The question is, would Ms. Bush falsify and misrepresent while on duty?" Miller asked. "Would the agency be at risk?"

She supplied her own answer to both questions: "Yes."

Others said they would have turned Bush away simply for not showing up on the first day.

Candice Trevino of Varco, an oilfield-services company based in Houston, said she'd assume that Bush was not an employee until the day she arrived to start work. Therefore, "if she didn't show up I would proceed with replacing her," Trevino wrote. "There is no indication of how long she would need to be out."

She also asked rhetorically: "Is the company responsible for providing leave benefits to someone who has not earned them yet? Don't think so."

But wait a minute, others wrote. Isn't everyone innocent until proven guilty?

"Since an arrest is not a conviction, this should not affect the decision to employ this candidate," wrote Becky McClain, president of HR Strategic Inc., a San Diego-based consulting firm. "If she were a current employee, we would be patient and work with her while the issue was resolved. Since we have extended a job offer that has been accepted, it is best to be a good employer and have some patience with the candidate."

McClain added that she'd give Bush about two weeks to decide what she wanted to do. "Thus, every effort has been made to accommodate this sticky situation and to be a great employer."

Henry J. Mengay, an HR consultant who served 14 years as HR director for WNED, the public radio and television stations in Buffalo, said hiring someone else in such a situation could land a company in legal trouble.

"I would hold the job open until there was a legal resolution to the arrest," he wrote. "If she was convicted and her crime had a bearing on the type of work she would do, then I would hire someone else. If you couldn't wait but needed someone quickly I might use a temp, if that was feasible."