Off a roof.

Looks like Ted over at SoCal Cabbie got picked for a random test. Unfortunately it wasn't a pleasant experience for him. Ah well, you can't please everyone.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing a post-accident urine collection for a hospitalized employee. Story goes this man fell off a roof while working, landed in a pile of debris, and snapped his arm in a couple of places. Obviously it's in the employer's best interest to get him drug tested as soon as possible after the accident, because if he comes up with red flags they have a good reason to skip out on his worker's comp.

Most of the post-accident tests we do don't actually involve serious injury; rather, they're for things like fender-benders or mild bruises or cuts. We do have one trucking company who seems to have a disproportionate amount of traffic accidents compared to everyone else. Once we even had to test two of their guys at once because they had somehow managed to crash into each other.

That wasn't the story this time, though. This man was pretty well mangled. Hospital runs are pretty rare, I've only done two or three in my time here, and while they pay well the experience is particularly harrowing. First off, I have a notoriously pitiful sense of direction, and hospitals tend to be the most confusing places on earth both inside and out; I must have circled the damn place three times before I finally found the correct parking garage. Locating the correct room is a job in and of itself. When you're not a patient, and you're not visiting, you want to look like you know what you're doing in a hospital. If you give off the slightest vibe that you might be lost someone will ask what you're looking for, which means you have to explain why you're there, and sometimes they'll try to shut you down. I don't know if certain hospitals just have different regulations as to what kinds of bodily fluids private citizens are allowed to remove from their patients, or of some hospital workers just have a moral objection to it, but the fewer people who know what you're up to, the better.

I eventually did find the room, and I was very clearly unwanted. This poor guy was racked with pain. I have no idea what kind of meds they had him on, but they clearly weren't working for him. He was as cooperative and polite as he could have been given the circumstances. Too hurt to make his way to the bathroom, I pulled the curtain around his bed and listened to him groan while he filled up his bottle. At least the hard part was over. I was finishing up my paperwork when a couple of nurses rolled in with a portable MRI machine, and I was asked to step outside. Their job is more important than mine, so I didn't argue, but the next fifteen minutes seemed to drag on forever as I waited out in the hallway for them to finish. It seemed like every person who walked by was giving me a strange look.

The two nurses finished up and wheeled the machine away. They were apparently checking for metal shavings in the patient's eyes, so hopefully they had at least that bit of good news for him. As I went back in he was ringing the nurse's station and begging for a shot, and I tell you, if that's something I could have helped him with, I would have. As it was he managed to sit up just long enough to sign his form. I stuck his copies into his bag like he asked, emptied out his urine container, and wished him a speedy recovery.

Then of course I got lost on the way out of the hospital and had to ask about four different people for directions at various points. At the end of one hallway I waited for a couple minutes for an elevator that was never going to show up, by virtue of it being for employees only. There was a giant red sign on the wall I had somehow managed to miss. I felt like a genius.

So I inconvenienced the overworked parking garage lady (who had to count out nine whole dollars in change for me), somehow managed to luck my way back to the interstate on my first try, and rolled up home around 9:00, ready for some serious unwinding.

My girlfriend was none to pleased to find a bag of some dude's urine sitting on our kitchen counter, but she cheered up when I told her how much I'd been paid for it.

Just plain rude.

Yes, I agree with you that the man stank. I reckon he stank worse than any human being I've ever smelled before in my life. I do admit that every moment I spent in this man's company I breathed through my mouth, a strategy which backfired once I discovered that the funk was so thick that I could actually taste it in the back of my throat.

I'll also grant you that he was, indeed, disgusting. Yes, I too saw the multiple layers of stains on the back of his shirt where it was sweated straight through. I saw the flecks of dandruff nestled snugly in his hair. In fact, my first impression of the man as I saw him snoring away in the corner of our lobby was of a homeless person who rolled up in here to escape the heat for a couple hours.

However, after I learned he was, in fact, a truck driver who had just driven straight through from Arizona only to find out his boss forgot to inform him about a drug test that he was now 32 hours late for, and how polite and cordial he was considering how infinitely pissed off he must have been, I decided that I would probably be just as smelly, dirty and tired as he was given the circumstances.

It's my opinion that you didn't wait long enough to be sure he was out of earshot before you resumed your conversation about how gross he was to whomever it was on the phone you were talking to.

And yes, I do think you overstepped the lines of professional courtesy when you followed him out of the office, three steps behind, spraying Lysol everywhere.

So that's why I was pissed at you today. Hope that clears things up.

P.S.: If you had time to chitchat on the telephone, why didn't you have time to just do the drug test? Rabble rabble.

The Super-translator.

I met a real live superhero last week, no foolin'. This guy's super power was to brag about his job as a translator.

I've worked with a lot of translators since I started peemeistering, for just about any language you could name (and probably a few you couldn't). Foreign language collections basically fall into one of two categories: Spanish and Everything Else.

Everything Else is actually the easier of the two. These are the people who have recently immigrated here but haven't picked up the language yet. They cart around professional translators (which, except for Super-translator, are awesome) or at the very least family members who know what the score is. These collections are usually pretty easy because they don't harbor any illusions of knowing English and are used to talking through a third party pretty much all the time.

Spanish is much trickier because, in this part of Florida, it's totally possible to live your entire life in Spanish without ever learning word one of English. There's almost always a Spanish-speaker present anywhere you could think to go (two in our office) so many of them learn to just fake their way through whatever transactions they can and get really angry at the ones they can't. What's worse, when they actually do bring a translator along it's usually just a friend or family member who either doesn't know any more English than they do, or for some reason doesn't think the transaction is important enough to translate in full.

Many have been the times when I've asked the "translator" to translate two lines of English text into Spanish for the benefit of the Spanish-only donor, only to have them say two or three words. I don't know a lot of Spanish myself, but I do know that firma aqui does not mean "I certify that I have provided my urine specimen to the collector..."

Thankfully, ever since I've been working in this office, I can hand the Spanish collections over to one of the Spanish-speaking up-front girls. I still deal with the translators when it's practical though, which brings us (finally) to Super-translator.

First off, the donor did not speak any English. She didn't speak "a little" English, or even "un poquito" English. She flat out did not understand the language. Going out on a limb here, this might be why she came in with a translator. Not only was Super-translator a translator, but he was, well, a super translator. He said so himself!

Now, the translation process is pretty simple: I say something in English, you repeat it in Spanish. That's it. I usually make it clear that the translator needs to repeat everything I say, even if it doesn't sound very important, because usually I'm talking to the donor's friend or co-worker who (as previously mentioned) doesn't think the whole thing is a big deal. But since Super-translator was a super translator I assumed he knew what the score was and didn't bother going through the whole "repeat after me" rigamarole. Imagine my surprise when I open up with an instruction and Super-translator stays silent.

Getting him to actually repeat anything I said was a battle. He reprimanded me because I was "supposed to direct my instructions to her, not to him", and claimed he wasn't translating word-for-word because he was also trying to help her learn English. His Spanish was broken and mangled at best. He either didn't know how (or refused) to say "Don't flush the toilet!" so he resorted to pantomime for that part.

By the time we go the poor donor into the bathroom she looked as confused as I've ever seen anyone in my entire life.

The entire time I was trying to fill out paperwork Super-translator kept trying to strike up conversation. Did I know how much money he made? Did I know that if I wanted to make real money all I had to do was learn another language? Did I know that people from the northern US talk different than people in the south and isn't that interesting? Did I know that I could learn to speak English better myself if I learned how to speak Spanish first? Did I know that Florida had a lot of Spanish-speaking citzens and wasn't it interesting how many there are?

Did I know it was such a shame that I only spoke one language?

Eventually we stumbled our way to the end of the collection, where the donor has to sign the part of the form saying it's actually her urine and so on. I can't let her sign it without being sure she knows what she's signing (this is one of those legal loopholes that can come back and bite me later). I made it clear that he would have to read the form to her in Spanish before I could let her sign it. He read it to her in English -- poorly, I might add! -- and looked at me for approval.

I've dealt with cheaters, liars, bastards and primadonas in this job, but I think this is the first time I actually wanted to reach forward and wring someone's neck.

I let the donor sign the form, but kept her boss's copy of it. As I waved them back out to the lobby Super-translator had the audacity to more or less tell me to congratulate him on a job well done. All he got out of me was a "Just have a seat in the lobby, please."

I left one of our own Spanish-speakers with instructions to please call the lady back up and read the form to her before they were allowed to leave. It must have been a slap in the face to see someone who isn't even a translator by trade do his job for him, and do it better than he ever could hope to do. Alas, I was busy with the next customer at that point and never got to see the self-righteous look on his face.

The entire time we were fumbling our way through this hapless collection, Super-translator was gently bopping his head along to whatever song was playing on his iPod. This was my first indicator that maybe he was going to do a terrible job. I should have followed my gut on this one.

Dignity, or...

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Can't handle the truth.

One benefit to my mainly-standard office job I did not have in the old peemeister-only job is that I don't have to field nearly as many phone calls. Once in a while, though, I still get a particularly irritating one. I thought I'd share one from last Friday.

Our clients receive renewal packets from us, once a year. This packet comes with some fancy posters and stickers, a CD with all our updated rules and regulations, and a purty certificate to hang on the wall. This packet is sent out as soon as we receive their annual payment. We have too many clients, however, to handle on an individual basis, so we've settled into a month-behind routine that works pretty well for everyone. Basically I get a list on the first of the month of every company that paid their fees during the previous month.

I suppose most of our clients don't mind waiting a few weeks for their packets, since most of them pay us a month or two late anyway.

So the ladycalls me up on Friday afternoon wanting to know where her renewal is. I look her up in the computer and see she paid us just last week.

"Yes ma'am, I see you paid. I'll get it out as soon as I can."

"When can we expect it?'

"Just as soon as I finish it, I promise."

"And when will that be? What date?"

"I don't know for sure. I send out a batch of renewal packets every day, though."

"Which batch will ours be in?"

"Again, I don't know for sure. I can't give you an exact date."

"Why not?"

This is the part of the conversation that makes me uncomfortable. This woman wants to hear "Yes ma'am I'll get it out right away ma'am, it'll be on your desk Monday, you are more important than all three hundred of our other clients expecting renewal packets," and anything but that answer is just going to antagonize her. Like the moron that I am, though, I decide to stick with the truth.

"Because yours is one of many packets I have yet to put together. I'm working through them as fast as I can."

"So when are you going to get around to it?"

"Ma'am, your packet will go out in the mail soon. That's all I can tell you."

"Not acceptable."

"I apologize."

"What date are you going to do it? Are you going to make us wait for a month?"

"That's incredibly unlikely. I'll probably be able to get it finished within the next couple of business days, but it's impossible to know which specific day it will be."

"Not acceptable."

"Again, I apologize."

"If I told any of our customers 'it will be there when it gets there' we would lose all our customers."

Then she hangs up.

Thinking about it, there are probably two schools of thought on how this conversation went down. The first would be something like, um, hey peemeister guy, that lady has a point. And I agree to an extent. She is certainly entitled to the materials she has paid for, and she's well within her rights to call and ask when they can be expected. However, just like the pizza guy really can't give you a better estimate than "probably about forty-five minutes" I can't give anyone a better estimate than "probably within the next few days." (Actually, I'm betting it was more a case of "well it's 4pm on Friday afternoon and I've had a crappy week but I can't yell at my boss let's see who can I call and give a hard time to oh yeah the drug test guys" than anything else, but I have no direct evidence for that.)

The other reaction is probably along the lines of, hey peemeister guy, that lady was totally a bitch, why didn't you lay into her with sarcasm and snarkiness much to the delight of your readers? The answer to which would be: because that would have been rude and unprofessional. Had I given her actual cause to call my boss and complain, I would have been yelled at. And man, I really hate being yelled at.

For the record, I got the packet done yesterday and sent out in the mail, so she probably received it today. I wonder what would have happened if I had quoted her an exact date for next week. Would she call back to complain? "Yes I got my renewal packet, but you told me it wouldn't be here until next week! Why did you lie to me!?"

Cue trombone sounds.

I've been handling supply orders in the office for the past month or so. The girl who did the job previously did alright with them, but she didn't have a system or anything resembling organizational skills. She would wait until someone ran out of something (letter openers, paper towels, whatever) then place an order for that particular item alone, plus however much copy paper would put the order over $100 so we qualified for free shipping. The end result was we usually had enough of everything to go around, but we'd run out of random things constantly. Except copy paper. We always had stacks and stacks of copy paper.

In any case, I whipped up a decent inventory system, moved all the office supplies out of the giant junk drawer and into a cabinet outside my office. I'm proud to report that we haven't run out of anything since I took over, largely because I actually take the time to do the inventory each week and place an order for things we're about to run out of. Everyone else has adjusted pretty well to this new system, and if I've done my part to make things around here run that much more efficiently, more the better.

Of course, I still have to have conversations like this one every few days:


"Do we have any more of those things?"

What things?

"Those things."

WHAT things?

"The things that go in the machine, up front."

What machine?

"The one that, where you slide, you know, MasterCards."

"The credit card machine."

"Yeah yeah."

You need receipt tape for the credit card machine.

"Yeah. Do you have them?"

They're in the supply cabinet, with all the other supplies.

"I can't find them."

They're on the top shelf. There's a huge pack of ten.

"They're not here. I'll go look up front."

No. They're in the cabinet, on the top shelf. There's a huge pack of them. Just reach up there.

"Which one?"

Top shelf.

"Yeah but where?"

TOP SHELF.

"We don't have them?"

Here. They're right here. Exactly where I said.

"Oh! Well that's too tall."

I'll move them to the middle shelf.

"Oh, we have highlighters! We needed some, I didn't know we had any."


I know, I know... my co-workers are dummies har har har. I wish it were that simple. This woman is not stupid. She knows where I keep the supplies. She knows she needs neither my permission nor my assistance to take whatever she wants. She simply prefers to be catered to, and if she can get away from her responsibilities up front by dragging the transaction out for three minutes, by golly, that's just what she'll do.

So, I figure I spend three minutes blogging about it, and the world keeps on spinnin'. Thank the Good Dude it's Friday.

This lady is shorter than I am, but not so short she can't reach the shelf her supplies are stored on. Even if she was, there's a footstool floating around back there with the specific purpose of enabling people to reach high-up shelves. Some people are just driven by an innate need to be difficult.

It's a bit nipply in here.

I think every office across America has that one room which is always twice as cold as any other room in the building. In our building, that room is my office. So here I sit, middle of July, wearing a jacket and rubbing my hands together so as not to lose feeling in the tips of my fingers.

I am reminded of a particularly cold day a few years ago, back in my old office. It was a windy November morning (or maybe December), and having just biked through a light drizzle I arrived at work absolutely freezing. Fortunately, back in those days I kept a spare change of clothes in the office for just this occasion. I changed into a clean, dry pair of jeans and threw on some new socks, but couldn't find a shirt. I did, however, have my nice warm heavy sweater draped across the desk, so I stripped out of my wet one and just threw on the sweater. I then killed the A/C to get things a little toasty and watched the grey morning pass by outside.

Several hours later a young lady walks in wearing a tight white shirt and a cute little pink vest. She's clutching her arms to her chest and shivering and, of course, is here to take a drug test.

The collection passes uneventfully, but just as I'm getting everything packed and sealed she points out, "You know, I can tell you aren't wearing a shirt under your sweater."

"That's okay," I reply, "I can tell you aren't wearing a bra under your shirt."

She turns beet red and leaves as swiftly as possible.

I guess nobody ever taught her it was rude to point.