The pool place.

One of our biggest clients is a pool company, as might be expected for Florida. The company is so big, in fact, they do on-site testing. This is where someone from my company will drive out there with a big truck and do their random drug testing right there on the premesis. Of course, this is not convenient for all their employees, so a fraction of them will end up coming to my office. This amounts to about ten people per week.

I have very few complaints about the pool place. There are bound to be some hiccups simply due to the sheer volume of employees they send to me, but on the whole they are a problem-free client. They never try to send people on my lunch break. They always provide translators. They send people down one-at-a-time instead of twenty at once. They even keep the maps on their forms up-to-date.

Someone in their HR department takes the time to explain the drug testing thing to each new-hire before they send them out. Most companies are content just waving their hands and maybe giving the poor guy some vague directions, but the pool place people always show up with paperwork, confident they're in the right place, knowing what is expected of them. They're always told to bring their ID. They're even told not to go to the bathroom beforehand, and to drink plenty of water, so they're always ready to go right when they come in the door.

My only quibble with the pool place is that they are thorough to the point of being nagging. They follow up on positive results within 72 hours, and any employee that tests positive but is not terminated takes a drug test once a week for twelve weeks. They have a list of their random selections and they make sure those people show up, which means endless amounts of phone calls asking "Did so-and-so show up for his test on such-and-such date? No? Well I'd better find out why." But these little bothers are just an indication that they take their drug testing seriously. Which isn't to say that drug testing is inherently a serious matter, just that if your company is going to do it you might as well not treat it like a joke.

I love the pool guys but I hate to swim. How many people do you know who can say that truthfully?

Pissing contests.

I've never had the pleasure of having an actual pissing contest with one of my clients, only metaphorical ones. In such contests the donor will try to assert himself as some kind of alpha male, transcendent, lifted above the rules that govern mere mortals. I delight in tormenting such people, especially when it can be done in such a way as to scarcely pay them any attention at all. Observe.

Once a week I have to be at the office earlier than normal in order to accomodate our largest client. At the beginning of each month I get a list of forty or fifty names of employees that have been randomly selected to show up on these pre-determined mornings for testing. So I show up early, do collections for a solid hour or two, and then revert to my typical day of killing time.

The pissing contest is initiated by Mr. Pissy, who is in a bad mood that he has been selected for random testing at all. We get to the part in the sign-in procedure where I need to see Mr. Pissy's photo ID. Instead of giving it to me, he wants to argue about the process by which names are randomly chosen in his company.

"Sorry sir, that's something you'd have to ask your supervisors."

"How do you know who is supposed to be here?"

"I have a list."

"Can I see the list?"

"No."

"I'm not giving you my ID until I see the list."

Okay, suit yourself. I tell Mr. Pissy that if he should have a seat until I have a chance to help the three men waiting behind him. He sits there fuming while I conduct these three collections. During the elapsed 20 minutes three more men have come in behind him. After the third collection is done he approaches once again, this time with his ID in his hand. I go to take it.

"Not so fast, I want to see this list."

"I'm not authorized to show the list to anyone."

He throws his ID on the counter, muttering something about how this is all ridiculous. I fill in his name, birthdate and phone number. I'm halfway through writing his social security number (which is on my list) when he tries to stop me.

"You're not allowed to put my social on there."

"Of course I am. All federal drug tests require it."

"Not if I say you can't."

"Well then," I shrug, "you'll just have to have a seat and wait for the gentlemen who don't say I can't."

I proceed to take the next three men ahead of him. Two of them hand me their social security cards, which is a nice but unnecessary gesture. I get the impression that these guys are going out of their way to make a statement to Mr. Pissy about how not ridiculous the process is if you don't act like a child.

The office empty once again, I ask Mr. Pissy if he's ready to continue. He doesn't protest the use of his social security number again.

I take him back and ask him to empty his pockets. He puts his ID and sunglasses on the counter and holds his hand out, expecting me to hand him the sample cup.

"Everything out of all your pockets, please," I tell him.

He places a wad of tissue and his keys on the counter and then holds his hand out again.

"That includes your wallet, radio, cell phone, and your knife case, please."

"You're not getting my wallet."

"I'll lock it up for you if you want but--"

"You're not getting my wallet."

Okay, suit yourself. I throw the sample cup away and head out to the lobby where a few more people have started emerging. It's now past the time I'd normally be open. Mr. Pissy has been here over 40 minutes.

I help a couple young ladies get a job at a call center somewhere before Mr. Pissy speaks up again. "Look, are we gonna do this or not?"

"Depends on whether or not you want to cooperate."

"This is ridiculous. I'm out of here."

I inform Mr. Pissy that if he leaves I have to record his paperwork as having refused to test.

"That's idiotic! Are you saying I can't leave?"

"I'm saying you shouldn't."

"I'm calling my boss to report you. You can't be doing this stuff to people."

I have his supervisor on my speed dial. By the time he's whipped out his cell phone I'm already talking to his boss. "Good morning, it's Richard. Oh, pretty good. Listen, I have one of your guys here, says he wants to talk to you. Okay, hold on."

I hand Mr. Pissy the phone. He doesn't believe what he's seing. Of course he had no intention of calling anyone at all; he was bluffing in order to scare me. I know from experience that employers (and this employer especially) don't like to hear about people having problems with their drug tests.

Mr. Pissy stammers something out to his boss. Suddenly he's a little lamb. "No, sir, he did-- he didn't tell me about the social thing. I didn't know about that. No, he didn't say nothing about having a box to put my stuff in. Yeah I've been here for like 45... well almost an hour. Yes sir. Yeah, okay."

He hands my phone back to me. "He wants to talk to you again."

I have a pre-existing arrangement with this employer. Usually I stack up their copies of the paperwork, and once a week they send a guy around to pick them up. For this man, though, The Bossman wants Mr. Pissy to deliver the company's copy to him personally. I can only imagine there's going to be an interesting conversation there.

Mr. Pissy's collection goes off without a hitch after that. Suddenly all the little roadblocks don't seem to bother him.

I cross him off the list. Despite being the first from his company to show up today, he's the last one finished. He turned what should have been a five-minute collection into a fifty-five minute pissing contest, in which he scored zero points. I call The Bossman back and tell him that Mr. Pissy is on the way with his form.

Then, my busiest, earliest morning behind me, I sit down to get back into my book.

This story is actually a month old. Mr. Pissy showed up on his company list again this month. Today he didn't seem to mind drug testing at all. Go figure.

Directionless.

One thing I'm particularly terrible at is giving directions. The main reason for this is because I tend not to leave the fifteen-or-so mile radius around my apartment, so people often ask for directions coming from faraway lands where for all I know they ride magic carpets and slay dragons. Another is that I have a truly pitiful sense of direction myself; I keep a Post-It attached to the wall near my phone to keep me from confusing east with west. A quick look at Google Maps can sometimes clear the matter up, but not always, and on occassion I am forced to simply point out that I have no idea where the person is, and thus can't give them directions.

I've discovered there are lots of ways to give directions. First off you have people like myself, who are address hunters. The way I've always done things is to get the address of the place, and then locate it. If i can't find the exact address I'll determine whether the numbers are going up or down and then pinpoint the location of the business I want based on the addresses I can see.

Very few people navigate like that, however. Most people use a blend of cross-streets and landmarks to get where they're going. This is problematic because, for one, I don't really register landmarks as I drive, so it's hard for me to determine what, if anything, in my area would make a good landmark to begin with. Secondly, there really aren't any prominent landmarks in my area. It's essentially just a series of strip-malls on either side of the road, no one sign really standing above the rest. The few slightly-bigger-than-the-rest signs that are out there have all failed me in the past, and what works fine for one person isn't going to work for the next.

The best landmark to get you to my office is the apartment complex I sit in front of. That's right, in front of. Not next to, not near, not across the street from. The apartments sit back from the road far enough for a row of businesses to sit in front of it as a buffer. You actually have to turn in to the apartment complex to get to my parking lot, but even this information fails as often as not because the rows of stores on either side of me use the exact same system.

Giving the name of my business isn't even helpful in some cases, because not everyone is looking for that name. For one, we have two company names: one for the side of the company that does physicals and what-have-you, and another for the drug testing. All our paperwork has both names on it, but the sign in my window only advertises the drug testing. So even with the correct forms in-hand, people are looking for the wrong sign right out of the gate. To make matters worse we work with two different labs, so a lot of people are sent out looking for the name of the lab instead of the collection site.

Compounding the problem even further is the fact that employers like to give little maps to their new-hires before sending them out, which would be helpful except the maps haven't been updated since 2000. Hundreds of clients out there each with their own little version of what the area my office sits in used to look like... not very helpful. This usually ends with me getting chewed out by the donor after they've driven around for an hour while needing to pee, or with someone barking at me on a cell phone insisting that a sign or business exists where it doesn't, because after all, that's what the map says.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know how anyone could drive by my building and not see my sign. It's easy to get confused with all these different factors tripping you up at the start, but five phone calls to me later there isn't much I can help you with. It isn't uncommon at all to finally get a person into my general area, making U-turns back and forth in front of my office, still completely incapable of locating it. There comes a point where I simply have to tell someone to slow their car down to 20 mph and closely examine every window they see, and turn at the one that matches my company name. Calls from my parking lot are fairly common too: "Okay, I'm in the parking lot... now which door are you?"

I keep hoping one day I'll stumble across a perfect solution that will solve my direction-giving dilemma once and for all. Until then... well, at least I have my Post-It.

Maybe I could just buy some road flares, and hire a clown to set them off in front of my office. If people miss that, there's really nothing I can do for them.

Mr. Nice Guy doesn't work here.

I'm not a nice person. This is the number one complaint about me from one (and only one, to my knowledge) specific company for whom I do drug testing. The little old ladies this company hires exclusively all find me particularly unpleasant. It's a fact.

I suppose they have a point. I take my job seriously and don't loosen the rules for anyone, whether they look like g-dawg gangsta or ol' Granny Smith. I can spot the stereotypes a mile away, and can predict with better-than-chance accuracy who is going to try to cheat and who is not, but that isn't any reason to not treat every single person the same way. In a way, going for a drug test means being treated like a criminal -- I can understand that mentality, which is why I try to make the process as smooth as possible. However, I am not apologetic and you don't have my sympathy. Things are done the correct way or they are not done at all.

In addition to my pretty hardcore adherence to my job's rules and guidelines, I lack a few of the character traits people generally find charming. For one, I'm immune to smalltalk. People like to chitchat to pass the time, but I've got enough stuff to accomplish that just fine, thanks. Legitimate questions about my work will get honest answers, but just about any other topic will get a polite nod and nothing more.

For another, I don't seem to have the ability to fake laughter. The number of absolutely boneheaded comments people try to pass off as jokes (or, at least, "amusing comments") makes my head spin. After all my paperwork was done I used to ask people, "Are you ready to go?" I've had to abandon that particular wording, because people would respond "Yeah, literally!" and them laugh at themselves for having said it. If the only way you can convince yourself that you are clever is to laugh at your own comments, that might be an indication that you're not clever at all. Wit doesn't work for everyone.

Sometimes people will press it even further than that, though; they'll say something genuinely unwitty, chuckle to themselves for having done so, and then confront me about my response. "Don't you ever laugh?" they'll say, as though my non-reaction to their one comment is any indication of my sense of humor. What's the correct way to respond to that? Just point out that yes, I do in fact laugh, and very often at that, but first I have to hear something funny, and your bad pun doesn't qualify? I've often thought about taking it in the other direction:"No," I'd respond, "my life is an endless spiral of misery and torment. I wallow in the bog of my own depression. I will probably kill myself once you've left the office. Please fill this cup above the temperature sticker..."

The little old ladies from the aformentioned company make it their business to get me to laugh at them, as though I'm some kind of British guard. I bet there's a betting pool at their office: first person to get the drug test guy to laugh wins a jar of money. They try everything short of dangling their keys in front of me while making googly noises. What I wish they would understand is that their antics have exactly the opposite effect. Their various distractions increase the risk of there being a mistake somewhere during the collection, and thus harden my resolve to become stricter and stricter with the rules until they give up. I think about the number of women I've seen who were so preoccupied with trying to start a frivolous conversation that they missed the part where I told them not to flush the toilet, and I really do wallow in the bog of my own depression.

At the same time though, I'm not a mean person. I'm not impolite. I don't avoid eye contact. I reserve the sarcastic comments for only the most vile of people. I know my courtesies, I say "please" and "thank you". I don't go out of my way to be rude, and if I come off that way then perhaps you need to take a step back yourself and get some thicker skin. The little old ladies who complain about me have worked so many years in an office environment that they've become accustomed to their fake, plastic personalities, and it's what they've come to expect from everyone else. I wonder how many of them remember what real laughter sounds like.

I do have the pleasure of meeting genuinely witty people from time to time. These people seem to have nothing bad at all to say about their drug testing experience.

He's really short.

It occurs to me that someone could read my blog and come away with the impression that I either never make mistakes, or that I make them all the time and blame them on other people. However, I made what is possibly the stupidest, most embarrassing mistake of my entire life just the other day.

I'm filling out this gentleman's form. His first name is Gary, and his last name starts with "Co" and ends with "n". Without thinking, on reflex alone I write "Gary Coleman" on my form.

Really, that's the whole story. What else do I need to say about it?

The guy was like six feet tall, and wasn't black. Nevertheless, he wasn't pleased.