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.