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.

Dignity, or...

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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.

The revenge of Mr. Tattoo.

Mr. Tattoo came back today for round two. He was in from a different car dealership; you'll recall the first one didn't hire him because they requested a hair test, and he's bald. (If you recall no such thing, you may click here to read about my first adventure with Mr. Tattoo.)

I couldn't see his tattoo today, on account of he was dressed up all nice. Collared shirt (tucked-in, even!), tie, nice slacks, the works. During our first meeting he wore ripped jeans and a wifebeater. My guess was he came in right off his job interview today, probably because he couldn't wait to yell at me.

And oh boy did he yell. He yelled about how we must have been lying about the hair regulations, since [insert our biggest competitor here] took his chest hair just, like, two or three months ago. He yelled about how it's demeaning to do a urine test. He yelled about how our company policies were stupid. He yelled about how it's discriminatory that he can't work at Car Dealership X because he chooses to cut his hair a certain way.

I tried to explain the difference between "company policy" and "state regulation". I tried to explain (without sounding like I was badmouthing them, and I admit it didn't come off very well) that some labs choose to skirt around regulations if they can profit from it. But as you probably know, there's no reasoning with someone who just wants to piss and moan and just generally be belligerent.

We didn't touch on the subject that, apparently, Car Company Y is a better place to work than Car Company X anyway. Meeting as many car dealership guys as I do, you get the feel for these things.

This story is actually a couple weeks old. I should check my saved drafts more often, I guess.

In May.

One of the pieces of information I put on your drug test form is your birthdate. I'm not precisely sure why this little morsel is the least bit important to the drug testing process, but then again I suppose I've never thought about it or cared enough about it to ask. In any case, it stands to reason that the odds you (as a donor) share a birthday with me (the collector) would be roughly 1 in 365. That's a relatively common occurrence when you consider how many collections I conduct.

Trying to calculate the odds that any given donor is a lunatic is a mite trickier. I'm not sure how I would go about it, but it works out that one out of every three hundred sixty-five of these lunatics shares my birthday. I was lucky enough to meet just such a woman on Monday.

Ms. Orange, so named for the impossibly orange sweater she was wearing, was a nice enough lady, but she seemed a little off. She asked a lot of weird and irrelevant questions ("Do you think they drug test the animals at the zoo?") and offered up a lot of not-particularly-helpful information ("I only eat organic food and drive a hybrid car -- will that affect anything?"). About the time she started asking if the doctor at our office used "healing crystals" I realized that she would never shut up unless I simply interrupted her, and that's exactly what I did.

"Oh, sorry," apologized Ms. Orange. "Didn't mean to take up so much time. I can't be here that much longer anyway, I have to get to class. I teach flute."

And with that she vanished into the bathroom.

I was just finishing up her paperwork when she emerged with this curious observation: "You were born in May, weren't you? I can tell."

"Come again?"

"Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. You just seem... impatient. Not rude or anything, just all-business, you know?"

A pretty fair assessment of my mood on any given day, I suppose. "I wasn't born in May."

"Are you sure?"

Are you kidding?

"Yeah, pretty sure."

"When were you born, if you don't mind my asking?"

Having just copied her birthdate onto the paperwork twenty seconds prior, I reply: "Same day as you."

Ms. Orange frowned. "I'm serious."

"It's true. Same birthday, except six years apart."

She looked offended, and impossibly sad, as though sharing a birthday with someone who was impatient and all-business were some terrible thing. She didn't say anything weird after that, just silently signed the form, collected her belongings and left.

I tried to piece together what had happened afterwards. I'm almost perfectly sure that the month someone is born in has no bearing whatsoever on their personality -- and what's more, I'd never even heard anyone make such a claim before. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Ms. Orange was into astrology, but then she would have identified me by a zodiac sign and not a month. I think.

Maybe she was just insulted that I pointed out she was six years older than me. Who knows.

In any case, if you're reading this, and you have a May birthday, let it be known that Ms. Orange (and probably everyone else who reads the same pseudo-astrology garbage she does) believes you are impatient and all-business by nature. That shouldn't irritate you, but if it does, just do what I do: picture Ms. Orange curled up in her beanbag chair inhaling a tub of organic ice cream because some kid pointed out that she's thirty years old. It certainly cheered me up.

According to my boss, we collect birthdates on the paperwork to serve as an identifier. I guess this is useful in case we spontaneously lose the donor's name, social security number, telephone number, employer information, and the sample's unique specimen ID number.

Off my game.

My girlfriend and I moved into our new apartment last weekend. Our respective families got together to move all our heavy furniture and video games, so it was decided that I would buy McDonald's for everyone. My brother and I ran down to the nearest branch, smack-dab in the middle of the Saturday lunch rush.

A man burst in holding his cell phone, complaining he had gone through the drive-thru and not received any straws. He muscled his way through everyone else in line and raised a huge fuss, even after one of the clerks had given him some straws. He demanded to see the manager. He demanded the manager give him free food. "I called ya'll from the parking lot and ain't none of ya picked up the phone! What kinda business is this!?"

The kind that is busier than hell at 12:30pm on a Saturday, Jethro. It was a simple, human mistake. Calm down.

I told you that story to tell you this story...

A young lady appears, 18 or 19 years old. I was already fairly shaken from my last two harrowing drug test experiences (see below) and I was more or less just ready to not do any more collections today and go take a nap. In retrospect, maybe I should have.

The young lady puts her purse in the lockbox and washes her hands as I do the paperwork. She points out helpfully, "Isn't that the wrong date?"

Sure enough, it was. "You're right," I told her, "thanks." I changed the date and handed her the cup.

"Thanks," she said, going into the bathroom. Then she paused. "Um... do I need to close this myself?"

I had forgotten to lock the lockbox. Curses. Kind of defeats the purpose of the lockbox, doesn't it?

I squeeze past her and lock it up, and repeat the instructions to her. A few minutes later she comes back with the sample, which I pour into the bottle, which she then initials.

It isn't until after she's signed her form and I've sealed everything up that I realize I'd forgotten to sign my copy.

With an ample supply of egg on my face, I explain that I now have to cut open the sample bag and remove the paperwork due to an error on my part. "I apologize, I'm usually not this far off my game."

She seemed amused.

Workers in the service industry labor under the misbelief that people, in general, are stupid. A first-time Starbucks customer who orders a small coffee instead of a tall coffee, for example, does so not because he hasn't been educated on the labyrinthine nuances of Starbucks's menu, but because he is a gibbering troglodyte unworthy of human interaction. They take his $6.50 and then laugh at him in the break room.

It took me a long time, and several customer service jobs, to finally realize that the stupidity myth is pretty baseless. It has more to do with everyone being human, than anyone being stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, and in a culture that demands perfection this looks like stupidity. Nobody knows everything, but everyone expects that of everyone else.

I, like you, make a lot of mistakes at my job. And, like you, I'm able to correct the vast majority of them before they become issues. But once in a while I'll be completely out of the lines, and I'll have to fess up. It's not a big deal. It happens.

The young lady whose urine I was packing up probably thought I was one of the unwashed gibbering troglodytes whom she would soon be making fun of in the break room of the check cashing place that just hired her. Oh well.

After dealing with the irate man's straws, the McDonald's clerk handed me my food. I noticed she had forgotten my drinks. I pointed it out to her politely, and she retrieved them for me with a quick "Sorry about that, have a nice day." I thought that was a fairly good solution to our little problem, rather than raising hell and looking like a total jerk, just for a free box of fries.

Two mistakes in a row. I don't know if that's good or bad for a McDonald's clerk, but I tend to think she was just a little off her game. As are we all, from time to time.

And this was anecdote the third, which concludes my stories of the longest drug testing day ever. Hope you enjoyed them.

Nothing to hide.

First thing's first, I want to offer a quick apology to my readers (new, old and incidental) for the long stretches of time in-between updates. Truth is the drug test collections as this office are a lot less "fun" as in my old one, which means far fewer interesting stories. Rather than fill my blog up with off-topic posts or jamming it with filler, I think it's better that I just stay quiet until I have a story worth telling. I guess this is just a "once in a while" blog. Put me at the bottom of your bookmarks list and check with me once a month or so.

That said, the dry spell is at least momentarily over. Today presented me with three most assuredly blogworthy anecdotes, which I'll be doling out over the course of the next week. Anecdote the first is as follows...

This gentleman assured me, multiple times, that he had taken drug tests before and knew the procedure. "I ain't got nothin' to hide," said he, as I was opening the collection kit.

"That's good," I replied. "Go ahead and wash and dry your hands please."

The gentleman is a Mexican immigrant, but he speaks English fairly well. He understands my instructions and can carry on a conversation, so the horror to follow was not a translation error or a misunderstanding on his part. He seems very intent on making sure I understand that he knows the procedure inside and out. Everything I tell him, he meets with a sagely nod and a muttering of "Yep, I remember."

I ask the gentleman to empty his pockets into the lockbox, then turn around to finish filling out his paperwork. Name, birthdate, phone number, so on and so forth. I turn back around so I can lock the box and...

...he's taken all his clothes off.

Hand to God.

Jeans, flannel shirt, and tighty-whities are sitting in a pile on the bathroom floor. The man is, and please pardon the expression, dick-and-balls naked.

"Sir," I told him as I tried to look at anything other than his junk, "please put your clothes back on." I couldn't even believe what I was saying, as I was saying it. Several different variations of "You must flee!" were running through my head. It is actually surprisingly difficult to retain your composure when someone violates your comfort zone by dropping his scrotum into it.

The man did not get dressed. He excused his behavior with "Oh, I don't want no one to think I'm sneaking anything in, or nothin'."

I asked him a few times to please for the love of all that is good put his pants back on. He kept declining. So what could I do? I handed him the cup and showed him the line.

I went through the rest of the collection in something like a trance. After placing his full cup on the counter the man very casually got dressed, as though what had happened were the most natural thing in the world. Other than the sudden and unsolicited nudity, there were no problems during the collection at all.

Not really sure what to do, I figured that would be a really good time to take a break for a while and go get some lunch. Only now as I write this do I find it hilarious that, after such an encounter, I would have the sudden urge to buy a hot dog.

Any and all penis/hot dog jokes are appreciated. I'm sure you guys can come up with dozens.

The predicament.

Mr. Greasy hikes up his way-too-baggy pants and asks me, "Hey, is that my piss?"

Just about to drop Mr. Greasy's sample into the baggie with his paperwork, I freeze. "Excuse me?"

"How do I know that's my piss?"

Sigh.

Pulling the sample bottle back out of the bag, I point to Mr. Greasy's initials and explain: "You initialed here stating that this was your sample."

"But you coulda switched it with someone else's."

"Sir, you watched as I poured your urine into this bottle and sealed it with the sticker. That's when I asked you to initial the side of the bottle."

"I wasn't lookin'. I was over there."

Alright, let's play games. I love games. I always win.

I collect as much calm as possible, and mutter, "Okay. I will discard this sample and we will do another, more secure collection."

Mr. Greasy tries to object as I pitch his bottle of urine into the garbage can.

"Yo, what didja do that for!?"

"There is doubt as to whether it was actually your sample. I can't in good faith send it to the lab to be tested. We're going to have to do it again."

"Dude, no, it's cool, I trust you."

"Sorry, nothing I can do at this point. If there's any doubt at all about whose urine it is, I can't send it up and risk some kind of problem."

"God damn it, man. So I gotta drink more water and sit there another hour?"

"If that's what it takes, yes. Please have a seat in the lobby."

And thus was Mr. Greasy defeated.

Make no mistake, this was not a simple honest case of someone having doubts about their drug test collection. This was a punk kid who knew a guy who knew a guy who snuck a positive sample through by claiming his urine had been switched.

Let's rewind a bit look at how this could have went down, shall we?
"How do I know that's my piss?"

Sigh.

Pulling the sample bottle back out of the bag, I point to Mr. Greasy's initials and explain: "You initialed here stating that this was your sample."

"But you coulda switched it with someone else's."

"Sir, I couldn't have done that. This is definately your urine."

"Well, dude, if you say so."

A few days pass, and Mr. Greasy's sample comes back positive for THC. One of our data girls gives him a call, goes through the whole spiel, and then...

"Well, I told the guy when I was there that I thought he switched my piss. So that wasn't mine."

The seeds of doubt thus sewn, we'd have no choice but to offer the guy a retest. Which of course was his original intention, anyway. Because like I said, he knew a guy who knew a guy who got away with it.

This is one of the red flag things I have to be on the lookout for when doing collections. I actually find myself wishing sometimes that people would have a little more imagination when they cheat. Sneaked-in sample? Ho hum. Guy scribbles all over the wrong places on the forms? Been there, done that. Lady insists on using her own personal "hand sanitizer" instead of our soap and water to wash her hands? Give me a break. It's like everyone reads the same "1001 Ways to Cheat on a Drug Test" handbook.

Mr. Greasy drank about nine cups of water and sheepishly did a second collection in about an hour. When I said "secure" I meant "secure". I gave him stump-dumb instructions along the lines of "I will now pour the sample into this bottle. Please watch as I do so. Now please watch as I affix this sticker over the top of the bottle..." I then read the form to him and underlined the exact portion for him to sign. He was not happy that I left him without any wiggle room.

I wonder if Mr. Greasy had gotten away with it, and passed his test, and got hired on at the car dealership he was applying at, if he would be as attentive to his job as I am to mine. Maybe he's the type who gets high on his personal time and doesn't let it affect his job at all. Or maybe he's the type who would have snuck off to the break room every chance he got to toke up.

Maybe he's not a user at all, and just thought it would be fun to see what happens when he indirectly accuses the drug test collector of switching his sample. Or maybe, just maybe, he honestly couldn't tell whether or not I had made a switch. Maybe he had a legitimate gripe.

Somehow, I doubt it. I've been doing this so long now I can spot 'em a mile away.

We're two people down in the office today, and on top of that I'm hopped up on DayQuil. Whatever Mr. Greasy's deal was, I was in no kind of mood to put up with it.

Not fake, just clueless.

I pull the next donor's paperwork out of the slot and check the ID it's attached to.

Robert Alvarez
Painter
1234 Address Rd
Tampa FL

It's a driver's license from 1995, torn practically to shreds. Instead of getting a new license issued, or even just renewing it through the mail or online, Mr. Alvarez has printed little stickers with his name, occupation and updated address to stick right on his license.

Around the edges of the sticker I can see the dirty, gluey residue of stickers which have been replaced. For some reason, this completely unacceptable ID has passed inspection at the front desk.

I call Mr. Alvarez up and explain why I can't accept his ID. I need to be able to see the original name printed on it. He does, at least, look like the picture on the driver's license.

(Long, boring aside: in Florida, and many other states too I assmue, you can renew your driver's license through the mail. The way this works now is they send you a new license with the picture they have of you have on file, which sometimes leads to situations where the person will hand you an ID with a picture that is ten years out of date. Even more ludicrous, they used to not send a new card at all, but just a sticker to put on the back. That leads to situations where not only is the picture out of date, but the expiration date on the card is ancient. They stopped issuing licenses like that back in the mid- to late-90s, but some people still have licenses from earlier than that. Mr. Alvarez was just such a case. His license wasn't expired, just very old and obviously tampered with.)

I explain to Mr. Alvarez that if he wants me to accept the license, he has to allow me to peel the sticker off and examine the name underneath.

"Oh, yeah man, no problem. I have a whole stack of them at home, so don't worry about it."

I peel the sticker off and verify that this is, in fact, Mr. Alvarez's license. Oh goodie.

Fortunately, he doesn't take offense to what amounts to an accusation on my part. In fact, he seems delighted that I pointed it out. He explains that he moves around a lot, so every time he gets a new address he has to print new stickers. He says this is easier than dealing with the DMV every few months. He explains that he goes through this every time his ID is needed for something, so he's used to it.

Everyone knows a guy who will say things like, "Hey, I've got a great idea for a bumper sticker!" and then proceed to describe an excruciatingly lame pun which, in his own head, is the most fabulous comedy mankind has ever envisioned. You feel bad for that guy. He's simply not as clever as he would like to believe, and has absolutely no idea. Mr. Alvarez is that guy. He is very, very proud of his little ID stickers, and the grin on his face while he was explaining their history and function was simply remarkable.

While I'm working through Mr. Alvarez's paperwork, I calmly explain that it is not a good idea to tamper with his driver's license in any way, even if his intentions were good. He brushes me off saying "It's not a big deal."

I would love to meet the cop on duty that pulls Mr. Alvarez over for a broken tail light one day. "This guy, he covered up parts of his ID with sticky labels and I had to peel them away. Then he tried to explain why he was so brilliant and what a great idea it was. I didn't even realize I was beating the stupid out of him with my nightstick until about twenty minutes later when my partner got back with the coffee and pulled me off."

Names in this post have been changed to protect the clueless.

Hypochondriac.

So I'm getting sued. Well, not really sued per se, but someone has filed a pretty serious official grievance against me. Lawyers are going to have to get involved, and it looks like it could get messy. Anyway, it's too early to be talking about that subject yet. Maybe another time.

Today I'd like to discuss The Hypochondriac.

The "wash your hands" segment of a collection had never taken this long. The woman rinsed her hands under the water, then pumped a huge glob of soap onto her palm. Then another huge glob. She lathered vigorously until flecks of white were shooting off in all directions. She then scrubbed under the water until all the soap was gone... and went back for a second helping.

She asked if it was antibacterial soap. She asked if it was a disinectant. She asked if it was just generic hand sanitizer, because that stuff doesn't really wash your hands, it just makes them slippery.

"It's just generic store-brand hand soap," I tell her. "It's the kind you'd get at a supermarket."

This answer does not appease her. I wonder momentarily if she buys her soap online from some kind of top secret alarmist hand-washing website. www.rubthemrawandbloody.com, perhaps?

She asks if she can take her little moist mini-wipes in the bathroom with her. She says she can't use my toilet paper. She looks disappointed when I explain that she can't, and why she can't, but she accepts reality and moves on. The Hypochondriac is a little crazy, but she isn't mean or impolite.

In her opinion I am a massive slob with no redeeming value whatsoever, but she's nice enough not to point this out explicitly.

And it's true; I am something of a slob. Cleanliness is not high on my list of priorities. Which isn't to say I'm a disgusting mess, of course, just that I'm disorganized and a little dirt and grime don't bother me. I'm what you'd call a "before" cleaner. I do the dishes before I cook. I make the bed before I get into it. I tidy up the living room before company comes over. I wait until practicality demands that something be cleaned before cleaning it.

The toilet, as far as I'm concerned, is not a device that needs to be cleaned routinely. If it smells particularly foul, or something happens to it that isn't supposed to happen to a toiilet (bad aim, for example) then yes, clean it up. But cleaning it just to say it's clean? Why bother?

This "meh" attitude towards cleanliness doesn't carry over to the office, however. Some people like their potties to be pristine, and I can't hold that against them. My toilet gets a big ole' deep clean once a week, with periodic wipe-downs inbetween as needed. The water is blue and beautiful. Something's wrong with the flushing mechanism and the water drains continuously (whistling like a tea kettle all the merry way) until I manually reach in and tap the plug, but that's my only real gripe with the toilet.

Point is, the toilet in my office is cleaner than the toilet in your house. Yes, we both know it's the truth. Fact is, I'd wager my toilet is cleaner than most toilets in most offices or businesses in the area, if only because I have the time to do a once-over every time someone uses it.

Still, The Hypochondriac scouts out the bathroom for a few moments before asking where I keep the paper seat covers.

"Sorry," I say, "I don't have any. Is there a problem with the toilet seat?"

"When was the last time it was cleaned?"

"Friday afternoon, before I left." It is now Monday morning. The Hypochondriac leans in and whispers to me, "You should talk to your cleaning staff, I don't think they did a very good job."

"I cleaned it myself," I admitted. "Nobody's been here all weekend, I assure you."

"Did you clean it today?"

"No."

"What about the three ladies ahead of me?"

I glance around the bathroom, thinking maybe I missed something. "It doesn't look like they left any messes. Is there a problem?"

"It's not very well lit in here, either..."

"My apologies," I stammer, not really sure how to help this woman with her plight.

"Do you have some disinfectant cleaner? I can't use this toilet."

"I do not. I used the last of it up cleaning my counters on Friday." The cleaner I use is a Pine Sol and water solution, and I use it to clean pretty much everything in the office. I like to do this on Friday afternoon because the smell of Pine Sol makes me gag. By the time I open up Monday morning the odor is gone, but everything is still clean.

In any case I don't have any left; my trusty spray bottle is empty until I get some more supplies in. Given my track record with securing supplies in a timely manner, I may or may not get a fresh bottle by this Friday.

Without a word The Hypochondriac pumps some hand soap onto a stack of paper towels and sets to work scrubbing the toilet. She scrubs the seat. She scrubs under the seat. She scrubs the base. She scrubs the tank. She scrubs the handle. She comes back out for more soap. She comes back out for dry towels. After she's soaped, rinsed and dried the entire counter, discarded her spent paper towels and re-washed her hands she asks me if I have any glass cleaner for the mirror.

The miror looks fine to me. There's a scratch in one corner where the mirror-y stuff is starting to peel off, but otherwise it accomplishes its task admirably. "Ma'am, you don't need to clean the mirror."

"Sorry," she replies, "it just looks really dirty to me."

I hand her the cup and give her the rules again. She has spent seven minutes, half a bottle of hand soap and the better part of an entire stack of paper towels to wash my bathroom. After she's done she apologizes again, then explains herself by saying, "It's just that a dirty bathroom is a major health hazard. It's not right to make people go in a filthy bathroom..."

To clear up a bit of misinformation -- you can't catch something off a toilet seat. For one thing bacteria have a rough time of it on the cold, smooth surface of the seat. Microscopic critters prefer warm, wet places to be fruitful and multiply. A toilet seat is neither warm nor wet. There's probably a better chance of harmful bacteria breeding on the paper seat cover than the seat itself.

For another, you can't catch things with your butt. Even if the seat were slick with unmentionable nastiness, the worst thing you'd have to deal with is wiping the mess off of yourself after you stood back up. This is assuming, of course, that you don't have a gaping open wound on your butt cheek, in which case I would be more worried about the person after you. You get sick by touching your hands to nasty things, and then exposing your hands to the openings on your body. For example, your mouth.

Here's a quick guide to getting sick off a toiilet seat. Step one: wait until someone pees all over it. Women who "hover" will accomplish this task quite nicely. (Isn't it a double standard that men are expected to put the seat down, but hovering women aren't? Maybe that's a post for another day...) Step two: wipe the seat clean with your hands. Step four (and this is important): do not wash your hands. Step five: patty you up some hamburgers, again without washing your hands. Make sure the beef is fresh, though, otherwise you'd be able to blame your food poisoning on ratty food and not a dirty commode. Finally, step six: add ketchup and enjoy!

Look, we all know people who won't use a public restroom. We all know people who don't know the difference between "looks clean", "is clean" and "smells clean". Something can look clean and be dirty, or look dirty and be clean. I used to get a lot of complaints that my office smelled dirty until I added an air freshener, and then the complaints stopped. Note that I didn't actually start cleaning more, I just changed the scent. That's enough to trick most people.

The irony is you're probably safer licking a toilet seat than licking your cell phone, or the doorknob to your house, or the clean laundry that's been sitting in your drawer all week.

The Hypochondriac gathered her things and left as demurely as she entered. She never raised her voice with me. She didn't try to argue. Although she looked disappointed that my office did not meet her impossible standards of immaculate cleanliness, I think she understands that nobody's bathroom except her own could possibly stack up.

Which gives me an idea for a new reality show. How Clean Is Your Bathroom? Little old grannies everywhere duke it out to see who can be the spic-and-spanniest! Coming this fall on Fox.

I apologize to all of my readers in case www.rubthemrawandbloody.com turns out to be a not-safe-for-work porn site. But in my defense I didn't make it a hyperlink, so you really only have yourselves to blame.

Classic Peemeister - You callin' me a liar!?

In honor of the complete and utter lack of anything interesting happening here the past few weeks, I've decided to go ahead and dredge up an old entry from my LiveJournal, back before the Peemeister blog existed. Here's a gem from December 9th, 2004.

---

This is a strange tactic I see from time to time at my job, as well as various other places in the service industry: someone will lie about something, and when confronted with their lie, will yell "Are you calling me a liar!?"

This tactic works surprisingly well. Nobody likes to be called names and, what's more, nobody likes their customers to think they're being called names. The usual response starts with "No, but..." and then concludes with an explanation of what the problem is again and perhaps a possible way it can be solved (or an explanation of why it can't be solved). If the liar is really a wily one, at this point he will shout "So you ARE callin' me a liar!"

I mention this because I hear this particular line once in a while at work, where someone will try to weasel through this loophole or that, and when I call their bluff and they're out of options the only thing left for them to do is get confrontational. Today was an oddity in that I met three people who accused me of calling them liars, spaced evenly throughout the day.

Culprit #1: Mr. McBaldington. Mr. McBaldington is the baldest man in the universe. He shows up at 9:30 am to take a drug test. This wouldn't be a problem, except he was in at 8:10 am yesterday for a drug test as well, but for whatever reason could not contribute a sample. It's against the rules for me to take something after the 24 hour mark, so whenever someone wants to leave and come back at a later time I make it very clear that there is a 24-hour rule, that yes they will have to abide by it, yes I am open weekdays, no I will not stay late on my lunch hour, and no I am not open Saturdays so if it's Friday you'd better get here before 5:00 pm or else.

Yesterday when Mr. McBaldington wanted to leave I made it very clear that if he showed up at 8:11 am, that would be too late (actually I'd cut him some slack, but I don't tell people that up front). I also tell him that I open at 8:00, but if something comes up and I open late he's still out of luck even if the lateness is entirely my fault. I tell him he needs to be in by 5:00 today or he risks not getting the collection done at all.

Now, as it was I got to work on time this morning; with eleven minutes to spare even (for you math whizzes out there, that's 7:49 am). So when Mr. McBaldington shows up at 9:30, an hour and twenty minutes too late, I have no sympathy for him. So of course he says "Well I was here at 8:00 and you weren't open." This is, of course, a flat-out lie. Not only was I at work at 7:49, but I had done a collection by 7:59. I pointed this out on my sign-in sheet that someone had, in fact, signed in at 7:54 and had their collection done by 7:59. Mr McBaldington's response: "Are you calling me a liar?"

I told him no, but he should probably get his watch fixed because obviously it was running at least twelve minutes fast. I told him he would have to get new paperwork from his employer if he wanted to do a collection, and he stormed out. He was back at about 11:45 with new paperwork and his drug test was completed successfully.

Culprit #2: Evil Midget Woman. Evil Midget Woman came in and said she needed a drug test for her parole hearing (or whatever). This is a little out of the ordinary for me; it requires payment up front and an extra form. She wants to pay with her credit card, which is fine, except I have no way to run the card at my office so I have to call my bosses in Tampa. I get in touch with them, rattle off the card number, expiration date, yadda yadda yadda, and the card is declined.

Right then I noticed the number I thought was a 1 was actually a 7. I apologized and rattled off the number again with the 7 in its proper place. The card was declined once again.

I tilted the card and saw that the 7 was actually a 9, and I triple checked the card (by the way: white numbers on a white background is hard to read) to make sure I had it right this time (Evil Midget Woman was getting furious) and rattled it off again, but the card was still declined.

At this point, between me and the other office, all our information was correct. We confirmed it when Evil Midget Woman got on the phone herself. Eventually Tampa told me there was nothing they could do and she'd have to find some other way to pay, and hung up.

The woman informs me that she knows her card went through because it's not really a credit card; it's her debit card. And she, like, just put $126 or whatever in the account, so she knows it's good. I tell her, once again, the card was declined. Her response: "You calling me a liar, boy?" (The addition of "boy" to the question was comical because I towered over this woman. She was like two-foot-nothing. Like a hobbit with a drug problem.)

I told her no, but she'd have to straighten out her card with her bank before we could run it. It was agreed that she would pay with cash, but when she found out she'd need exact change (drug tests cost $38 and I don't keep cash at my office) she left in a huff.

Culprit #3: Teh Glassez. Teh Glassez comes in about 4:00 or so, interrupting my work on a Lord of the Rings jigsaw puzzle. Right away I have to stifle myself because this kid is a goth/punk wannabe with big thick coke-bottle glasses. Seriously, if Steve Urkel were emo... and white... he'd be Teh Glassez.

Now, Teh Glassez doesn't want to empty his pockets. He pouts for a bit until I tell him he can lock his wallet and wallet chain (HAH!) and his half-eaten pack of Starburst in the box. Box goes in the bathroom with you, key stays out here with me. Important to note: I never touch anyone's stuff. If they put it in the box, they put it in the box. And when we're done, they take it back out. So when we're done I watch Teh Glassez take his wallet, wallet chain and half-eaten pack of Starburst out of the box and that's that.

He shows up about a half-hour later saying he left some money in the box by accident, and could he please go back and get it? "Sure," I say, "you can go look. But I'm fairly sure you didn't leave anything in there. I checked it after you left and it was empty."

"Dude," says Teh Glassez in his hardest 'tryin' to sound like a tough guy' voice, "if it's not there I'm going to be somewhat cross, because the logical deduction would be that you took my money. Pray let us investigate, good sir." (He was actually a lot less cordial than this but it wouldn't be nice to reproduce his exact language here.)

I go back and unlock the box for him and, sure enough, it's empty. "Dude, where's my money?" says Teh Glassez. At this point I tell him I don't remember him putting any money into the box, or taking any out, and that all personal effects are solely his responsibility. If he did in fact lose some money (funny how he never mentioned how much) he'd be just out of luck.

"Dude, I put money in your box. What'd you do with it?"

"I didn't take anything out of that box, and there was nothing in there when you left."

"So are you calling me a liar?"

This is the third time I've been asked this today, and I'm sick of it. So I answer his question with a question: "Do you maintain that you put your money in this lockbox earlier today?"

"Yeah, I put it in there."

"Then yes, I am in fact calling you a liar."

Teh Glassez was shocked! He'd been called on his lies! The look on his face was priceless, and not just because of the black lipstick (seriously). He said he was going to call the police; I said fine, you can use my phone. I even have the number handy. He backed down. On his way out the door he said he'd be back with the police.

By this time it was ten minutes to closing time, so I decided to leave early. I am currently enjoying my last night of freedom, because between 7:49 and 8:10 tomorrow (whenever I feel like showing up for work) I will most assuredly be arrested and locked up tight.

It's been fun guys! Write to me in prison.

Suffice it to say, i did not actually go to prison. What a disappointment.

Phone games.

Ring ring.

Good morning. Patient service center.

"Is this for the drug test?"

This is a drug test collection site, yes.

"I need to get a phone number."

Okay, what number?

"His name is Joey Smith."

...I'm sorry, who?

"Joey Smith, he called you this morning about a drug test."

I don't have a phone number for anyone named Joey Smith.

"Yes you do, he said he called about 8:30."

Ma'am, I don't have any way of knowing the phone numbers of people who call me.

"Yeah you do, it's called Caller ID."

I don't have a Caller ID.

"What do you mean you don't?"

I mean, I don't have one. The only time I know someone's phone number is if they tell it to me.

"So you won't tell me Joey's?"

Even if I could, I wouldn't release that information. Sorry.

"Mother[explitive deleted]!"

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good morning. Patient service center.

"Finally he decides to answer the phone! Jesus Christ! I've been calling you for the past twenty minutes!"

Yes, I know. I heard the phone ring.

"So why don't you ever pick up!?"

I was busy helping other clients. What can I help you with?

"I need some [explitive deleted]ing directions, but nobody there apparently knows how to use a phone so I'm just drivin' around in [explitive deleted]ing circles here. What is wrong with you, man?"

Calm down please. Tell me where you are, and I might be able to help you find my office.

"You need to hire someone to answer your [explitive deleted]ing phone, it pisses me off when people get paid six dollars an hour to do an easy piece of [explitive deleted] job and they don't even do it. Okay? Okay?"

...sir, I'll help you with directions, but first you need to lay off the abusive language.

"It's too [explitive deleted]ing late now, I already pulled over and pissed in a gas station. It was either that or piss my [explitive deleted]ing pants. I called like five times but noooo, you're too busy [explitive deleted]ing around to worry about it."

You could have left a message. I have an answering machine that not only records messages, it gives my address and location as well.

"I hung up on that piece of [explitive deleted], is it too much to ask to talk to a live person anymore? Jesus Christ."

Apparently so sir. Do you need directions or not.

"Oh so now you're going to give me [explitive deleted]ing attitude? This is unbelievable. Un-freaking-believable."

I'm glad we had this chat, sir. But now I have to hang up and help some more people who are coming in. Have a nice day.

"Wait you motherf--"

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

"--don't even believe Shaunda would do that to him, you know what I mean? I mean, [explitive deleted]."

Hello? Patient service center.

"Oh [explitive deleted]! My bad! Yeah I was wonderin' do you all have a office in Iowa?"

No ma'am, just this one and the one in Tampa.

"Because my husband, he just got a job, an' he need to do a drug test, but he in Iowa right now, and he need to start his new job."

We're a Florida-based company, ma'am. We just have the two offices.

"Right, but, what I'm sayin' is, he in Iowa."

I'm afraid I can't help you.

"He say he paid for a drug test, but his new job won't take it. Like, it was the wrong lab, or somethin'."

That doesn't surprise me, most of our clients work through one lab, only. He'll have to do his collection at one of our two offices.

"So where are you at in Iowa?"

Ma'am, we do not have any offices in Iowa.

"So what he gon' do?"

I'm afraid I can't help you, ma'am.

"[Explitive deleted]. So what Shaunda do then? I don' even believe--"

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

"You do drug tets?"

Yes sir.

"My job says I have to do a drug test."

Okay.

"It's for [company name]."

They're one of my clients.

"So I can do a drug test for [company name]?"

Yes.

"And it's for my job?"

...yes.

"Oh okay, I was just makin' sure you do drug tests, 'cause my job is sendin' me down there for a drug test, and I was just makin' sure."

Okay.

"Aight."

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

"Yeah, hi. I was in for a drug test on [insert date here] and haven't received the results, I was just wondering what you all did with it."

Was this for employment?

"Yes."

In that case all the results go directly back to your employer. You'll have to call them.

"No, I mean, it was my drug test."

Right. But the company that paid for the test will get the results. You'll have to call them.

"No, this was MY drug test. I paid for it."

So, it wasn't for employment?

"No, see, I need to do one for employment, but I did one for myself first to make sure it was good. I paid for it."

I'm sorry sir, I don't do personal tests here.

"What do you mean?"

I mean, I only do collections for set clients. Nobody can just walk in, without first clearing it with my supervisors in Tampa.

"Oh, that's what I did."

No, sir, you didn't. I didn't do any personal tests at all last week. Or the week before. In fact, I'm pretty sure I haven't done any since 2005.

"No, it was on [insert date here]."

Not at this office, it wasn't.

"Is this [my company name]?"

Yes.

"On [my street]?"

Yes.

"That's where I went. It was some girl in there."

Sir, I'm the only person who works here.

"No, it was some girl, not you. She let me do a test and said I'd get the results the next day."

Even if that were true, turnaround time on drug test results is 2-3 business days.

"That isn't what she said."

Sir, you must not have been in my office. I'm the only person who works here. I do not do personal tests.

"Let me talk to your manager."

No problem. Do you have a pen?

"Why do I need a pen?"

You'll have to call the Tampa office.

"No, just let me talk to him."

Sir, I'm the only person who works here, as I've said. My bosses work at the head office in Tampa.

"So you're screwing me out of test results, is that it?"

Sir, I don't even get any results back at this office. The results all go to the head office, and are then delivered to the employer directly. Either way, you'll have to get in touch with them. Now, do you have a pen?

"Forget it, then."

Click.

---

Ring ring...

...why?

It's about 5:03 p.m. I'm in the back room stacking boxes of collection kits, waiting for my girlfriend to show up and give me a ride home. I hear the doorknob jiggle. Then it jiggles a little louder. Then a loud knocking. Then the sound of a foot hitting the door.

I go out to investigate.

"Hey, let's try not to break the door, okay?"

"My bad, but it wasn't openin'."

"It was locked. It's after five."

"What, you all closed?"

"Yes."

"Why are you closed?"

"What do you mean why am I closed? It's after five. I'm closed."

"I'm here for a drug test."

"I can see that, but I'm closed. I'll be open tomorrow at eight."

"Why I can't get one now?"

"Because I'm closed. It's after five. You'll have to come back tomorrow."

"Man, ain't that some [explitive deleted]."

I'm trying to envision a door somewhere, perhaps leading into a restaurant or a bank or some other business, that only opens after you kick it. I can't imagine for the life of me what this man was thinking. Maybe the door is just really, really stuck!

This isnt the real story about what happened this week at the pee clinic... but I'm in a really foul mood and felt it was better to use this crappy story to vent, rather than ruin a good one with a bunch of ranty nonsense. See you tomorrow.

How do you use a semicolon?

Early in the morning is the preferred time of day to get drug tests for cantankerous old hags. I don't know why that is; probably because they need to hurry up and get home in time for their 10am supper.

...okay, that was hateful and unfair to (most) old hags. There are some very nice old hags out there. Mrs. Grammar wasn't one of them, though.

Her collection was more or less unpleasant right from the get-go because she refused to hand me her ID. It was tucked into a transparent sleeve in her pocketbook, which is a right convenient place for it I admit. However, it's difficult to get your license in and out of these things sometimes, as was the case here. For my part, I don't accept an ID I can't actually hold and examine. It's relatively easy to pass a fake if it's behind a quarter inch of plastic and nobody gets a chance to look at it. I've seen some really bad fakes, and a few really good ones, from my short stint working in a gas station a few years ago, so I learned a few tricks to examine and ID rather than just glance at it in passing.

Mrs. Grammar didn't like being asked, a second time, to please remove her ID. And she told me so. She mentioned that she "didn't appreciate being lumped in with drug dealers". I gave her a sympathetic nod and said that everyone has to follow the same rules, I'm only doing my job, etc... this line of bullhonkey usually serves to shut down all but the particularly irate complainers.

(Right here I had typed out a little mini-rant about the young black man with the saggy pants who left his sample before Mrs. Grammar did, and about how her "lumped in" comment probably referred directly to him... but that's a baseless accusation and anyway takes me too far off topic.)

Mrs. Grammar is on a roll now. She lists all the reasons that the whole drug testing process is demeaning and how she won't stand for it. I say nothing. I wait patiently for her to get tired of listening to herself, then give her the instructions and hand her the cup.

"This is ridiculous," she declares as she sets the cup of urine on the counter, "you're young enough to be my great-grandson." I do a few quick calculations as I'm finishing up my paperwork. "I very much doubt that," I reply, and the matter drops. Mrs. Grammar was born in 1937 and I'm 23 years old. Feel free to do the math yourself.)

After this Mrs. Grammar tries to leave... except she hasn't signed the form yet. I call after her, "Ma'am you aren't done." I'm ignored, so I call louder, "Ma'am, you aren't done. I need you to come back please."

"I'm not finished," Mrs. Grammar shoots back. "The word is finished. Done refers only to cakes."

She comes back to sign the form. As she's doing so, I correct her error: "Done can refer to anything that has terminated or completed, including an action. You say a cake is done because the baking process is over. I say you are done when your drug test collection is over."

I should probably point out that when someone corrects my grammar in a way that is not intended to actually point out a flaw in my wording, but rather to insult or degrade me, I take it as a personal attack. I am highly proficient with the English language. Furthermore I have a great deal of respect for it. I know that sounds nerdy, but hey, I'm a nerd. English fascinates me. Like anyone else I make spelling errors and typos from time to time, and mix up this or that word... but that is not indicative of my lack of knowledge on the subject of English, just that I'm human and make mistakes.

I also understand that there are many, many different dialects of English. Unlike some "grammar nazis" I know, I don't mind technically improper English. Ebonics and Spanglish do not faze me; in fact I find them interesting to listen to. I don't split hairs over the correct spelling of the word "colour" like some British fanatics. The fact that English as a language has evolved over so much time, in so many different directions, excites me. I love learning more and more about the language, while most of my fellow Americans are glad to be done with it after high school.

That's done with, not finished with. As you can see, I know what the goddamn word means.

Mrs. Grammar tries to argue with me, until I offer to look the word up in the dictionary. She says she knows English and doesn't need a dictionary. So I pull out the trick that always, always works in these situations.

"How do you use a semicolon?"

Anytime someone is trying to play grammar rodeo with you, this knocks them off their bucking bronco. Every time. Without fail.

I love the semicolon. It is my favorite punctuation mark. Yes, I realize that it's completely weird and probably a little pathetic that I have a favorite punctuation mark; but I do, and it's the semicolon. I use it as often as possible; partially because I know how to correctly use it and I like to lord that fact over people who don't (as it makes me feel smart), but also because once you're proficient with it, it's just too damn useful to ignore.

(Right here I had typed out the rules for proper semicolon usage, but then decided that if you want to be able to use my little anti-grammar-nazi trick, you should do your own homework. Wikipedia awaits!)

Mrs. Grammar doesn't know how to use a semicolon. I'd have bet twenty bucks she didn't have the first clue what a semicolon was. "Just like a colon," was all she said. I handed her her copies of the paperwork and said, "You're done now. Have a nice day."

I have some bad habits when it comes to English, especially writing. I tend to overuse (and even misuse) ellipses. I break up my thoughts far too often with parantheses (or have you noticed that?). I've even been known to unintentionally fall into the there/they're/their trap, from time to time.

In fact, I'm not even going to spell check this post -- not because I'm confident there aren't any typos, but because I never spellcheck any of my posts. It's just a bad habit I have. I'm not saying to myself, "Gee, the subject of this post is English and grammar... I should spell check it to make sure there aren't any dumb errors." I'm human like anyone else. There will be errors in this post and probably many more to come.

But I know how to use a semicolon. And that's what's important.

2006 - 1937 = 69. That's her age. 69 - 23 (my age) = 46. That's her age when her make-believe great-grandson was born. 46 / 3 (the number of complete generations from her birth to her great-grandson's birth) = 15.3. That's the average age women in this bloodline are when they give birth. 23 - 15 = 8. That's the age of Mrs. Grammar's great-great grandson, and he'll be expecting his kid in seven years. I'd say this family has more to worry about than grammar.

Long stretches of time.

The truth of the matter is that the vast, vast majority of my time here at the office is empty. On a typical day that means less than an hour of actual work. As a result, there are sometimes long stretches of time in which nothing particularly interesting happens, leaving me nothing particularly interesting to write about.

But I mean, come one, how am I supposed to follow up that story from a month ago?

Still, a month without an update is pretty lame even for me. So rather than just leaving this space empty for another month (or until something neat happens, or the world ends, whichever comes first) I figured I'd regale you with a few minor tidbits that didn't really merit updates of their own.

---

About two weeks ago a man came in for a drug test. His name was Kareem Abdul Jabbar Jackson. I immediately decided that it was the most amazing name I had ever heard in my entire life.

---

On the subject of donor names... earlier this week I had an exceptionally slow day: only six collections. Four of those were for guys named Christopher. One was for a woman named Christine. The sixth was for a man named Cristobal. I think the six of them should get together and form a crime-fighting group called "The Super Chrises".

---

I actually did almost update a while ago, but now I'm glad I didn't. See, I was having one of those remarkably awful days, where everything set me off. A world-class bad mood, you might say. After a verbal boxing match over the phone with my bank I realized I had only five minutes left on my lunch break, so I hopped on my bike and flew down to McDonald's to buy some grub. I get back a few minutes after 2:00 and there are a couple people waiting for me. Cursing under my breath I set my food aside and took care of the collections.

What I almost updated about was this pompous holier-than-thou over-educated nitwit who took one look at my sack'o'burgers, scoffed, and then said "You really shouldn't eat that, you know."

For some reason I was so irritated at this guy's comment that I sat down and wrote a five-paragraph post about him, and about how I should be allowed to eat whatever I want, fast food or no, and who are you to comment? I had it all worked out, lambasting the whole uber-vegan subculture who look down their long, sickly noses at the unwashed masses who eat fast food.

Then, just to be sure I was a complete hypocrite, I went on to detail my actual eating habits, which include cooking a meal every night of the week and having fast food once in a while as an afterthought. I went on to contradict my previous paragraph, proceeding to bash people who did eat fast food on a regular basis and how unhealthy and unfulfilling a lifestyle choice that is.

As it turns out though, simply the act of typing all that out was enough to vent my frustrations. I went on to preview it and realized that nobody, anywhere, wants to read about my McDonald's misadventures, so I deleted the post. Dodged a bullet, there! Whew!

---

The lightswitch in my hallway is broken, and has somehow caused all the wiring in the two fluorescent lights it controls to melt and fuse to the bulbs. Thus the entire back half of my office was plunged into darkness. I told my boss to fix it; he bought me a lamp to stick in the hallway. Oh well.

---

I received my first formal complaint in over two years! One of our landscaping clients filed a complaint that I am "unnecessarily rude to our Hispanic employees". This is presumably because I refuse to drug test them without a translator... although they didn't mention that part.

It isn't going to happen, but I personally hope that we lose the client. We can't really provide the service they're asking for anyway; they hire an almost exclusively Mexican crew, and really need a drug test site that speaks Spanish. Why they don't simply shop around until they find one is beyond me. At the very least, why put up with someone who is "unnecessarily rude" to their employees?

---

So there it is, a couple half-interesting little tidbits all rolled into one. Hopefully something sufficiently post-worthy happens in the near future so I don't have to pull this trick twice in a row!

Last time someone was in to play with my lights, he poked it with a broom a few times and then gave up. Gee, I wonder why they don't work...

Disgusting jobs.

People always wonder how I can do my disgusting, filthy job. People wonder all the time how I manage to actually touch cups full of urine on a daily basis. Folks can't wrap their heads around it, but the truth of the matter is my job isn't all that disgusting. Mopping up a small puddle of urine (which is usually the most that happens, when accidents do happen) is no different than mopping up a small puddle of any other liquid.

Honestly, I prefer the smell of stale urine over some of the really rank cleaning products I end up using. Then there's my air freshener on top of that -- masking one smell with another, with another. If anything is disgusting, it's the smell of Glade Plug-ins and bug spray mingled with disinfectant and Lysol, combined with the aroma of slime-like bluing agent, with perhaps the slightest tinge of urine as an afterthought.

Keeping my office clean generally means vacuuming and mopping, keeping my paperwork in neat little stacks, and keeping the water in my toilet as blue as a smurf. Until today.

I can't sugar-coat this... the guy was fat. There's no dancing around a thing like this. This man did not have a weight problem, he had a weight catastrophe. That he could manage to walk without a cane or some other kind of support was mind-blowing, though calling his movements "walking" isn't exactly accurate. He would kind of swivel his hips and swing his arms as hard as he could to gain momentum, and any movement his feet actually made seemed to be incidental. One thing was for sure, when not in motion the man could not stand up on his own. He had to lean on something or fall over.

Please understand that I'm merely describing this man, not mocking him, although mockery was the least of his worries. He couldn't string a sentence together without gasping for breath halfway through. He was sweating through his sweatpants. His odor was pungent and foul. This was not your average, run-of-the-mill fat man, the kind we all know and love. This was someone with a serious, immediate problem that needs to be remedied. This man, you look at and feel an instant and overwhelming sense of pity, but at the same time you try to avert your eyes and breathe through your mouth.

A quick aside about my waterless urinal: it's basically just a drain on the wall with a little pocket inside for disinfectant (which, as noted above, smells worse than urine). It's actually the ideal tool for someone in my field, since it can't be flushed and puts the donor in a place where he cannot get any water whatsoever, running or otherwise. Furthermore, it reduces the chances of a donor flushing the toilet to exactly zero, which saves me from a lot of headaches. When a man asks to use the regular toilet, however, that's generally a red flag. Some men are incapable of doing so, and that's fine, but some simply want to cheat and need a readily avaialble source of water to do so.

I was willing to make an exception in this man's case, though, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how he was going to be able to aim the stream into the waterless urinal. He had seen the two men in front of him use the waterless urinal so he knew it existed, and when I asked if he needed a regular toilet he became embarrassed and said no, he could do it just fine.

This did not turn out to be the case.

While he was in the men's room working on filling his cup I was in the lobby filling out paperwork for the two donors behind him. Just as I was finishing up the second set of forms I hear a loud crash from the bathroom. I rushed back and asked if he was okay.

"I made a mess," he said.

It took him a few minutes but he eventually got up, and cracked the door open. He didn't want to open it all the way and reveal the fruits of his labor, but at the same time he couldn't fit through the half-opened door. He was beet red, but whether that was because he was completley out of breath or utterly mortified, I have no way of knowing. Probably a combination of the two.

In no uncertain terms, this man had fallen over somehow in the bathroom and lost control of his bowels. Green, murky diarrhea covered the back of his pants and most of one arm, not to mention my bathroom floor. His sample cup was discarded amidst his leavings. It was empty, not because he had spilled it, but because he hadn't filled it in the first place.

He forced his way past me so he didn't have to see the look on my face as the mess came into full view. He choked out some apologies on his way out the door. I was left with the task of cleaning up after him. The two people in my lobby had begun to wrinkle their noses, the looks of disgust impossible to hide. The young lady excused herself.

I set about my undesirable task, armed with everything in my cleaning arsenal. Fifteen grisly minutes later my men's room was back in pristine condition. It was the most horrible mess I'd ever cleaned up in my life.

I still felt extreme amounts of pity for this man, but now I was angry with him as well. It's rather common for men to not be able to do number one without first doing number two, I'm sure it happens to everyone. But I had offered this guy an out. Had he been sitting on the toilet he would have never slipped and, even if he had somehow, clean-up would have been as easy as flushing. Sure, his drug test would have been ruined. But isn't that better than the alternative?

I'm aware he was just embarrassed and sensitive about his weight, but I'm betting that after leaving here he went straight through a McDonald's drive-thru for some comfort food. I sometimes wonder if incidents like these form the catalyst in someone's life, where they clearly identify a change they need to make and then get motivated enough to change it. But somehow I think that only happens in movies. As it stands this man is in seriously bad health and is at best a horrible inconvenience to the people who have to put up with him. Nobody can help him but himself, and even in situations as silly as drug testing he's unwilling to do even that.

As for me, for the rest of the day there's an odor lingering about that drowns out even the disinfectants and Pine Sol. And it's hard to be excited about that.

When the young lady came back in she blurted out, "I didn't leave because of the fat -- because of the obese guy, I mean -- I just wanted a cigarette." At that point, I would have welcomed the smell of a cigarette.

Jailbait.

The people I deal with on a daily basis sometimes infuriate me, sometimes bore me, and sometimes even delight me... but only rarely do they honestly creep me out. That was until yesterday, when I met Old Man Shortshorts.

Old Man Shortshorts was a tiny, wrinkled scab of a man. He stood about five-foot-nothing. He wore a t-shirt advertising the 1999 Senior Fun Walk and a pair of tiny red shorts, showing off the mass of his liver spot encrusted legs. His voice was gravely and harsh, just one step above the guy who needs the handheld voice-box held up to his throat to speak. This alone was creepy enough, but then in walked his wife.

Lady Shortshorts had to have been my age or younger. She was a good six feet tall. I'm certain she was his wife and not, say, his granddaughter because they wore matching wedding bands and he kept on grabbing her butt. She had a thick European accent I had a hard time identifying. The whole situation just freaked me out something bad.

Old Man Shortshorts didn't do anything remarkably annoying. His collection was smooth and painless; he didn't ask stupid questions, he didn't complain about the pockets thing or the wallet thing or the ID thing. But the fact remains that he bought a European woman less than one-third his age. Ew. Just ew.

I wanted to shower vigorously after Old Man Shortshorts and his knockout foreign wife left my office.

I guess maybe I'm being unfair. For all I know it could be true love. But it's still creepy true love.

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?

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.