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.

Cue trombone sounds.

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

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

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


"Do we have any more of those things?"

What things?

"Those things."

WHAT things?

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

What machine?

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

"The credit card machine."

"Yeah yeah."

You need receipt tape for the credit card machine.

"Yeah. Do you have them?"

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

"I can't find them."

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

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

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

"Which one?"

Top shelf.

"Yeah but where?"

TOP SHELF.

"We don't have them?"

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

"Oh! Well that's too tall."

I'll move them to the middle shelf.

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


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

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

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

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.

The Two-Story Translator.

At about 9am a young lady walks into my office requiring a pre-employment drug test for a landscaping company. She does not speak English.

This particular landscaping company has a long, sordid history of being very much against the idea of providing translators for their new-hires. The fact that I speak no Spanish is not unknown to them. I don't know why they refuse to send translators; it's not like they don't have any on-hand. Many of the Mexican workers who come in for a drug test are bilingual already, how hard would it be to call one over and send him out with a new-hire to make sure the drug test goes down properly.

Any way you slice it, I can't do the collection. I have no choice but to turn the young lady away.

She returns after lunch with an employee of the same company. I ask him if he is going to serve as translator. He nods and says "okay".

"Okay" is a red-flag word. It's deceptively easy to get through a conversation by just nodding and saying "okay" whenever the person you're listening to pauses in their speech. I lob a couple lowball questions at the translator to test his English capabilities. As it turns out he knows precious little English at all. not even enough to help the young lady tell me her phone number. Again I have no choice but to turn them away.

Ten minutes before closing time they return, this time accompanied by a white woman who very obviously works in the air-conditioned part of the company's dealings. "Hi," she says impatiently, "is there some problem here?"

I explain to the woman, just like I have to various other members of her company, over and over again, that I do not speak Spanish and I can not conduct a collection unless the donor speaks English.

"Well all she has to do is pee in a cup right?"

Sigh. It's the "only a drug test" argument. I wonder how this woman would react if one of their landscaping crews uprooted someone's flower bed. Somehow I doubt she'd respond with "Well it's only your front lawn right?"

I briefly explain the process, the do-not-flush thing, the empty-your-pockets thing, and I show her the block on the form the donor needs to sign.

Now, I have no illusions that everyone who comes in for a drug test actually reads the form before signing it. Most people are so jaded that they just sign anything and everything you point to. My personal take on the issue is that if you have the ability to read it, and decide not to, that is your thing. But if you do not have the ability to read it, it's my job to ensure you know what it says before you sign. I meet a lot of people who are illiterate, or who don't have their glasses, or speak English perfectly well but can't read it, and to those people I cheerfully read the two lines of text aloud. But in the case of foreign language translations, nothing short of an actual bilingual translator can get the job done. This solution, while painfully obvious to me, continues to elude the landscaping company in question and specifically the increasingly-irritated woman standing before me.

"Well, why can't he translate?"

I shrug, and look at the translator again, and ask him in plain English, "Sir, are you able to translate for me?"

He blinks a few times and then looks at the supervisor woman, helplessly.

She repeats what I said, except louder and slower. When that doesn't work, she rewords it as "Can you talk English? To him? Like this?" She holds up one hand and pantomimes a mouth opening and closing, while pointing to her own mouth with the other hand.

He nods and says "okay."

"There," says the supervisor, "what's the problem?"

The problem is that I'm not fooled. The problem is that I'm not a complete retard. The problem is that your goddamned company wants to capitalize on the cheap labor offered by a Mexican work force (illegal or otherwise) and the tax benefits of getting them all drug tested without accepting the responsibility to get it done properly.

The part of the form the young lady is eventually going to have to sign, I ask the translator to read to me in English. He can't get passed the second word (the first word is "I"). It is so painfully obvious that this man, excellent landscaper though he may be, simply does not speak English and simply can not serve as a translator. A five-year-old could see it.

"Ma'am," I tell the supervisor, "unless you speak Spanish and can translate, I am going to have to discontinue this collection process." That's a polite way of saying "get the hell out of my office, it's after five and I want to go home."

"What if I help him with the things he doesn't understand?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can translate for him."

"You're going to translate for the translator?"

"He'll listen to me."

I envision in my mind the kind of work environment this woman deals with. She is probably highly skilled at getting a crew of Spanish-speaking workers where they need to be, doing what they need to get done, and doing it very efficiently. But outside of her little landscaping world, things don't work like that. It's easy to hand a rake to someone, point them at a pile of leaves, and let them figure it out. What I do at my office is something different entirely.

"So you want to translate for me, and then have this man translate for you."

"Can we hurry this up please?"

"But he doesn't speak English."

"He does, you say he doesn't, whatever."

"And you don't speak Spanish."

"He'll listen to me."

I walk out, take my OPEN sign off the window, and turn off the lobby lights. "Okay," I tell her, "we'll give it one shot. If it doesn't work you're going to have to send her back tomorrow with a proper translator." I realize that statement is meaningless to her, so I follow up by explaining that a translator is someone who is bilingual, and can hold conversations in two different languages (in this case English and Spanish) be they verbal or written.

I give all my instructions. The supervisor repeats them louder, leaving out verbs, the way one would talk to a dog. The translator stumbles around with some clumsy Spanish. The donor looks very confused. Eventually the supervisor snaps the cup from my hand, gives it to the donor and points to the bathroom.

As she's going in, I remind her not to flush the toilet. The helpful supervisor sums this up as "No this," with a hand gesture that tries to mimic water circling a toilet bowl. To me it looks like she's stirring soup.

Even through the language barrier, handing someone an empty cup and pointing them at a bathroom is a pretty easy message to get across. The donor emerges with a full cup, the sound of a freshly flushed toilet echoing through the hallway.

The supervisor is angry when I tell her it's a botched collection. The donor did not follow my instructions because, despite having two translators at hand, she did not understand what they were. The supervisor barks at the donor to "drink aqua" as fast as she could so she could go again.

"No, ma'am, she will have to come back tomorrow with a proper translator."

"She'll get it right next time, she just--"

"It's after five. I'm closed. She doesn't speak English. You aren't a translator. He isn't a translator. This collection is over."

I throw away the cup and break eye contact. The supervisor tries to protest but eventually just stomps out with her Mexican underlings in tow.

As for me, I still don't speak Spanish.

The very next day the same man came in, supposedly sent to translate for a completely different new-hire. Something is seriously wrong with that company.

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.

Shouldn't have said that.

Working in the service industry, one learns to hold one's tongue.

Of course there are other times where one simply cannot help being a snarky bastard.

Every so often I'll get lippy with a client, and realize what I'm saying is wrong even as I'm saying it. I thought I'd share some of those experiences today.

---

A lady walks in and she's hopping mad. Beet red, steam firing from the gaskets behind her ears, and a scowl on her face that threatens to wrench her jaw clear off of her skull. "There is NO sign out there," she declares. "They said there would be a huge sign that says [my company's name] on it, but there is NO sign."

I stare past her at the huge sign in my window, perfectly visible from any and all angles at quite a distance. The only way she could have missed it is if she wasn't bothering to look for it. I apologize for the inconvenience and we get on with the collection.

She's so burning mad about this sign thing that she isn't listening to my intructions. I go through the entire spiel (wash your hands, don't flush the toilet, etc) twice before she snatches the cup out of my hands and stomps into the bathroom. About three minutes later, the toilet flushes. She comes out and I inform her that a second collection will have to be done, as she flushed the toilet.

"What!? You didn't tell me that!"

Of course I did. Twice, in fact.

"Well, you should put a giant sign in the bathroom saying it!"

"There was one, ma'am; you just didn't see it."

I winced. Shouldn't have said that.

---

A woman comes in with her two screaming children. These are children of an age where they should be able to go out into public without screaming. I had them pegged at about nine and twelve; definately capable of sitting quietly for a few minutes while Mommy tends to her business.

I quickly see where they get it from; Mommy is a 40-year-old brat. She insists on making the entire process as difficult as possible. She doesn't want to leave her purse behind. She doesn't want to wash her hands. She whines about just having her nails done. "You are welcome to come back tomorrow, ma'am," I offer, genuinely wanting her out of my hair.

Instead, she decides to redifine "washing your hands" as "holding your hands under running water for less than two seconds". I ask her to wash them again, properly this time.

"I just washed them."

"Please wash them again, using the soap provided." When detailing common sense instructions at point-blank range, I find it's best to use a firm but polite voice. But really, there's no way you can teach a grown adult how to wash her hands without sounding condescending. I hear her kids giggle from the lobby. The woman turns red.

She washes her hands again, while I watch. This time she makes a show of scrubbing them, but hasn't actually touched the soap. As she goes to reach for a paper towel, I ask her: "Did you use soap?"

"Of course I did."

"I didn't see you use any soap."

"Then you must be blind."

"I'll need you to wash your hands again, using the soap provided," I repeat.

She does so, using nearly half the bottle of soap. As she furiously scrubs the skin off the back of her hands she remarks, "I'm a grown woman, you can stop treating me like a child."

"I will, as soon as you stop acting like one."

The kids in the lobby are howling. The woman glares at me for a moment, then grabs her purse (without stopping to dry her hands), wrenches both of her kids from their chairs and drags them out to her minivan. She never comes back to complete the collection.

Whoops. Shouldn't have said that.

---

Four men come in, needing a drug test to get their coast guard licenses in order so they can take their commercial fishing boat out. One of them had called me about an hour prior to get my address. He drove here from the other end of the county for some reason. He insisted that he needed to come to this office, even though he could have gone to literally any drug test collection site he wanted. I don't keep any of my competitor's names and addresses handy, though, and because I couldn't point him to another office he decided it was in his best interests to travel for forty-five minutes and interrupt me just as I was about to take my lunch break.

I call in their company credit card, which is charged for four tests. The first three collections go down without a hitch. The fourth man, however, doesn't have a photo ID. He left it in his wallet, which is back at work.

"No problem. Which of you gentlemen is his supervisor?" I'm assuming here that one of the guys is the supervisor or overseer or whatever nautical term applies. But they just exchange glances. "None of us," on of them says. "We just work on the boat."

"Without a photo ID or a supervisor here in person, I can't do his collection," I point out.

Now everyone gets angry.

"Why do you need his ID? You have the man right here!"

"All three of us can vouch for him."

"None of us can go back to work until this is done!"

Much whining and groaning ensues, but there's nothing I can do for them. It's not my fault the guy left his ID laying somewhere. As hostilities start to rise I point out this simple fact. "No, but it's your fault for not telling him to bring it!"

"Excuse me?"

"You never said we'd need our IDs!"

"I assumed you knew. It's pretty much a given. You three didn't forget yours, even without being told."

From this point on it's all my fault. Even though the man without his ID was not the man I spoke to on the phone, I somehow should have still contacted him telepathically and reminded him to do something that every other adult in the United States does every day of their lives just out of habit.

Fed up with the accusations, I look at the ID-less man right in the eyes. He must be at least 20 years older than me. "Sir, you need to carry your ID at all times. I apologize if nobody has informed you of this, but in our society it is expected that all legal adults have a form of photo identification on them" I launch into a lecture about the exact purpose of photo identification, where he can acquire one, etc. I talk to him like he's an absolute idiot; obviously his co-workers think he is.

The four men storm out. The first three are angry, the fourth merely incredibly humiliated. I never did find out if they bothered to ask for a refund.

Definately shouldn't have said that.

Do you think there's some kind of connection between moments like these, and being forced by stubborn clients to point out the glaringly obvious? Nah, couldn't be...

End of the line.

One of the larger construction companies I deal with has an unusual method of notifying its employees of random drug testing. Rather than drawing names and giving out notices with a 24-hour timeframe attached, they hand out all the notices at once with a cut-off date on it. My speculation is that this gives people who know they can't pass a few weeks to come up clean, therefore reducing the amount of employees that have to be punished for drug use. Or they just don't want to pay employees to come take a drug test on company time... I guess I don't really know.

However, this has an obvious side-effect -- all the construction workers who get notices just wait until the last day before the cut-off before coming in. That day was yesterday.

It's 4:30pm, and there are seven gentlemen waiting in the lobby. Anyone who doesn't do their drug test today has to face the music in the morning when they go in to work. Some of these guys have to go really badly, but are waiting patiently in line for their turn. Four minutes per collection, seven collections... well, I'm already going to get out of here late. No problem, it happens.

In walks Mr. Beard, a scraggly guy wearing a sleeveless shirt bearing the name of Construction Company X, the same company all these other men are wearing. I'm busy completing the paperwork for the next person in line when Mr. Beard looks around forlornly, stomps up to the counter, and tries to get my attention.

"Excuse me, how long is the wait going to be?"

"I figure about thirty minutes."

"Don't you close at five?"

"Yeah, but I won't leave without taking care of you. Go ahead and have a seat."

"I have to be at my night job by six."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to come back tomorrow," I reply, knowing perfectly well he's holding paperwork with a cut-off date on it.

"You don't understand," says Mr. Beard, "my boss gives me this paper to come down here, and says it has to be done by tomorrow, and you've got all these other guys in line. You have to move me ahead of them."

"You're free to discuss it with these gentlemen," I tell him. But a quick scan around the room reveals shaking, weary heads. Mr. Beard's just gonna have to wait.

I go back to do my collection and as I do I hear Mr. Beard pacing back and forth. He gets a few cups of water, of course using a new cup for each refill. He whips out a cell phone but closes it before placing a call.

Four minutes later I send the first man on his way and call out, "Who was next?"

Mr. Beard muscles in front of the elderly black gentleman who had begun to stand up.

"You need to take me ahead of these guys, man," he pleads in a voice low enough that I know he doesn't want anyone else to overhear, but loud enough that everyone does. "It's bad enough that my boss is making me do this. I mean I don't get off of work until five usually, I had to take off an hour just to come down here, and my boss isn't even paying me for it. I mean, this has to be done tomorrow. I can't lose this job and I can't be late to my other one."

I wave the black gentleman forward, double-check his ID to make sure I have the right paperwork, and reply to Mr. Beard, "Sorry, sir. Everyone has to wait their turn."

While doing one collection I like to come out and fill out the paperwork for the next person in line. It helps save everyone's time. In this case, however, it just exposes me to Mr. Beard's pleas and excuses even more. "Look, man, I'm not on probation or anything, I didn't just get out of jail, I'm not doing this for court... it's just for my job. Plus I really need to go, really bad."

"Of the gentlemen currently waiting patiently in the lobby, which of you are here from Construction Company X?"

They all nod, or grunt, or raise their hand, or otherwise affirm my question.

"And how many of you gentlemen received your notices on November 15th?"

They all nod, or grunt, or raise their hand, or otherwise affirm my question, again.

"If you get drawn again next month, sir," I tell Mr. Beard, "I suggest you come in on the 16th."

When I come back from completing my next collection, Mr. Beard is gone. I guess he really couldn't wait. I finish up the line and I'm out the door by about 5:05.

Some people just can't stand being at the end of a line.

I've waited in two-hour long lines for roller coasters. There's always this sense of relief once someone steps into the line behind me. I guess it doesn't really matter how long the line is, just as long as you aren't at the end of it.

Sign in, please.

People don't know what to do with my sign-in sheet.

I'd say about 75% of my clientele fits into this category.

The sign-in sheet is not hard. It has three columns: one for your name, one for your employer's name, and one for the time. At the top in ginormous letters it declares "PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY".

But people don't print clearly. They furiously scribble their name in the first column and ignore the rest. They write their first name in the first column and their last name in the second. They print one and sign the other. They fill out all three lines with random stuff, then declare: "Where do I put the date?"

I like to believe that people are not inherently stupid. They, like me, simply do not take note of their surroundings sometimes. These are the same people who blow a gasket when their double cheeseburger is 38 seconds late or the person at the bank spells their name wrong, but right now they're just having an all-too-human brainfart.

My own paperwork needs to be done before I can take a collection, so I usually just let people figure out the sign-in sheet for themselves. When I'm done with my first page (containing the company name, my phone and fax number, my name and today's date twice) I'll check on them. I point out any errors they've made. I pretend the sign-in sheet is some kind of Mayan glyph puzzle that requires a degree in indianajonesology to decipher. I try not to make them feel stupid. I start my second page of paperwork. Most times I can finish before they do.

Sometimes people ask pertinent questions. "Do you want my supervisor's name? Or the name of the company?" Since the sheet only says "employer's name" I can see how this would be a sticking point. This is a person who has read the form and wants to make sure there are no errors. This is a person after my own heart. But these people are few and far between.

The time is a big sticking point. The only clock in my office is displayed conveniently behind the person signing in, so I either have to point it out to them or tell them the time myself. Sometimes they don't ask. They start scanning the walls, first right, then left, then right again, then left again, their neck craning a few more degrees with each oscillation, their waist joining in, until finally their impromptu aerobics reveals the clock behind them.

Then they write down the wrong time. Everyone writes down the wrong time.

I suppose people think they'll get rewarded for getting here a few minutes early (or punished for being late). If they show up at 2:15, they'll write 2:10. Even if they ask me, they'll shave five or ten minutes off their time.

People love to feel like they're getting away with something.

At one point my largest client, the one that makes me open a half hour early once a week for their scheduled testing days, decided they wanted me to keep a sign-in record for them in addition to the one I already keep. So now I have to juggle two sign-in sheets. It is not uncommon to hear me remark, exasperated, "Please print your name on both sheets. There are two sheets. You need to print your name on both."

We won't get into what the many illiterate or non-English clients I see daily do with the sign-in sheet.

The sign-in sheet acts like a gate; it tells me how slow I'll have to talk or how many times I'll have to repeat myself once we get to the harder parts of the collection process. This is where I determine whether I can breeze through your collection or if I'm going to have to hold your hand and take you step-by-step. The way I figure it, if you can't write your name properly there's not much hope for anything else.

In other words, if you screw up on my sign-in sheet I won't really think you're an idiot. But I'll still treat you like one.