Just plain rude.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can't handle the truth.

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

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

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

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

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

"When can we expect it?'

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

"And when will that be? What date?"

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

"Which batch will ours be in?"

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

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

"Not acceptable."

"I apologize."

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

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

"Not acceptable."

"Again, I apologize."

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

Then she hangs up.

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

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

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

Cue trombone sounds.

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

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

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


"Do we have any more of those things?"

What things?

"Those things."

WHAT things?

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

What machine?

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

"The credit card machine."

"Yeah yeah."

You need receipt tape for the credit card machine.

"Yeah. Do you have them?"

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

"I can't find them."

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

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

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

"Which one?"

Top shelf.

"Yeah but where?"

TOP SHELF.

"We don't have them?"

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

"Oh! Well that's too tall."

I'll move them to the middle shelf.

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


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

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

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

Why I love the ER blogs.

In the past month of no updates I have probably sat down to type something here about three dozen times, at least. Every single time, though, I had to erase what I had written because I realized all I was really doing was ranting like a lunatic. Which can admittedly be fun to read, but it's not the kind of stuff I like to write. I like relaying quirky stories about weird people taking drug tests, not six paragraphs of "rawr everyone is an idiot but me, rabble rabble rabble."

A lot of things have gone down in the tiny peemeister offices these past few weeks, and some of them have left me a bit shaken. But it's all office politics stuff, which isn't the focus of my blogging. It has cut me though, sometimes deeper than I would have figured was possible. Changes are happening, some good, some bad. Management has woken up and is starting to make some decisions... again, some good, some bad. Anyway, all the politicking has left me unable or unwilling to document the various zaniness I've come across while conducting my collections, and for that I apologize.

Things are starting to settle a little, I think.

One of the new decisions is the arbitrary blocking of half the internet from all our computers. I disagree with the decision for basically selfish reasons: I like the internet and I get cranky when it's taken away from me. I feel that in an office of a dozen or so people, if it's found that someone is abusing MySpace or whatever you can just block that address from that machine and be done with it. Er, there I go, ranting again. I'll stop now.

Anyway, the criteria for what is blocked and what isn't is pretty strange. Websites I used to hit once a day (comics, news sites, educational sites, and a forum or two) are gone now, even though I'm the only person in the office who would ever dream of visiting them. However, sites like LiveJournal and Blogger are unblocked, so I've been filling my days reading a lot more blogs than I used to.

I've never been much of a blog guy. I really love writing and sharing my experiences, but I don't take a lot of pleasure in reading the rants of others. There are several blogs I check daily, but they're either videogame related (and thus of no real value to anyone except gamers) or they're the awesome cream-of-the-crop blogs that everyone is already reading anyway. Maybe I'll put the links up someday.

For some reason though, I have discovered that I love the ER blogs. I love them. I can't get enough. I don't know how I found the first one, but after I finished the archives I pulled a random link from its blogroll and plowed through another one. The ER blogs captivate me.

I'm not really interested in the medical industry, even though I kinda sorta work in it (in the same way the janitor at CBS works in the "entertainment industry"). And a lot of the ER blogs are the "everyone is an idiot but me" rants I tend to roll my eyes at. So why do I love them so much? I think it's the combination of two things. First, they do have a point. Anyone who's sat an an ER for any length of time at peak hours sees the kind of absolute crap hospital employees deal with on a daily basis. It's enough to make anyone jaded. And second, jaded or not, the work they do is incredibly difficult and I would probably have a coronary just thinking about it.

In a few ways, reading all those ER blogs helped me realize that a lot of the petty nonsense I'm putting up with at work right now is just that: petty nonsense. I know perfectly well that my laziness and lack of compassion preclude me from ever doing the important and often thankless work they do. So I offer my heartfelt thanks to all of them, especially the ones who blog about their daily grind and share their experiences with the rest of us.

Here are three of the best ones I came across, which have made it onto my "check these daily" list:
http://ernursey.blogspot.com/
http://lastblogstanding.blogspot.com/
http://ambulancedriverfiles.blogspot.com/

Please note: this isn't any indication that the peemeistering is going to pick up anytime soon. Here's hoping, though!

Never a good day.

I don't hate my job, not even in the least. It's a pretty sweet gig. I can't come to work and play six hours of PlayStation relatively uninterrupted anymore, but I still get to keep to myself and screw around on the internet most of the day. The vast majority of my responsibilities are stress-free, and even the most major and unthinkable screw-ups on my watch would only lead to re-doing fifteen minutes of work, worst case scenario.

But something dawned on me recently that I hadn't really thought about before, and it kind of weighs me down: I don't really have good days. It's entirely possible to have a bad day, which does happen once in a while, and is a mainstay at any job. Most of my days, naturally, are just regular days: clock in, do some combination of work and internet-slacking, clock out. But a good day? It's just not possible.

One of my first jobs was at an ice cream store. I used to love making the waffle cones. Two of my shifts every week consisted of me sitting at a row of waffle machines with two pans of cone batter on the counter in front of me and a CD player tucked into the pocket of my apron. Even on non-cone days there were little things that could occur to cheer me out of a sour mood, even something simple as a customer dropping five bucks in the tip jar after getting exactly what he wanted out of his ice cream experience. Maybe it was silly, but very good.

After high school I put a few months in as a sales rep for the Home Shopping Network. This consisted mostly of selling fake Susan Somers jewelery to women with twelve maxed Master Cards, but once in a while you'd get someone who has been looking for some rare coin or just the right size basketball jersey, and you could tell that just by completing a sale for them you'd made their day. I'm sure people working in pretty much any sales position experience this from time to time. I distinctly remember one time we were selling some kind of telescope as part of an after-Christmas sale, and a man called up asking if we still had any. He had tried to buy his son that very telescope for Christmas, but couldn't find one anywhere. Just the fact that this man would be able to share the galaxy with his son after all, and that I had played some roll in facilitating that dream, really made my night.

You might not think I could have a good day at my old pee clinic, and you'd be partially right. Nobody wants to take a drug test. At worse people verbally abuse you, try a thousand different ways to cheat, or eat up hours of your time because they can't muster enough urine to fill a 30ml cup. At best they come in, drop their sample, then leave indifferently. Even so, there were little unexpected niceties that would happen from time to time. Sometimes I'd walk up to the drug store and they'd have Vanilla Pepsi stocked instead of just regular Pepsi. Sometimes a friend would drop by for a few hours to play Street Fighter or watch a movie with me. Sometimes I would get a shipment of supplies exactly at the moment I needed them, completely unexpectedly. And sometimes I would just use the downtime to pursue one of my hobbies in a particularly exhilarating way. There were good days.

Nothing like that ever happens where I am now. On my best days I get my work done and go home. On the worst everything piles up and I get trapped in some monotonous office politics or chewed out by some client who can't figure out how our online ordering system works. Most days fall somewhere in-between.

I wonder if I'm bound to come across some positive surprises eventually, but in the meantime it just feels like I'm going through the motions. It's been a long time since my girlfriend asked me how my day was, and I was able to answer her with anything other than "Meh."

I'm trying to think of ways I can turn this around. Maybe I'm just in a slump and just need to stop crying about it.

Peemeistering is a thankless profession. Next time you're subjected to a drug test, don't forget to tell your collector how much you appreciate him handling your bodily waste.

Much drama.

Office politics. Oh boy.

The number one reason I dislike sharing my office with a dozen other people is the politicking and gossping that goes around. Whenever something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault. If work isn't getting done, it's always someone else's job. Everyone seems to have honed the skill of shrugging responsibility onto someone else's shoulders until it's become a fine, perfected art.

Anyone who digs back through the Peemeister archives for a bit will find that back when I had my own office I would sometimes have trouble procuring supplies. This was because, as a satellite office, my bosses would literally forget I existed and sometimes get behind schedule ordering things for me. This is perfectly understandable; it was my responsiblity to let them know what I needed, and theirs to get it for me. When I ran out of something it didn't matter which of us had screwed up, just so long as we got the problem cleared up. We always did.

Supplies at this office are a bit trickier. Since not everyone has access to or knowledge of all the supplies, no one person knows the entire inventory of the office. Which is fine; what do the people up front care how many boxes of forms I have? And why should I care how many seringes the doctor has for giving shots? That isn't our respective department.

So yesterday I'm doing a pile of drug tests when I notice we're almost out of paper towels, paper cups for the water machine and hand soap. I decided to restock everything before continuing with the collections, but didn't know where the various materials were kept. Still being an office newb I turned to the girls up front for help.

"I don't know," she said, "nobody in this office ever does inventory. We've been out all week."

She proceeded to examine every cupboard and closet in the office to drive her point home, muttering all the while about how nobody ever bothers to order supplies. Eventually she turned up one brick of paper towels, but nothing in the way of cups or soap. She blamed one of the other girls for not being stocked.

I put the towels into the dispenser and decided that getting supplies was no big deal. It's such an easy job, I figured, and if nobody's doing it I could handle it myself to prevent running out in the future. I ran the idea by my boss: I'd print out a checklist of all the supplies needed in the drug testing area and, once a week, I'd do inventory and pass along a supply order if need be. It occured to me that it was a bit strange that the girls up front would constantly complain about not having supplies instead of, you know, ordering some, but I wasn't asked for my opinion. My boss liked the idea and said I should run it by the girl whose job it is to order our office supplies.

I finished up my collections and, when finished, dropped by the supply girl's office to let her know what we needed. "Oh, here you go," she said, and handed me a full jug of hand soap and two full sleeves of paper cups.

"Wait, you mean we had this stuff all along?"

"Yeah, why, are we out up there?"

"The up-front girls said you never ordered any."

"Well, it's all back here, all they have to do is come and get it."

Then she went on her way.

Suddenly I felt very, very silly about offering to increase my workload by doing office inventory; someone was already doing it, and doing a very good job of it. In actuality, all that had happened was a couple of lazy people would rather go without supplies and complain to everyone in sight than to take a few minutes and walk to the back and ask about it.

I suppose the argument could be made that it's supply-girl's job to make sure all the supplies end up where they need to be, but I'm not really sure it is. She works hard and has a lot of other stuff to worry about without having to run up front every few hours to make sure the soap dispenser is full. Since she never actually uses the soap dispenser herself, it is far more logical for the people who do use it (myself included) to pass word along to her when it's running low. Which is exactly what I do.

I'm thinking a lot these days about office efficiency and what I can do to increase it. I'm not really sure I can do much of anything, with co-workers around who literally don't make the minimum effort necessary to do their jobs successfully. It's sad because I know their slacking off is affecting the rest of the office both in morale (nobody wants to hear their whining) and in productivity (whenever they get too "busy" one of the backup collectors has to stop what they're doing to go up and do drug tests until they're bailed out).

I try to stay out of the drama as much as possible. It really doesn't interest me in the slightest. But sometimes one has no choice but get involved since others are so intent on smacking everyone over the head with it.

The word "busy" is in scare quotes for a reason. I've been called up to do drug tests so the up-front girls can sit around and chitchat about Gilmore Girls.

A little privacy, please?

The layout of our office is simply genius. And by "genius", of coure, I mean blatantly idiotic.

Previously, my drug test area was a semi-isolated area outside of the bathroom. I could stand in the hallway and see the bathroom, the drug test area, and out into my main lobby. I could ensure nobody was going to sneak back into the drug test area and violate the donor's right to privacy. Since there were no other employees other than myself and keeping donors corralled was as easy as barking, "Please wait a moment, sir, I'll be right with you," this was never an issue for me.

If you scroll down a few entries you can see how even the tiniest infraction, imaginary or otherwise, can blow a collection wide open and cause huge problems for everyone involved. I don't think we need to go over that territory again.

The drug test area in the office I now work in is actually a hallway in between the medical area and the staff break room. The two bathrooms still branch off of the hallway, but now the drug test area (that is, the place I stand and do all my paperwork, and where the urine sample is actually handled and stored) is the hallway itself, in between the two bathrooms.

Apparently, some months back, a donor complained that several office employees walked through the drug test area to the break room while his sample was being secured. The solution: my boss put up a privacy curtain. You go back to do a drug test, you pull the curtain closed behind you.

The problem? The curtain may as well not be there.

Outside of myself, my bosses, and a couple of the other employees who don't do drug tests anyway, everyone ignores the curtain.

Need to heat up your coffee? No problem, just open the curtain and sneak through. Lunchtime and you absolutely positively cannot wait another four minutes to dig into your leftovers? Just pretend the curtain isn't there. Pretend the drug test victim in question doesn't have a right to privacy at all.

You can see the look on their faces, too. They look confused. Some look annoyed. Most don't mention it, but a few do. "Should she really be back here?" they'll whisper to me underneath the hum of the microwave or the din of the faucet.

Part of it, I know, is that we are just desensitized to pee. Really, it's not the unbelievably disgusting thing that society tells us it is. Remove all the taboos and the all-encompassing "ick" factor and it's just a slightly smelly yellow liquid. We get that, of course, but the donors don't. They're embarrassed enough as it is that one person has to bottle their pee, let alone a parade of other employees nonchalantly traipsing through.

In simplist terms: the average donor wants as few people to look at their bodily waste as possible. This is a totally understandable feeling.

So this puts me in an awkward position. I know how important it is that a collection be done correctly. Remember, I was on the front lines for three years. I would not define drug testing at office as "the front lines." If there's a problem here, or the donor pitches a fit, you can go and get a supervisor. Someone with authority can put him in his place. There's a wall between the collector and the donor here. By the time I see donors, their paperwork is already done. Their ID is already checked. Any complications that could lead to the collection not taking place has already been handled.

In other words, collectors here are just a cog in the machine, not the machine itself. I think that causes complacency among the other collectors. "Oh, well, if there's a problem, someone else can handle it." I, on the other hand, learned to be self-sufficient. "Well, if there's a problem, I'd better know how to handle it because there's nobody else here to do it."

Which is why I'm such a rules nazi: the best way to clear up protential problems is not to cause them in the first place.

That brings me back to the privacy curtain. When people skulk around while I'm trying to do a collection, that is a problem for me. If, like, Becky runs through the curtain to heat up her mac and cheese and the donor I'm working with comes back positive, I'm the one who will catch the fallout, not Becky.

So now I'm kind of a curtain whistleblower. My bosses back me up on it, of course, but I can tell the other employees are sick of it. No fewer than three people (and maybe more) have gone to the bosses with complaints like "Ricky yelled at me today." That doesn't reflect well on me, even though I'm technically right and even though this is a matter where being right is actually important.

Each and every time someone parts the privacy curtain and sneaks through, thinking it isn't a big deal, they are jeapordizing someone's drug test and they are jeapordizing my job. I hate that, and I wish I knew what to do to make it stop once and for all.

There isn't really anyone in my office named Becky, nor is Becky meant to personify any of my co-workers. I just chose that name because everyone, at one point in their lives, has had an absolutely insufferable co-worker named Becky.

"The stare."

My new official title is "shipping manager", but that isn't as exciting as "peemeister". Fortunately, I'm still a part-time peemeister.

My job now is to take orders from clients (forms, "don't do drugs!" posters, etc.) and ship them out. I still have a great deal of the autonomy I've grown so used to over the past three years; there are about a dozen people who work in the office but since I'm tucked away back in the shipping room I can go an hour or two without seeing or hearing any of them.

I still do drug test collections sometimes, but all my other responsibilities are piled on top of them. And therein lies a story:

They hired a new peemistress for up front to help with admissions, clerical work, and of course conducting drug test collections. The way the system works is that the peemistress is supposed to take care of the drug tests unless the front office gets overwhelmed, at which point she'll call back for someone to go up and help. The three people in the back office (myself included) who are certified to take collections have the week divvied up. My days are Monday and Wednesday.

So Monday I'm sitting here staring down the barrel of fifty-some client renewal packets I need to put together. I get partway through the first one when suddenly: "Beep! Drug test, three drug tests." That's my cue. I go up front, do three collections, and come back to work.

I get started on my next packet and then: "Beep! Drug test, two drug tests."

Wow, I think, they must be really busy up there.

Two collections balloons into six as they pile them on me faster than I can finish them. And no sooner am I finished burning my next renewal CD do I hear: "Beep! Drug test, four drug tests."

At this point I'm noticing something peculiar. I've done every single drug test so far today. The peemistress has done zero. I flipped through the MRO forms sitting in the box and, sure enough, every single one of them was signed by me.

I ended up doing 35 collections that day. The peemistress did absolutely none.

I got six renewal packets done, total. Three of those were done after the office closed to drug tests, since I wasn't interrupted anymore after that point.

Tuesday went by with calls of "Beep. Drug test" echoing through the office all day long. It wasn't my day to be backup, but I know the girl whose day it was couldn't have been pleased with being pulled away from her desk so often.

It was partway through Wednesday, after I'd done my tenth collection or so, that I began to get really irritated. I peeked in at the peemistress to see just what she was doing that caused her to be too busy to do her job.

She was, of course, poking around on the internet.

I pulled my boss aside. "Does the peemistress know she's supposed to be doing drug tests?"

"I think so. Has she been trained on them?"

"I trained her myself, last week."

"Well when the front office gets busy, they call you in for backup."

"Right, but doesn't it seemed strange that the backup collector did every single drug test on Monday, and every single test so far today."

"What's she doing?"

"Playing on the internet."

"...okay. I'll handle it."

I left the stack of drug test paperwork where it sat and went back to my office. The next time I passed the peemistress in the hallway she gave me the stare.

Look, I know how sweet it is to get paid to play on the internet. And I'm certainly not saying that people shouldn't play on the internet from work. I'm at work right now, in fact. And chances are, so are you. Heck, I'm not even saying you can't neglect your own job so you can play around on the internet. It's probably not a great idea but, you know, it's between you and your boss.

But to call someone else to do your job so you can play around on the internet? That's just really scummy.

I would have more sympathy for the peemistress if I hadn't trained her myself. Conducting drug tests, at first, is a herculean task. There are a thousand and one tiny rules you have to adhere to just like so or the entire thing might blow up in your face. And on top of that you're already dealing with people who hate being there to begin with. So it's not like I'm surprised she isn't falling over herself with enthusiasm to do these collections.

However, I walked her through every step. I watched her perform the job correctly more than a dozen times. She's still the newbie in the office (and so am I, really, although I'm not new to the company) but the part where someone needs to hold her hand is over with. I don't know what she was waiting for. And furthermore, I don't know why it went on and on until I had to step up and be the squeaky wheel about it.

There's an upside to this: you don't do 45 drug test collections over the course of two days without getting at least one mildly entertaining story out of it... but I'll save it for next week.

A 35-test day would have been considered amazingly busy at my old office, and that's without the added responsibilities of my new position. A typical day at the old pee clinic would run about ten or twelve people.

Sued, or whatever.

I wasn't really sued. That isn't the right word for it. I don't even know what the official term is for it. Point is, the matter would have involved lawyers and courts, and had it stuck I would have been fired and maybe found liable for damages. Emotional distress or somesuch. I'm not exactly sure.

The reason I'm not sure about any of these things is that the whole thing never came to fruition. The grievance fizzled away without much ado at all, and the guy who filed it just sort of vanished.

The story is pretty interesting though, even though I didn't get thrown in jail or fined $5000 or lose my job.

I was handling a stream of collections for my offices's biggest client. This would be the one who insisted I open at 7:30 am, whom I've complained about here on several past occassions. Mr. Nervous was there waiting for his name to be called... and Mr. Nervous had a secret -- he had a little bottle of urine squirrelled away on his person.

Maybe it was deep in a secluded pocket. Maybe it was tucked in his sock. Maybe it was up inside his... yeah. Point is, it was there. And he was afraid of getting caught. And that's why he was nervous.

Also in the office this morning was my girlfriend. The routine was pretty simple: she would drop me off at my office at 8am and be at work on time herself by 8:30. The difference was, this morning I had to be in at 7:30 and it was too early for her to go clock in. Generally on these mornings she would just hang out at the office with me for twenty or thirty minutes and then take her leave.

Mr. Nervous stepped up to do his drug test, and the missus was sitting in my lobby nodding off. The stage was now set.

In the proud tradition of idiots who don't know how to properly cheat on a drug test, Mr. Nervous had neglected to warm up the urine sample he bought to give me instead of his own. As a result, the temperature strip read that the contents of the sample cup were way too cold. I pointed this out to Mr. Nervous and he started to put up a little fight, until I mentioned that I would have to call his employer for authorization to do a second test.

A second, observed collection.

I made Mr. Nervous wait until the five guys behind him were taken care of. During this period my girlfriend kissed me good-bye and left my office. Soon Mr. Nervous and I were all alone, I placed a call to his boss, got authorization to do an observed collection, and we were good to go.

An observed collection is exactly that: the guy gives a second sample, except this time I get to watch. Lo and behold, this time Mr. Nervous's sample was not only plenty warm, but smelled completely different. I made a note on the first form that the first sample was cold and send both samples to the lab.

Time passed, as time does.

I heard the good news from my boss. She called and asked, "Hey, when your girlfriend is in the office, she's in the back, right?"

Keep in mind that my boss and I have the kind of relationship where, had I lied and said "yes" she would have taken my word for it and that would have been the end of it. We also have the kind of relationship where I don't bother lying to my boss.

"Not usually," was my answer, "she'll usually hang out up front with me."

"Is she there very often?"

"Just on my early days, she'll stay here for about a half hour before it's time for her to be at work."

"Have you ever let her do a collection?"

"Absolutely not!"

This is the kind of place where I can usually think up a witty little joke to liven up the employer/employee banter. But the accusation is just so alarming that nothing but an outright denial is the only thing that will suffice. I remember years ago when I used to work at an ice cream store sometimes my friends would show up at closing time and help mop the floors. They did this for two reasons: I would get out of work earlier, and they would get free ice cream. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement and, besides, the worst thing that could happen was they could do a pisspoor job of mopping the floor, and I'd have to redo it.

There would be no benefit, mutual or otherwise, to allowing my girlfriend to do my job for me. It wouldn't get me out of the office any faster and even if I did have the authority to offer her a free drug test, I doubt she'd want one.

"Absolutely not," I repeated. "That's ridiculous. Who said that?"

"Do you remember doing a collection that came back cold?"

"Yeah, for [company x]. I called [company x's supervisor] and got permission to do an observed collection."

"Okay, well, he's filing a formal grievance against you. He said you denied his right to privacy and that your girlfriend saw him pee."

Thank you, good-night.

"...wait, what?"

"He said your girlfriend saw him pee."

"And that caused his sample to be cold?"

"I don't know, but that's what the complaint is."

"It's ludicrous."

"I know."

"From now on I won't let any of my friends hang out here, in the back or not."

"No, that's not a problem, I just wanted to make sure you weren't letting anyone else do collections or anything like that."

"What, does this guy think my girlfriend has x-ray vision?"

"I have no idea."

"Okay, well, should we be worried about this?"

"Nah, it's no problem. But you'll probably get a phone call from him."

"Fun."

Several hours later, I actually did get that phone call. Mr. Nervous sped through his monologue as quickly as possible without pause for breath. I would have bet a hundred bucks his lawyer was sitting next to him saying something like, "You have to call him and confront him with the charges, or legally nothing will stick." It was pathetic.

It went a little something like this:

"This is Mr. Nervous, I'm notifyin' you that I'm filin' a grievance against you, because your girlfriend was there, and you have been notified that my lawyer will be present."

I tried to reply, but he hung up.

I never learned where his lawyer would be present. Nor did I ever hear anything else about this entire situation, except to exchange a few lines about it next time Mr. Nervous's ex-supervisor came into my office to pick up his forms.

Apparently, the case against my girlfriend having fantastic super powers struck Mr. Nervous as far too difficult to make. So he dropped it.

Make no mistake, Mr. Nervous's old employer has strict policies concerning employees who try to cheat on a drug test. Strict, but not complicated: cheat, and you're fired. Period. The punishment for cheating is actually worse than if you'd actually failed (in which case you go to rehab, but keep your job). That said, Mr. Nervous was undoubtedly fired.

Now, as I understand it, if Mr. Nervous was going to make a formal complaint against me, his employer would have had to take it seriously. The matter would have had to have been persued all the way to court if need be. He could have fought for his job. This actually happened to me on one occassion a few years back. But no, Mr. Nervous decided against that. He decided to lodge his complaint as a private citizen, which means his employer didn't have to go to the mat for him. Of course, that means they would have gone to the mat for me instead.

Part of me really is really disappointed this whole matter just kind of... went away. I was really hoping the guy would try to push the matter. I was hoping for a court battle. I was hoping we'd get the chance to show his signature on two separate forms stating that both the urine that came back negative and the urine that came back positive were his urine. I was hoping we'd get to call the other guys in the office that day as witnesses... guys who had nothing to gain by sticking up for Mr. Nervous but everything to lose.

I was hoping the guy would call a local news station to try to kick-start a telling exposé on the drug test industry.

Alas, none of those things happened.

I've thought a bit at the mental process that goes into the things Mr. Nervous did. What was going through his mind? "Uh oh, I did a few lines the other day and now I'm going to fail a drug test. I'm going to be fired. I know! I'll make up an insane story that nobody will believe about the drug test guy and get him fired too! I am a criminal mastermind!"

Pathetic.

For the record, my girlfriend actually does have x-ray vision. However, she uses her powers only for good, like any self-respecting superhero.

Peemeister no more...

Today is my last day at the pee clinic. The office is closing down. All of our clients have been notified, of course, so absolutely nobody has been in today for a drug test. I'm taking this time to box up all the little odds and ends to make life easier for the guys who come with a pickup truck over the weekend to cart off all the furniture.

As I understand it, my office just became unprofitable because our landlord happens to be our biggest and nearest competitor. I would rather my bosses just find a new office in the same location, but there might be forces at work I don't quite understand.

I took a job at the main office. I'll be doing something computer-y, which means I won't be taking collections anymore. It also means I won't have eight hours a day to play PlayStation or read internet forums. It also means I'll have to get used to putting up with co-workers again, after three years. Rats.

So, I'll no longer be the Peemeister.

This, of course, means a radical change has to be made to this blog. I foresee one of two things happening:

1) Without new Peemeister stories, there'll be no reason to update, and the blog will just fall into disuse. Sad, but true. Nobody wants to read "The Crazy Adventures of the Guy Who Typesets Marketing Brochures" or "Mr. I Answer Phones All Day Isn't That Nuts!?".

2) The Peemeister stories will continue, and actually get better. Remember, I'm just a lowly collection site. I don't deal in results. People don't complain to me about tests coming back positive, so I don't get to hear the absolutely awesome excuses folks concoct to get their butt out of the wood chipper.

Here's an example one of the home-base folks has told me: a woman's urine test came back positive for cocaine, and she was notified of it. She was not on any medication that would flag a false positive for cocaine. Her excuse was that her boyfriend does a lot of cocaine, and she did not wash her feminine crevasse between her most recent sexual encounter and her drug test.

In other words, she claims it wasn't her urine that came back positive, but her boyfriend's semen which was still lingering around in her vagina.

I mean, that's good stuff, right?

So right now it's "wait and see". Could be my bosses are just biding their time for a few months after which they'll open up a new office and will, once again, be in need of a Peemeister.

If that happens, I'll be back here on the front lines.

My office is equipped with a brand new microwave and mini-fridge. I intend to keep both of them as souvenirs.

Special rules for special people.

I said I was going to update yesterday, and I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't. I like writing these entries but I find the writing improves the longer I'm detached from a situation. If I were to have hopped right in yesterday, when I said I would, this would have just been a page-long incoherent rant. I know I still slip up from time to time and post those but I do try to avoid it. I would much rather wait a few days, cool down, and then reflect on what happened in order to tell an interesting story than just list the things at my office that piss me off and then glibly pop out a "people are stupid, hyuck hyuck hyuck."

So just for the record, I don't believe people are stupid nor do I hate my job. I believe people are selectively inattentive, and usually stubborn, and the combonation of those things often gives the appearance of stupid... but to someone who is being selectively inattentive and stubborn himself.

Which is not to say, of course, that some people aren't stupid, or that I don't deal with some stupid people here at the pee clinic... but those stories aren't as interesting as you might expect, which is why I don't write about them (often).

Anyway, enough about that. Let's talk about the special privelages one of my largest clients enjoy.

First, they get a huge break on their bill at the end of the month. The exact specifics of the deal I don't know (nor would I mention here if I did), but suffice it to say they pay less per drug test than most of my other clients.

Second, they send me a list monthly with all the people they're sending down to be tested, a courtesy I'm sure we would not extend to most clients. It simplifies things for them because they can easily identify who came down to my office and when.

Third, they get one day a week all to themselves. I come into the office and open a half-hour early, during which time I do collections only for this one client. All they have to do is get their guys here.

Fourth, I keep a sign-in sheet specifically for this company which I would fax to them at 9am each morning I opened early. That is, on the specific days the company does its random drug testing.

In theory, it looks like a very good deal for these guys. We're essentially bending over backwards for them. Problem is, they don't take advantage of what they've been given.

The lists of names? Always late. The early mornings Nobody shows up. And since nobody shows up, all I can fax them is an empty sign-in sheet, which is meaningless. What actually occurs is this: one person from the company will show up before 8am, when I am opened specially for his company. A few more people will trickle in throughout the day, often on my lunch break. Most of them show up the following day.

Really what this boils down to is: I am sick of getting up early for nothing. I'm sure everyone in America can sympathize.

The past few weeks I haven't bothered keeping a separate sign-in sheet because by the 9am deadline, the thing would only have one name on it. I received a phone call yesterday asking why this was, and I explained to the guy on the other end that the whole "separate sign-in sheet" only works if they actually manage to get their employees down here at the time they promised. I also told him that only one person was showing up during my early half-hour, and could we please try to fix that situation?

I didn't bring up the fact that it's now the end of June and I still don't have July's list.

Of course I'm not in any position to make demands of this guy or his company. The agreement reached was that I will continue coming in at 7:30 on the days he picks, and continue faxing him a sign-in sheet even if it is empty. A company as big as his (and please note that it is not "his company" so much at is "a company he works for, and is in charge of the department which handles drug testing") obviously the impression that things are running efficiently is more important than things actually runnin efficiently.

Oh well.

Hmm... that came out a little ranty anyway. I'll try to work on that.

The story I had planned to tell today was about Mexicans not having translators. But I've already told enough of those, haven't I?

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...

An open letter.

My last post was about a mean old hag who yelled at me for doing one of her office's collections. This was a strange and highly unlikely scenario in which either office could have done the collection, so I had not made a mistake. Nonetheless I have been instructed by my employer not to do collections for that office's MRO, and I have not done so since the incident.

This would be much easier if that other office would keep a closer eye on their people, though. Just now a woman walked in with the very form I have been ordered not to touch, saying she was sent over because she had a Mapquest printout with my address on it. Obviously the clerk looked at the address, rather than the actual paperwork, and kicked the woman out so they could get their line moving faster. So now this poor woman has been ping-ponged between two different drug test offices and has had to wait through their insane line twice.

This is an open letter to the mean old hag who yelled at me last week.

Dear Old Hag,

You should focus more on governing your own employees and less on hassling me. Something you may not know: people don't like taking drug tests. It's embarrassing. It can be frustrating. It can be time-consuming, especially if the office has a long wait. It can also be confusing, since there are so many offices and so many rules and so many different forms. But honestly, it only takes a few seconds to actually look at the paperwork in front of your face before dismissing it out of hand.

I have my own little procedure when I see a form I don't recognize. First, I check for any overt, obvious signs of your office's name. If I see one, I send the donor on over. Also, I know several of your clients by name as well, so there are some occassions where I can just look at the company name on the form and know it's yours. If I don't know, I call my boss, who can run the name of the donor's company against our own database to see if maybe it's just one of our clients I don't recognize. If they have a map or an address and have just shown up in the wrong place entirely, I offer to call the office they need to be at and get them directions. These are courtesies I extend to these people because I am a decent human being.

As for the endless barrage of people you send over to me who are neither my client nor yours, I really don't mind that. You aren't willing to help them get where they need to be; I am. I look like a saint, you look like a jerk, and the donor ends up in the right place. Everybody wins. Except you, jerk.

The reason people go to your office with your form but my map is because I am listed as a third-party collector for that particular lab. That means it is your responsibility to make sure your employees actually bother to look at the form the person is carrying so people aren't inconvenienced any more than is necessary. It's a sad, sad day when some punk kid can run an office better than an entire team of supposedly qualified employees, isnt it?

Love, the Peemeister

Next time this happens I'm going to just do the collection. Hey, they obviously don't want it!

The drug test place next door.

This may come as a surprise, but two doors down from my office (in the same tiny office plaza in fact) is a competing drug test site. It's actually a much larger office (the company's corporate office in fact), and provides lots of services I don't. In addition to urine testing, I believe they do blood draws, perform physicals, and other such nonsense.

This actually causes much less of a clash than one would think; their company has their clients, my company has ours, and it's easy to tell which is which. In most cases, it isn't a matter of a patient looking at two drug test places and then deciding where to go; they're usually given a form with an address on it and told to show up.

The operative term here, of course, is "in most cases". This morning it has been brought to my attention that there is at least one case in which our interests overlap.

As I've been ranting about lately, my office has recently taken on the responsibility of third party collections. What this means is, rather than being sent to a specific office donors are given a list of offices they can go to, and told to pick the most convenient one. This sometimes works in reverse as well; a donor could take one of our forms to a collection site that is registered as a third party collector with our lab, in theory. Of course the lab we use is a smallish one, and I don't think many of our clients even offer the option.

Point is, there's a difference between going to the drug test place, and going to a drug test place. This morning I found out that the office next door uses as its primary lab the very one I am registered with to do third party collections. In other words, there exists a very small number of people who really do have a choice of which of our two offices to visit.

Here's the rub: we get paid for providing the service of accepting third party collections. At the same time, we pay a company who accepts one of our collections for us. If someone comes to me with my neighbor's form, and it's actually a collection I'm authorized to do, they pay us for the privelage. (I'm a little fuzzy on the details on exactly how this works, but that's the gist of it.)

This morning during my 8:30 am pre-caffeinated stupor I was chewed out quite thoroughly for doing just such a collection. Several, in fact, over the course of the past few weeks. I was told by a woman who is not my employer (and is, in fact, employed by a competing office) that I need to send all such collections to her office.

"We will not pay when you steal one of our collections," she demanded. I gave her a curt nod and she was out the door.

So, here's my dilemma.

I could, very easily, identify which of these third party collections they want, and send them over. Indeed, I send people over their way all the time, when they come in with paperwork I can't process, or have been sent to me mistakenly by one of their clients. I am generally all for anything that lightens my already tiny workload.

But at the same time, it's not like I'm consciously stealing their business, or making a serious mistake. If their office were located, say, a mile away there would be no discussion at all. It would just be a matter of the donor bringing me a valid form, and me completing a valid collection.

If you walk into McDonald's by accident and order a Whopper, are they obligated to send you to the Burger King across the street? Can they sell you a Big Mac and hope you can't tell the difference?

This is to say nothing of the fact that the donor actually has a choice. It's true that anyone who walks into my office with their form is making an honest mistake. But what if the person really, truly knows they can pick which office to walk into? Their office is almost always jam packed; mine is almost always empty. What if someone knows they have a choice, and have honestly come to me because it'll make their day go by quicker?

It's a delicate situation. I wonder if I can navigate it successfully without getting yelled at...

The situation between our two offices is actually much, much more complicated than I've outlined here, but that's a topic for another day... maybe.

Fun with the new lab.

Up until this week I only took collections for one lab and one lab only. Every single sample I collected was sent to the same place for testing, and every single result was sent to the same place for verification before being reported. Monday my company added itself to the list of approved collection sites for a fairly large nationwide laboratory, which has very nearly doubled my workload and added a whole new set of rules to play by.

Hey, no sweat. I dig rules.

If you've ever worked in an office which made sudden, sweeping changes, though, you know that things can be hectic and disorienting for a while. Old routines have to be abandoned and incorporated into new ones. Everything has to be double-checked just to be sure it's going in the right place, or to the right person. And the situation is compounded by the fact that I work alone.

When I first started here I went through an uncomfortable period where I just attempted to wing it, at best. It takes a long time to get into a decent routine, and it took even longer to adjust to not having anyone working alongside me. No bosses to point things out that I've overlooked, no co-workers to blame things on when something goes awry. My job isn't difficult by any stretch of the imagination, but I hadn't experienced anything like it before.

For our old lab, I just type up the information (donor's name, company's name and specimen ID number) and e-mail a list to my boss each night. For the new one I have to fax some stuff to the medical review officer listed on the form. This information wasn't given to me until yesterday, which meant Monday was interesting in that I had a whole box of specimens to send out, but had no idea what to do with the forms that belonged to those specimens.

When word finally came down that the system was in place to process the paperwork and all I had to do was fax it off, I went down through the stack of backlogged forms and got them all where they needed to go. My uncooperative fax machine took thirty minutes to manage this herculean feat, but the point is it was done.

As the forms were whisking away across the country I amused myself by wondering how long it would take before one of these new MROs would call with a complaint.

Didn't take long. I got my wish this morning. Very early this morning in fact; the message was on my machine when I got in at 7:50.

"This is Dr. Cranky from such-and-such office in some faraway state you've never heard of. I need a chain of custody form faxed immediately. Please call my office back at [phone number] immediately upon receiving this message."

I tend to my first-thing-in-the-morning collections, then gather up my stack of recently-faxed forms so the one Dr. Cranky wants is at hand immediately.

"Good morning. This is Richard, I just received a message about a COC that needs to be faxed."

"Please hold," says a voice that I've never heard before.

A few minutes go by. The hold music is "I'll Be Watching You" by Sting.

"Yes, Richard," says the voice from my message, "I received some results from a collection done at your office, but I never received the COC." She rattles off the ID number from the form. "This was collected on the 9th... just wondering why it's the 11th and I haven't gotten anything yet."

"My apologies. I only started taking collections for this lab on the 9th and I'm still adjusting to the new procedures. Can I have your fax number please?"

"It's on the form, in the top-right corner, where it says 'fax number'," says Dr. Cranky in the same annoying singsong voice you'd use to tell your kids it's time to pick up their toys.

"Right, I just want to confirm the number on the form is correct." After all, I faxed this out yesterday afternoon. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here; maybe the number on her form is misprinted. More likely she just didn't bother to check her fax tray this morning before calling me.

She tells me the fax number, one digit at a time. I tell her, "Alright, I'll dig that out and send it off to you right away."

"I'm sorry, 'dig that out'?" asks Dr. Cranky.

"Well yeah. I have a rather large stack of forms here, and it's going to take me a moment to find the one you want."

"Mmm-hmm. Richard, may I speak with your supervisor?"

"I suppose so. Do you have a pen handy?"

"Could you please transfer me to your supervisor, Richard?"

"No, I can't. I can give you her phone number though."

"I would like to speak to your supervisor immediately, Richard."

"I work alone in this office. To speak with anyone over my head you'll have to call corporate."

"What's the number, please?"

I tell it to her.

"Thank you Richard. Do you foresee future delays between the time a collection is taken and the time you send out the COC?"

"It's possible, but not likely. As I explained, I'm still adjusting to the new set of rules for the new lab."

"Thank you, have a nice day," she says, and hangs up.

It does amuse me that when Dr. Cranky goes to check her fax machine she'll be greeted with two copies of the same form. I bet she finds it and then calls my boss to complain anyway.

I'm wondering whether or not I should conveniently lose all of Dr. Cranky's forms from here on out. Hey, she thinks I'm incompetent anyway; I may as well act the part.

Two short stories.

A man comes into the office with four roofers in tow, all needing drug tests. "For what company?" I ask him. He replies, "SlogNat International."

SlogNat is not a name I'm familiar with. I ask if he has any paperwork.

"I've done a hundred guys here, I ain't never needed paperwork before."

But without some sort of paperwork I can't know whether or not you're my client.

"Don't worry, I am."

Oh, well, that settles it! The word of a man I've never met before and who may or may not have some incentive to purposely cause a mix-up in his company's drug testing (and yes, believe it or not, it does happen) is good enough for me. Come on in!

Except, no, not really. I don't recognize the man's company and he didn't bring me anything but his word, so I'll have to verify it. I get my supervisor on the phone and ask her to look up SlogNat in the computer.

"Nope, it's not in here."

You're sure?

"Yep, he's not ours."

I relay the information to Mr. SlogNat and he is not pleased. "Every guy who works for me done his drug test right here!" he exclaims, flailing his arms around like a rag doll. Except I've been working here two years and change, and I've never seen the name SlogNat before. He demands to speak to my supervisor.

I get her on the phone again.

"Oh, wait, did you say SlogNat? I looked up SlogNet."

I begin to apologize to Mr. SlogNat for the misunderstanding, but my boss isn't done with her assessment.

"...but his account is like $700 overdue. We can't do any more tests for him until he pays that up. Wow, last test we did for that company was 2002. No wonder nobody recognized it."

Mr. SlogNat receives this news and turns beet red. The four employees he's brought along with him begin to chitter amongst themselves.

One wonders what goes through one's mind the moment one learns one's employer is a total deadbeat. If your boss doesn't even bother to pay his bills, what assurance do you have that he's going to sign your paychecks?

---

We've completed Mr. Nicepen's collection and he's just signed his name to the form. "That's a nice pen," he comments. And he's right; it is a nice pen. I only use nice pens. Specifically, nice .7mm gel ink pens. My job involves a lot of writing, and I cannot bear to use cheap, scratchy pens anymore.

This does of course mean that I have an ongoing problem keeping myself stocked in pens, since nice ones tend to disappear while I'm not looking. Mr. Nicepen isn't a thief though. He at least has enough decency to ask me for one, in his own special way: "Hey, lemme get that pen."

"No," I tell him. I'm one pen short as it is. It takes six pens to keep my office fully equipped, and I'm down to five, which means one of my counters is naked as far as pens are concerned. "You can buy them at CVS, right up the street there. I think I pay four dollars for six pens."

"Come on man, lemme get that pen."

"No. I don't give away pens." Magazines, fine. Post-it notes, okay. I've even given away a phone book once. Heck, I'll sell you a Pepsi for fifty cents, if I've got one to spare. But my nice, comfortable, smooth gel ink pens? I don't think so.

"It ain't yours anyway, it's your boss's, so just gimme it," Mr. Nicepen insists.

"If I left it up to my boss I'd be using those disgusting Bic pens, or worse. I buy these myself." Thinking on it a bit, I decide to drive the point home. "I buy a lot of my own supplies. That's why I have the nice-smelling hand soap and two-ply toilet paper. I have to use this stuff too, you know, and I like having the good stuff."

"Man, bein' so stingy. I coulda just stole the damn thing."

"I appreciate the fact that you didn't."

"I just need a pen, man."

I go to my pen tray and retrieve a pen someone has left here. It's a grey pen that feels like fingernails on a chalkboard when you try to write with it. "Here you go, sir," I say, offering him the free pen.

Instead of accepting it, he repeats, "Man, bein' so stingy..."

He leaves, muttering to himself about how stingy I am. I place Frankenpen back in the tray.

Well, so beggars can be choosers. Learn something new every day, I do.

The name of the company wasn't really SlogNat. Since I was going to change the name anyway, I figured I'd at least change it to something hilarious and insulting.

My kingdom for paper towels.

Working in an office by myself is essentially a dream come true for me. Virtually limitless peace and quiet, no supervisors breathing down my neck, no annoying co-workers I have to pretend to like. I decide what needs done and when. I'm free to handle the rigors of my day-to-day operation in essentially any way I see fit. Aside from the schedule and the rules directly relating to collection, I'm my own boss.

Except when it comes to supplies.

Pens and soap, forms and kits, toilet paper and bluing agent -- these are things that, despite my best intentions, will eventually run out. When I'm low on something I have to send a fax up to my bosses and pray they don't ignore it. On one occasion where I was without on-site collection kits for three days my supervisor apologetically explained, "You do such a good job up there that nobody complains about you. So sometimes we forget you're even there."

Isn't that touching?

Currently I am involved in trench warfare concerning, of all things, paper towels.

Let me explain something to you people. It doesn't take a fistful of paper towels to dry your hands. There's enough real estate on two towels to cover the average pair of human hands, including in between the fingers. Maybe three sheets if you have exceptionally large or exceptionally hairy hands. Maybe four if you're the missing link.

The reason I run out of paper towels far faster than any other commodity is because people tear them out of the dispenser like they're going out of style. Five, six, seven towels -- gone in a flash. Double that if the person washes up after the collection as well. Donors descend on paper towels as though a hunger consumes them, raw and primal.

While I find this practice irritating, another block of paper towels is usually only twenty steps away in my back room. I can get the key to the dispenser, acquire a fresh block of towels, and have everything stocked and ready to go in the time it takes the donor to squeeze out a sample. They emerge from the bathroom, none the wiser.

This assumes, of course, I have the towels to begin with. Right now, I have half a roll of generic kitchen towels to cover both bathrooms. This is because, for some reason, my supervisors can't or won't send me a box of my usual stuff. Imagine my chagrin when I send another desperate fax up top, pleading for paper towels, only to have the boss's wife come skipping up a half-hour later with a single roll of kitchen towels.

It won't last me the day.

This story is about two weeks old now, and has not concluded yet. Until I get a box of those lovely, beautiful brown bricks of paper I will be on edge.

People absolutely hate having to dry their hands on their pants. Absolutely nothing in the drug testing procedure solicits the kind of verbal abuse that asking someone to wash, but not dry, their hands does. I still vividly remember an occasion where a man was so irate about the lack of paper products in my office that he actually reached out to dry his mitts on my shirt.

I wonder if this is something the powers that be over at the main office do to remind me that, yes, they are the ones still in charge. "We'll let him stew a bit," they say, "and we'll send him his paper towels when we are good and ready. He will receive the pittance we give him and he will be damn grateful for it."

Time to send another not-so-polite fax upstairs, explaining the situation. It's war, man. The lines have been drawn and the stakes have been raised. It's Towelgate 2005. There is nothing short of a worldwide communist conspiracy in place keeping me from my paper towels.

The current record of paper towel consumption for a single collection is nineteen. That guy had the driest hands on Earth once he was through.