"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.

Ahem... well...

Not 24 hours after that tirade about how important it is that drug test procedures, no matter how silly or inane, must be followed to the letter, I get a phone call from our lab saying all the collections I took yesterday have the wrong date on them.

So, color me retarded.

Let's see... 25 botched collections at $120,000 a piece... that's $3 million I just lost my company. Hooray! I am so fired.

Not really. Don't worry folks, looks like the Peemeister is here to stay.

"But it's only a drug test...!"

If you love to read long court summaries where a drug test collector gets himself raped through the ear, you're going to totally dig this:

http://tinyurl.com/rcawu

Basically, here's what happened. This woman goes in for a DOT drug test, is found positive for THC, and then walks away with $120,000 in medical expenses, emotional distress and lost wages. Why? Because the collector screwed up.

The collector admitted that his office did not carry a copy of the DOT regulations, did not secure the bathroom before the donor went in, did not instruct the donor to wash her hands and failed to add a bluing agent to the toilet bowl.

Whether or not the woman's story about the collector mixing her sample up with some other donor's sample is true is completely irrelevant. Point is, admitting the first couple blunders before a jury is just giving credence to anything else someone else wants to pile on top of it.

This is the reason I'm a total nazi about following the collection regulations. This is why everyone empties their pockets, washes their hands and reads the form. One little slip-up and my company is out $120,000

Note that I'm not disagreeing with the verdict; heck, if I saw an opportunity to cash in on a slipshot drug test collection, I'd gobble it up.

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.

Ain't random.

"I'm here for a random drug test, man."

He says random sarcastically, and makes mock quotes with his index and middle fingers. I can tell immediately that this one is going to be a battle.

"I'll tell you how it works, man. My boss knows I'm the only guy in the shop that'll come up clean, so when it's time to do a random test, he sends me down. Random my left nut."

I tell him to sign in, and he does, although begrudgingly. Despite his assurance that he's the only clean worker at Shop X, nine other Shop X employees have been in today. Random selections, you see.

"I don't have any idea how something can be random if my name gets pulled every single week, you know? What do you think of that?"

"I think it's something you ought to take up with your employer," I tell him truthfully, "I have no control over selections."

"Yeah, but what do they do? Do they go alphabetically? Pull names out of a hat?"

"I imagine they use a computer."

"Yeah well the computer's broken. I've been in here every single month for the past two years."

"If you say so, sir. Empty your pockets please."

"What did you just say?"

Uh oh. That just kind of slipped out. Now I've gone and woken the beast. It becomes clear that there's no way he's going to empty his pockets until I clarify my challenge.

"I mean, you haven't been here every month for the past two years. You're mistaken. Please empty your--"

"What do you mean, I'm mistaken? I'm telling you, I might as well just set up a cot in the back room there, as often as my boss sends me down here to drug test. I don't know how they pick the names, but it ain't random."

"Okay. Now I just need you to empty your pockets--"

"Doesn't this bother you at all? Not one bit, huh?"

Sigh.

"Does what bother me, sir?"

"You don't care one bit that I'm being treated unfairly? That I have to come down here all the time while there are crackheads and burnouts at the shop who haven't been tested in five years? You think that's fair, huh?"

"Sir, if you have a problem with the selection process, you'll need to take it up with your employer. I have no control over that."

My lack of concern for this man's insufferable plight is driving him to new levels of anger. It's clear that he hates taking a drug test. Everyone does. But he doesn't have the balls to actually bring it to his employer, so he's taking it out on me. Oh joy.

"So what, you just get a list of names, and you don't care, huh? Don't care one bit that guys like me keep getting screwed while there are guys up there who smoke joints in the breakroom and never get tested?"

"I actually do get a list, once a month. If you want, I can pull all the lists dating back to 2003 and check them for you, to see if you really have been pulled more often than you should have."

Stunned silence. He starts emptying his pockets.

"No, no point in you doing that. You just gotta do what you gotta do, you know? Grin and bear it, gotta break your back for a paycheck, making the rich man richer."

"Fill this above the top of the temperature sticker, please. Bring the cup back to me when you're done."

Once his collection is finished and he's out of my hair, I go pull the lists. He hasn't been to my office since March 2004.

There are guys that get pulled more often than others. And there probably are guys at that shop who haven't been pulled in five years. That's what happens when your selection process is unpredictable. That is the very definition of the word "random". In all honesty, he's one of the luckier ones. There are guys who really have been pulled two months in a row, or more.

I feel like calling this guy's boss, but I won't. I know the bossman over there. If I called to tattle, his life would just take a turn for the miserable. He probably would end up on my list the next two or three times. And he certainly wouldn't be complaining about it any more.

Oh well. Back to work...

One unlucky fellow was picked the last week of August '05, and the first week of September. Which means he was in my office two days in a row, taking two separate drug tests. I don't recall if he complained about it or not.

The crime of eating lunch.

My lunch hour is between 1pm and 2pm. As I am the only employee in my office, this means the office is closed between 1pm and 2pm.

Back when I was a new, idealistic peemeister (a peeprentice as it were) I would often blur the lines of my precious, precious lunch hour. If someone had to stay past 1pm that was cool with me. If I was here and someone knocked on the door at 1:30, that was cool also. And I would almost always open up early, say at 1:45 or 1:50.

Indeed, I felt horribly guilty if I didn't do these things.

What started to happen, though, was that I would start missing lunch with alarming frequency. What started as a person saying "I'll be ready to go in ten minutes, fifteen tops" would metamorph into a ninety-minute ordeal. What started as "I really didn't know you closed at 1pm" would eventually become "I know you close at 1pm but can you take me anyway?"

I probably told myself that since my office was never very busy, I'd only end up missing lunch once in a blue moon. In reality I ended up sacrificing half of my lunch hour or more at least once a week.

It was Mr. Friendly that caused me to finally and firmly adopt my current policy of "closed, no matter what". Mr. Friendly came in about 11am. He tried to drop a sample and failed, as people often do. He was thus faced with a choice: stay and try again, or return later. Since he had errands to run he said he'd come back later.

No problem. I explain that I can only save his paperwork for 24 hours, and that I take my lunch from 1pm to 2pm. If he planned to come back that afternoon he would have to wait until after 2pm. Mr. Friendly agreed; after all, he was friendly.

I had to take care of some personal affairs over the phone that day. I generally like to do this from my office during my lunch hour, since it's my only spare time during the day when the businesses I needed to contact would be open and I was sure I wouldn't be interrupted. Any other time of the day I might get halfway through a transaction and then have to leave abruptly to collect some pee.

It must have been 1:20 or so when Mr. Friendly returned. He looked at my Will Return sign in disgust and banged on my door. I went to answer it.

"What, did you close early today?"

"No, I'm on my lunch break. Can you come back after 2?"

(Note how poorly I worded that -- as though he should have a choice in the matter.)

"Not really," said Mr. Friendly, "see I have to pick my kids up from school at 2:30and before that I have to pick my clothes up from the laundromat, and my car's in the shop so I have a taxi waiting on me."

Foolishly sympathizing with Mr. Friendly's plight, I let him in.

"Hopefully you'll be able to go right away," I told him. "I haven't had a chance to go get my lunch yet."

"No problem, I'm ready to go right now."

Except he wasn't.

A half hour ticked by. I was in a position where if I couldn't get rid of Mr. Friendly right now I would have to go hungry. I tell him as much.

"Look man," says Mr. Friendly, suddenly not-so-friendly, "we don't need to make a thing out of it. You don't have to be so cold all the time. Just lighten up a little!"

Of course it wasn't a matter of me not being able to lighten up. It was a matter of me wanting to eat something for lunch.

"I'm not asking for very much here, just do your job and help me out."

As if I weren't already helping him out by opening the door for him while my office was closed.

Mr. Friendly was there so long that eventually, defeated, I had no choice but to flip my Will Return sign back around to Open. Another day without sustenance. I was not happy and it was pretty easy to tell that Mr. Friendly knew it.

Mr. Friendly took this as an affront to his very being.

"You've never been in sales, have you? I can tell you've never worked sales, because you have such a terrible personality. If you worked sales you'd be fired," he told me.

"I don't get paid to be your friend," I snapped back.

After Mr. Friendly's collection was finally done, nearly forty-five minutes after he arrived, he said he was going to file a complaint against me for being unpersonable. I offered to get my boss on the phone for him right away, but he declined. So, in a charitable act of pleasantness, I wrote my boss's phone number on a Post-It note so he could call her at his convenience. He did not want the note.

"Oh no," I growled, "I insist."

He snatched the note, slammed my door and stomped off.

I was feeling so smug and abused for a while that I decided it would be a good idea to close my office down later in the afternoon to give me time to go buy a sandwich. After a long line at Subway and a short walk back to work in the rain, I was greeted by six or seven guys from a roofing company. They were soaking wet. Some looked confused and some looked angry. As I was unlocking the door the leader mentioned he thought we were closed between 1 and 2.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I had to work through lunch today."

Suddenly all my smugness and superiority evaporated. Closing down the office during the afternoon was not acceptable, no matter how hard I had worked to rationalize it in my head. My employer already gives me time to eat lunch -- it's called my lunch hour. I had chosen to squander it time and again, and I had no one to blame for it but myself.

Mr. Friendly, as it turns out, was absolutely right. He wasn't trying to inconvenience me. The only difference between him and all the other people who take 45 minutes to pee is that I chose to let him in when my office was supposed to be closed. It was my decision, not his.

To my knowledge Mr. Friendly never did call to complain about me. Nonetheless I decided that I would never work through lunch again. I still fudge the clock a bit here and there (if you have to wait until 1:15 that's fine, but any longer than that and you can bet I'm kicking you out) and there are the extraordinarily odd days where I don't have a choice in the matter (a subset of collections must be done in one sitting, as opposed to offering the option for the donor to come back later). But the Mr. Friendlys of the world have been turned away ever since.

I know people hate it when it's 1:50 and they look in the window seeing me eat my Chef Boyardee or my Uncle Ben's Rice Bowl or my Campbell's Chunky Soup. I know they probably can't process the information -- the dude, he's like right there, why won't he open the door!?

But there's a reason for it. I work an eight-hour day and I'm entitled to a lunch break. I learned the hard way I need to take advantage of it. And besides, it's not like these companies who send folks down to me are blindsided. My office hours are very clearly printed on all my paperwork and on the company website. If someone chooses to show up forty minutes before I open my door... well, that's their fault. Not mine. And look -- I didn't even have to do any mental gymnastics to rationalize it.

By the time I was done with those six or seven roofer guys the bacon on my sandwich was cold. I ate about half of it and threw it away, and felt incredibly guilty.

Hypochondriac.

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

Today I'd like to discuss The Hypochondriac.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When was the last time it was cleaned?"

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

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

"Did you clean it today?"

"No."

"What about the three ladies ahead of me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24, and wasting my life.

I just turned 24 last month, which means now I can file for financial aid as an independant student.

It may or may not surprise you to learn that I haven't been to school in about five years. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that since I couldn't get financial aid (students under 24 have to file as dependant students, meaning their parents need to pay for part of their education, and my parents weren't anywhere near in a position to do that) I would have to pay for school out of my own pocket, which wasn't an attractive prospect. The second is that I had no real direction; no clue what, in fact, I wanted to go to school for. Since I didn't have a goal in mind, it seemed ridiculous to me to pay out a huge portion of my income or, even worse, take out thousands in loans.

I love school and I love learning, but I couldn't really justify that much expense for what would simply amount to a way to kill time.

Anyway, what happened was I landed the peemeister gig. This job, for all the complaining I do about it, is extremely sweet. I don't have a boss or any co-workers. My duties are simple and leave me with lots of spare time to surf the internet, play video games, or generally goof around. I can even sleep if I want to, right here in the office, while on the clock. I don't make a huge amount of money, but I do keep my bills paid and have enough left to buy fun toys and keep my girlfriend happy. I have health insurance and a retirement plan. I am awesome at making and sticking to a budget. I am financially stable and almost completely content.

Almost.

See, the problem is that there's this nagging thing in my head telling me that I'm wasting my life. My mother and other various family members agree with it. I'm not in school, I'm not working towards a career, I have no plans to start a family, yadda yadda yadda. Just the typical nagging that anyone in my shoes would go through.

As far as I'm concerned, life is really good and as long as I'm not placing the burden of myself in anyone else's lap and as long as I'm having fun doing it, I should go ahead and stay the course. Making my family proud of me is not a huge priority. And anyway, I'm more stable financially and emotionally than most of them were at 24. I don't really want a career or a family. What I want is constant access to the internet and video games, and a paycheck every week that covers all my ridiculous nerd hobbies.

I've somehow managed to find myself in the exact position I've wanted to be in ever since I realized I'd have to work for a living, and people tell me it's not good enough. I figure if I ever find myself not enjoying life this much, and really wishing for something more, it's never to late to pick up and get started on something else. I'm lazy, but I'm not hopeless. I'm a slacker but I'm not irresponsible.

Well okay... maybe I'm a little irresponsible.

Anyway, for better or worse, I'm 24 now and as far as the federal government is concerned that means I can get free money to help go to school. And, working the job I do, I really have no reason not to. So I applied for my aid and we'll see what happens. Of course, since my birthday is in the summer it means I won't get anything in time to go to school until next year, but that's fine with me.

There's a stack of PlayStation games here I need to get through, anyway, and Monday starts another week at the pee clinic.

4:30 am on Sunday morning. This post brought to you by way too much caffeine. I should go to bed, but I'll play more Warcraft instead.

Classic Peemeister - You callin' me a liar!?

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So are you calling me a liar?"

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

"Yeah, I put it in there."

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

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

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

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

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

Phone games.

Ring ring.

Good morning. Patient service center.

"Is this for the drug test?"

This is a drug test collection site, yes.

"I need to get a phone number."

Okay, what number?

"His name is Joey Smith."

...I'm sorry, who?

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

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

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

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

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

I don't have a Caller ID.

"What do you mean you don't?"

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

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

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

"Mother[explitive deleted]!"

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good morning. Patient service center.

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

Yes, I know. I heard the phone ring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently so sir. Do you need directions or not.

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

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

"Wait you motherf--"

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

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

Hello? Patient service center.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm afraid I can't help you.

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

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

"So where are you at in Iowa?"

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

"So what he gon' do?"

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

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

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

"You do drug tets?"

Yes sir.

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

Okay.

"It's for [company name]."

They're one of my clients.

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

Yes.

"And it's for my job?"

...yes.

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

Okay.

"Aight."

Click.

---

Ring ring.

Good afternoon. Patient service center.

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

Was this for employment?

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

So, it wasn't for employment?

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

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

"What do you mean?"

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

"Oh, that's what I did."

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

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

Not at this office, it wasn't.

"Is this [my company name]?"

Yes.

"On [my street]?"

Yes.

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

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

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

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

"That isn't what she said."

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

"Let me talk to your manager."

No problem. Do you have a pen?

"Why do I need a pen?"

You'll have to call the Tampa office.

"No, just let me talk to him."

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

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

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

"Forget it, then."

Click.

---

Ring ring...

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?

...why?

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

I go out to investigate.

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

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

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

"What, you all closed?"

"Yes."

"Why are you closed?"

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

"I'm here for a drug test."

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

"Why I can't get one now?"

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

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

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

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

How do you use a semicolon?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you use a semicolon?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long stretches of time.

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

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

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

Disgusting jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This did not turn out to be the case.

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

"I made a mess," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Jailbait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pool place.

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

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

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

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

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