Nice aim.

To answer your question: yes, people try to cheat. This doesn't bother me as much as you might think, other than the fact that it ends up wasting five or ten minutes of everyone's time. The sad truth about pre-employment drug testing (or any drug test which gives you time beforehand to prepare) is that they aren't so much testing for drugs as they are intelligence. Anyone with even passing knowledge of how the process works (for example, anyone who reads my blog) can, with the slightest bit of reasoning, work out how to cheat.

So, whenever I come across a cheater, I'm a little disappointed. The process can't catch the people who cheat successfully (how would we ever know?); we only see the people who didn't bother putting more than four minutes of thought into how they were going to sneak one by us. It's the equivalent of watching some numbskull uselessly pushing against a door that is labeled "pull".

Stupid Name not only didn't have a good plan for cheating -- if that were the extent of it, he wouldn't really be noteworthy. What made Stupid Name extra special was that he actually managed to botch his already-doomed-to-fail plan.

The collection started smoothly. Stupid Name seemed eager to get the thing over and done with, and I was eager to be rid of him and move on to the nine people waiting in line behind him. I'm finishing up his paperwork as he's in the bathroom when I hear the curious sound of liquid hitting the floor. Not the tssssss of a careless man peeing on the floor, but rather the kssssshhhhh of someone spilling the contents of a bottle.

Stupid Name opens the door and pokes his head out. "Hey dude, you got a mop or somethin'? I missed the bowl."

I tell Stupid Name that I'll take care of the mopping afterwards. He opens the door, steps out, and sets a half-full cup on the counter. His shirt has a huge wet spot on it starting at his collar and ending just above his gut. There's an enormous puddle of urine on the floor of the bathroom about two feet away from the toilet. Why, it almost looks as though someone were standing with his back to the commode, pouring liquid from one container into another, and spilling it all over himself.

Before I can point out to Stupid Name why this is unacceptable, he offers up this useful information: "Sorry, I kinda peed on myself."

Explaining to Stupid Name why I won't be taking his sample is actually none too difficult. He's pretty embarrassed by the fact that he screwed up. The odd sound is enough to merit a second collection. Stupid Name packs his things and leaves the office.

Oh, and his sample was colder than room temperature. Which means even if he weren't a moron and hadn't botched his flawless scheme, I still would have caught him. Dude was foiled from both ends. Once he's gone I set about mopping up his mess, then call the next person waiting. Going to be a long-ish day.

Just now I've been informed that Stupid Name is back, willing to try again. As soon as we get permission to do a witnessed collection from his employer, he'll get his chance. I haven't seen him yet but I hope he's at least changed his shirt.

Let's take it from the top.

One of the services my company haphazardly provides is hair testing. The deal with hair testing, essentially, is that the lab can trace your drug usage history back as far as you hair has been growing. I guess, in theory, they could take a 30-year-old woman who hasn't had her hair cut in 16 years and find out what kind of substances she used in high school. I'm fairly sure there's a cap on how far back various agencies are allowed to look into your drug history to consider you for employment. In any case, this is why Brittney Spears recently flipped out an shaved her head. No hair, no drug test history.

Hair collections are generally a snap. Snip snip, fold the hair into a foil strip, seal it up in an envelope, and now it's the lab's problem. It's so easy, in fact, that interviewers can do it literally right there at the interview -- no need to send the applicant out for a costly urine collection. Unless, of course, the applicant has no hair on his head... then they send him to us so we can take the hair from elsewhere.

In my day I've skimmed chests, snipped underarms and clipped napes. It has thankfully always been our company policy to not use pubic hair for testing, although there is a spot on the form for it, so it's definitely an option. So, easy as they are to conduct in theory, you can see why I've always dreaded doing hair collections: it means I have to go into some bald dude's pits. And, since it's tricky to get the requisite one-by-one-and-a-half inch patch of hair from even the shaggiest of chests, it likely meant that the lab wouldn't do the test at all and the guy would just be sent back for another try. I've had several cases where, after three failed hair tests, the company broke down and just settled for a urine test instead.

I mean, even bald guys have to pee.

I was overjoyed about two years ago when the hair testing regulations were changed to only allow hair from the head, and nowhere else. I never knew the reason for the change and didn't much care... my days of doing hair tests were over. Huzzah, etc. It meant, of course, that once every six months or so I would have an irate bald man in my office screaming at me, but I nonetheless considered it a bargain.

So imagine my disdain when I sit down at my computer today to see a message from my boss: "Can you do a hair test?"

Crap.

I put up a halfhearted fight and pointed out that, really, I'd rather be doing anything but hair testing... but in the end it wasn't going to work and I knew it. Nobody else in the office is trained to do them. I have no idea who was trained on them before I started here, put it's kind of a moot point now; some clown was on his way to get a hair test done for a car dealership.

(I'll point out here that of the thirty or forty hair tests I've done, they have all been for car dealerships, to the very last man. I don't even have a vague theory on why this is.)

In any case it doesn't take long. By the time we've scrounged up our hair test supplies, Mr. Tattoo is waiting in the lobby. I snap his form out of the box and look at his ID.

He's entirely bald.

Thank heavens.

Of course now I have to explain that he made the trip out here for nothing, but again, I consider it a bargain.

"Mr. Tattoo? You're here for a hair test, right? There's a small problem."

"No problem," he says, lifting up his shirt. He has hair on his chest, but not nearly enough to get the required amount for the lab.

"I can't take it from your chest. It has to be from the head."

"No it doesn't."

"Sorry, Mr. Tattoo. They changed the regulations on hair testing a few years ago. Nothing we can do." I hand him his ID. He snatches it and whips out his cell phone to call whomever it is that people always call on their cell phones when they've been denied service for something.

So I get out of having to do a hair test and Mr. Tattoo doesn't have to work at a car dealership. I think I'll call that a win/win.

We offered to do a urine test instead, but Mr. Tattoo had already failed one. Go figure.

Weird look.

One of the up-front girls notified me over our inter-office messaging system that Mr. Quiet's collection would need to be witnessed. Apparently his first sample came back far too hot and, upon delivering this information to Mr. Quiet's would-be employer, they requested that someone watch him pee to make sure he didn't try to get away with anything the second time around.

I felt bad for Mr. Quiet because he didn't seem to me to be the type who would attempt to cheat on a drug test. He was very polite and soft-spoken, was not the least bit combative or nervous, and didn't ask any strange questions about loopholes. He didn't set off any red flags. I quickly decided that he probably just had the bad luck of running a high temperature. Not common, but it happens.

I stood behind Mr. Quiet in the bathroom as he went through the motions. Ten seconds in, however, he discontinued the process claiming he just couldn't go. This was definitely strange... even if you didn't feel the urge, you'd give it more than ten seconds, right?

I put Mr. Quiet's paperwork in the "not ready" box and instruct him to drink as much water as he needs. It's pretty early in the afternoon, so there's no hurry; he can sit there for hours if he wants, or leave and come back, or pretty much anything really. Ball's in his court.

Fifteen minutes before closing, I get called back up. Mr. Quiet's ready. In the middle of putting together a last-minute overnight order for one of our clients, I told the up-front girls to go ahead and take someone ahead of him, and that I'd be up in five minutes. When I made it up to there, the collection-in-progress was only halfway done, so I stood nearby and waited patiently for my turn.

From where I stood I could look into the reception area and out through the window into the waiting room. I watched as someone dumped $1.50 into our soda machine, skimmed over a couple waiting on an immigration physical, and to Mr. Quiet sitting in the corner. I gave him a polite nod.

Another minute goes by, and Mr. Quiet approached the receptionist. I couldn't hear what he said, and in fact didn't even know he had stepped up until I heard the up-front girl say, "Huh? Speak up sweetie, I can't hear you." Mr. Quiet glanced nervously at me, shrugged sheepishly, and said "I'm sorry man... it's nothing personal... just... I don't know what to make of that look." Then he turned back to the up-front girl and reinforced his point: "Didn't you see? He just gave me a really weird look. Like, really uncomfortable. Can someone else do the test?"

The up-front girl looked at me, stupefied. She didn't know the answer to the question (of course) but I did: "Sir, I'm the only male collector on duty today. It's me or no one."

"Can I come back tomorrow? I'm sorry but I'm just real uncomfortable."

"I'm pretty much the only male collector who works here, sir. You'll have to get in touch with your employer if you want to arrange to go somewhere else." That's actually only a half-truth: the president of the company is also certified to do collections, but let's be honest, nobody actually expects him to. If Mr. Quiet wants this drug test done, he's really only got the one option.

By now, the collection-in-progress is done and I retrieve Mr. Quiet's sheet. He follows me back, apologizing the whole way, repeating "I just really don't know what to make of that look... you know?"

A brief aside: Mr. Quiet's complaint about a "look" might not be completely unwarranted. I wasn't convinced he was a cheater at first, but his shabby performance during the first witnessed test didn't exactly win him any points with me. If the look on my face said "this guy is a scumbag cheater" when we locked eyes for one magical moment as I as scanning the lobby, well, you'll have to forgive me. More likely, Mr. Quiet was looking for any semi-legit opportunity to duck out of a drug test he knew he'd fail, no matter how flimsy the pretense.

So we went through the whole song and dance, the "empty your pockets please", the "you understand this test is to be witnessed", the whole nine yards. And again, he gives a shoddy ten second showing where he doesn't even pretend to try to urinate, then gives up. "I can't do it," he says. "I just can't do it."

Mr. Quiet elected to leave the office and return the next day, pending permission to do so from whatever hapless company thinks it wants to employ him.

The next day Mr. Quiet returned. His employer had given permission for a second witnessed test. However, this time when he saw that once again I was the only person available for the collection, he raised a small fuss about how he was assured it wouldn't be the guy who gave him the "weird look." We certainly assured him of no such thing. Perhaps his employer did, not knowing the circumstances, but in any case these assurances did not match reality. He left without even filling out the paperwork.

The next day (today) I learned that Mr. Quiet couldn't be witnessed because he had kidney stones. Now, I'm of the opinion that the man was just trying to duck a drug test by any means necessary. I admit that I could be wrong, and that the poor guy just doesn't want some other dude watching him pee. Maybe he gets stage fright really easily. But again, making excuses doesn't help his case any. After today's visit it seems Mr. Quiet finally gave up the fight and his prospective employer passed him over for one of the fifty guys standing behind him for the same job.

Sorry, Mr. Quiet. Don't leave it in the microwave so long next time, eh?

I enjoy watching people pump money into the soda machine because I'm the guy who stocks it and profits from it. *clack* *clack* *rumbarumba* *THUNK* -- Thanks for the twenty-six cents, mister!

In May.

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

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

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

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

And with that she vanished into the bathroom.

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

"Come again?"

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

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

"Are you sure?"

Are you kidding?

"Yeah, pretty sure."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Off my game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She seemed amused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossing The Line.

People are sometimes hardheaded and stubborn for no reason other than they want to be hardheaded and stubborn. Case in point: The Line.

The Line was a tall man who had come in to do a pre-employment drug test for a towing company, which means he has a commercial driver's license, and therefore his drug test needs to follow federal rather than state standards. The Line's major problem is that he's a clown, and as veteran peemeister readers will know I am fairly incompatible with clowns.

When I ask someone a question about a service they are providing me, I like to get a clear and honest answer. When someone asks me a question about the drug test collection I'm conducting, I like to make my answers as clear and honest as possible. This creates a surprising amount of friction with some people, and it baffles me as to why. The Line is a perfect example of this.

When I asked The Line to place his things in the lockbox he asked me, "How do I know you won't take anything?" This is a perfectly reasonable question. The answer, of course, is that he'll be in the bathroom with all his stuff locked up in a box, and I'll have the key outside. Neither of us can access the materials in the lockbox. Halfway through explaining this to The Line, however, he interrupts me by saying: "How do I know you ain't a magician?"

So, now I have to temporarily abandon the first question and answer the second: "Sir, I assure you I'm not a magician. Neither of us will be able to touch the things in the box." Yes, the magician question was a joke. But I still had to answer it seriously. Why? Because what if it wasn't a joke? Crazier things have happened. The running theme here is that people will try anything, absolutely anything to cheat on a drug test, if they have to.

Now that the foolishness about me being a sorcerer are put aside, I try to revisit the original question about the lockbox and the key. But again, he interrupts me: "Man, it was a joke. I'm just messin' with you."

"I try not to mess around at work, sir," I tell him. And this was the point I crossed the line with The Line.

Not appreciating his joke was essentially the most horrid thing I could have possibly done to this man. From this point on it was a war. Every instruction I gave him was a battle. Everything was met with an icy stare. He suddenly had a problem with washing his hands with cold water. (Why is there no hot water in the sink next to our bathroom? Beats me, but there isn't.) He is entitled to hot water. He wants to know why he can't flush the toilet. I can't get two words out of my mouth without another interruption about how rude I am or how ridiculous drug testing is.

Eventually we manage to get The Line's sample poured into the split bottles. All that's left is for him to initial the bottles, sign the forms, and then I can be rid of him. He snatches the two bottles from my hands, stares me right in the eyes, and without breaking his gaze he quickly and flippantly puts a line on each sticker.

"Sir, I need you to please initial each bottle."

"Those are my initials."

"That's just a line."

"That's how I write my initials."

"I need you to please write T. L."

Again he snatches the two bottles and scribbles the initials T. L. onto each one in the most terrible chicken-scratch handwriting I've ever seen in my life. He practically throws them at me. "There. We done?"

"No sir," I reply as I place the bottles in the sample bag. "Now I need you to read and sign step five, right h--"

The Line snatches the pen from my hand before I can finish and very firmly draws a line in the signature field. Well, at least it's the correct field.

"Sir, I need you to actually sign your name."

"That's my name."

"Sir, that's a line."

"That's how I sign my name."

"No, it isn't."

"Are you patronizing me, boy?"

"No, but I can see your signature on your driver's license, and it isn't a line."

"I don't care."

The Line crosses his arms. We are at an impasse. There's no way I'm going to get him to sign the form. There are a lot of things I could explain to The Line. For example, I could explain that his company may choose not to hire him if he refuses to take a drug test (which, by the way, is what he's doing if he doesn't sign the paperwork saying it's his sample). I could explain that the lab might get audited by the Department of Transportation, his sample might get pulled out of their freezer, and they might find his refusal to test and revoke his license. He might face fines or, worse, lose his CDL forever. Which means no more working in his field. For the rest of his life.

Of course, I can't get any of this out. He red-lights every word I say by reaffirming: "I don't care."

"Okay," I shrug. I hand him his copies of the paperwork and send him on his way. Once he's gone, I write "REFUSED TO SIGN FORM" in huge letters in the remarks field on the lab's copy of the form.

The company which sent The Line to our office is actually pretty lax about the federal standards they're supposed to follow, so chances are good that nothing will happen to The Line. However, I've dealt with companies that will blacklist people who refuse to test. I've had more than a couple desperate phone calls from men who were tough and invincible on drug test day, who now all of a sudden have lost their job or their license and need me to fix it.

The DoT standards are strict and maybe a little cruel, but they are what they are. I can't imagine anyone who works in a field that requires a CDL could possibly not know that. Why anyone would risk their livelihood because some kid didn't think his lame joke was funny is beyond my grasp.

This was anecdote the second. I'll post the third in a couple of days.

Nothing to hide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hand to God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The predicament.

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yo, what didja do that for!?"

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

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

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

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

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

And thus was Mr. Greasy defeated.

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

"Well, dude, if you say so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Not fake, just clueless.

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

Robert Alvarez
Painter
1234 Address Rd
Tampa FL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.