Urinalysis
Drug testing is very common in this day and age. I believe it became popular when idiots getting carts in the parking lots of grocery stores accidentally had too many run-ins with expensive cars. Chipped paint and dented fenders had more to do with the popularity and spread of urinalysis than any sort of actual drug use. People just figured that if a moron was dumb enough to slam a grocery cart into an eighty thousand dollar Mercedes, they might just be dumb enough to have smoked a bowl prior to hitting the lot. So there you have it…insurance companies and a few rotten apples made it so that you have to get a drug test every time you apply for a new job.
Oh, I am sure that forklift accidents, crane accidents, blowtorch accidents and HazMat accidents all played their part, but from my experience, it’s the dumbasses on grocery store parking lots who really got the urinalysis kick running at full force.
I recently had to take a piss test. In my past, I have had to take them and I am reasonably sure what goes on in your standard test. They give you a cup, follow you into the bathroom, and you do your deed. This last test was far, far different from anything that I have ever had to endure…I think endure is the right word, it sure felt like an ordeal of some sort.
First off, whoever decided to put a urinalysis and drug consultancy company right in the middle of the ghetto probably had good intentions, but that didn’t stop me from having to fight through about three hundred junkies just to get through the door.
“Hey bro, you gotta dollah?”
“Hey bro, gimme a cigarette…”
“Sweetie…I’ll suck yo dick for twenny..."
“Gimme a ride once you get out…okay?”
That was what I heard as I waded my way through the throng of recovering opiate users that crowded the front lawn and foyer area of the urinalysis center. Seeing that I had pulled up in a car (no matter how crappy it was) meant that I either owed these people something, or I was an idiot and had money. I am neither of those things. I didn’t owe them anything and I surely don’t have any money…remember, I am a writer.
You may be asking why all these junkies were hanging out there. My appointment for my piss test was for nine o’clock on a Monday morning. All the junkies were coming down from a high old time on the weekend, and for good or ill, they needed some methadone to get through the coming day. All the people who I spoke to and saw on that front lawn were clutching a small plastic cup that had once held orange juice and methadone.
Secondly, all the people who work at this particular urinalysis unit are recovering users of some sort. This is probably a good idea in itself, they know all the tricks and probably “keep their ear to the ground” when it comes to trouble. The man who handled my test certainly looked like an ex-junky. This guy had that bug eyed look to him and a nervous way about his movements. He also seemed a little off when he talked to me, as if his brain needed a few more seconds to handle what it was doing than a normal, sober person.
While talking about these people, I may sound harsh. I assure you that this is on purpose. The whole thing was a trial and I can’t believe I had to pay for the delightful experience. How many times have you had to pay good money to be accosted by heroin addicts? Let me assure you, the rides at your local amusement park may be more exciting, but they certainly don’t hold a candle to methadone freaks who want your wallet in the “scary” department. So if I sound callous or unsympathetic, I really want you to know how I feel about the whole thing and I am certainly not going to do something as silly as acting “PC” about having to piss in a cup for a job.
After I managed to get myself through all the junkies and had met the guy who was going to be handling my urinalysis, I was told to go to a bathroom down the hall. There, I was to wash my hands and wait. I did what I was told. For some reason, the guy was really really late to making it down to the bathroom, I had washed my hands three times and the towel dispenser (one of those fucking annoying ones you have to wave your hand at) was out of towels. After about five minutes, the dude sauntered into the bathroom.
“Go in that stall, and keep everything where I can see it. Hold your shirt up,” he said while he pointed at a stall that had a large mirror above the toilet.
I began to move toward the stall and realized that somebody had taken a huge shit in the toilet and had not flushed. The tester became visibly mad.
“Move over to the next stall,” he said with a slight stammer in his voice. “I have to find somebody to clean that up.”
I went to the next stall and realized that this particular stall didn’t have the mirror. The tester had to stand right up behind me and look over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t sneaking in somebody else’s pee for the test. It was very disconcerting to say the least.
I began to pee. When I had the cup about half full, I asked the guy how much I would need to put into the cup for a test to be done. He waited about ten seconds before answering…remember the clock…I mean the piss was ticking.
“Oh, ‘bout half,” he said. He took the cup and managed to slop some of it’s contents on my hand as I handed it to him.
What the hell? I had passed the halfway mark even before I had asked the question! I immediately moved the cup out of the way and finished my business. He took the cup and pulled out a pile of paperwork from his back pocket. While he was filling out the information for my test, he was using the sink area to write on. I really wanted to wash my hands, but guess what? I couldn’t get passed him so I had to stand there like an idiot with pee-cup drippin’s on my hands. Finally, he gave me a sticker to place over the screw on cap that went on the top of the pee cup and got the hell out of the way. Because I wanted to wash my hands so badly, I screwed up the sticker as I put it on the cup. The tester was visibly outraged by this simple screw up.
I took it more as a power play; these guys have so little in their lives to entertain themselves since they can’t shoot heroin anymore, they have to make other people miserable too. He made a huge act out of ripping the messed up sticker off of the cup and then writing a new sticker out.
Finally, I could get to the sink and wash the quickly drying urine off of my hands. The tester guy got the hell out of there. I straightened up and fortified myself against the coming onslaught of recovering methadone-heads out in the foyer. As I left, I swung by the window where the tester was standing behind.
“Everything done? Can I leave now?” I asked through the grate.
“Sure.” He said over his shoulder, already sorry he had rushed his self-aggrandizing moment in the bathroom. I didn’t say anything to him; I had already pissed him off (pun intended) enough in the bathroom. I didn’t want him to screw up my test and ruin my chances at that job…
