I Am Not a Druggie
I used to temp at a large company before I was hired as a permanent employee. When I quit the job for another part-time position, my boss asked if I’d be interested in doing some temp work for them later on. I needed the money, so I said yes.
By now, the temp agency at the company was a new one, so I had to sign on with them. This involved filling out a 3 page application, providing references, documenting the last 10 years of my work history, and taking a drug test.
The drug test took place at a walk-in laboratory in Andover. I had never worked at a company that required drug testing, and thought maybe the test would involve some kind of blood test or breathalyzer. Or maybe they’d be able to just look at me, and know that I’d never touched an illegal drug in my life. Drug dealers could certainly tell, and it was a sore point with me that none of them had ever offered me any cocaine. I didn’t want to take it, but I sure wanted to be given the opportunity to, politely and firmly, with a touch of Nancy Reagan, just say no.
When I walked into the lab, an older man was sitting in the waiting room, reading a magazine. I figured he was waiting to get a blood test or something, but it turned out he was just waiting for his daughter. She flounced out in a few minutes, bearing a cup with less than an inch of pale yellow liquid in it. She handed the cup to the nurse, who shook her head.
“Not enough,” the nurse said.
“I didn’t have enough,” the girl told her father.
“Can’t you drink a few cups of water?” he asked. “I took the whole day off from work to bring you here!”
“Dad! It won’t work! I don’t have to pee!” she said, with the certainty of a teenager who knows her parents are idiots.
They walked out, grumbling at each other, and the nurse called me in. She examined my driver’s license, and then pulled out a plastic cup.
“Do you think you can urinate enough to cover this sticker?” she asked me seriously.
I looked at the cup. I looked at her. The sticker was about an inch from the bottom of the specimen cup. She was asking me–Jane of the Tiny Shrunken Bladder, who drank about 80 ounces of water a day — if I could pee an inch? I didn’t want to brag, but I felt I had finally found my life’s calling; the one task I had trained for since I was, well, toilet trained.
“Yeah, I think so,” I told her.
“Okay, go into the bathroom and wash your hands. Just with water. Then come back here.”
Puzzled, I did as she said.
She opened a cabinet door, revealing stacks of empty and sealed specimen cups.
“Please pick one.”
I wanted to move all the specimen cups and pick one at the very back of the cabinet, just for fun, but I had too many things to do that day so I just grabbed the one closest to me. I handed it to the nurse.
She peeled off the foil lid and returned the cup to me.
“Go into the bathroom and don’t run the water in the sink or flush the toilet. You need to urinate at least above this line– ” she indicated the sticker again, “and if you have extra, you can go in the toilet. But don’t flush it afterwards or wash your hands.”
No flushing? And no hand washing? How gross! This drug testing was inhumane! Illegal! Infringing upon my right as an American to have clean hands after using a toilet!
I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I peed carefully into the cup. I was tempted to show off by filling up the entire cup, and then perhaps cracking open the bathroom door to say, “My good lady, could I trouble you for another receptacle? I fear this one is not quite large enough for my prowess at this task.” But I restrained myself, and modestly went just over the stickered line.
I opened the bathroom door and gave the cup to the nurse. I desperately wanted to wash my hands, but the nurse wouldn’t let me.
“You have to stand here until I seal up the cup,” she explained. “The cup’s not really supposed to be out of your sight at all.”
Gradually it dawned on me that her odd instructions, which I’d chalked up to the nurse attempting to liven up her day, had a point to them. There were some people who might (and this was hard for me to grasp) try to fake their drug tests.
I wanted to ask the nurse how it was done (dissolving something in water? Flushing something–what?–down the toilet?) but was afraid she would think I was a drug user who wanted to know how to circumvent the system.
Instead, I stood by silently as she poured my urine into a tiny beaker and sealed the lid. She placed a tamper-proof sticker over the opening, and then had me initial the sticker and sign another document.
“Now you can wash your hands,” she announced. Thank goodness. I was beginning to feel like a criminal.
She pushed a dispenser of liquid soap toward me, and I squeezed a few drops of soap into my palm. I went back into the bathroom and held my hand under the automatic faucet. Nothing. I waved my hand in front of the laser viewer. Nothing again.
I was beginning to panic (WHY WON’T THEY LET ME WASH MY HANDS? WILL I NEVER BE CLEAN AGAIN?) when the nurse noticed I was having trouble.
“Oh, it’s not coming on?” She flicked a switch behind her. Miraculously, the water began to flow, and all was right in the world again.
Posted by: ssjane | April 29, 2004 | 10:00 pm
Posted in: This Life