True Story©... Misunderstood the Assignment
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Not to let you in on more than you need to know about me, but my full-time job has existed under the constant possibility of a random drug test...
I could, at any moment, receive an email and teams message from my manager telling me that I have 30 minutes to report to a draw station and present a sample to be tested for illegal drugs. 18 years and 8 months had successfully transpired without me EVER having received any such a thing, not even after that one time I randomly passed the fxck out at my desk.
... until now...
Last week, I got that message on Teams and the email. When she noticed my light was amber because I was on break, outside cutting the front yard, she sent me a text asking if I got them. I ran inside and checked, responded "on it" to her text, changed shoes and hopped in the truck to go to the center for the test.
13 minutes later, I walked into the center and signed in on the kiosk. They called my name to the window, saw the order and reached down and grabbed the specimen cup. She pointed across the hall to a bathroom and said "you can use that bathroom right there, put your specimen in the window when you're done."
Simple enough, right?
RIGHT?!!?
Wrong™!
I went into the room with the cup and somehow went out of my fucking mind. I saw the cup in my hand in the eight steps from the window to the room and had a flashback to my college days when I was a paid donor to the sperm bank. I closed the door and opened [website redacted] and went right to the task of doing what I remembered how to do.
5 minutes pass... 8 minutes... At ten minutes, a knock on the door comes "are you okay in there?" to which I respond "I'm good, gimme a minute."
Stifled and having my concentration broken, I basically had to start over but finally got the job done. I closed the specimen cup before I put it in the box and washed my hands. I stepped out and asked "anything else?" and was on my way back to the house when she shook her head no.
No sooner than I got to the exit door, I heard the woman at the desk scream "OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUHHHH?!!?" in a lobby full of people waiting to have blood drawn. She gathered herself and ran after me in the exit vestibule, yelling "excuse me!" to get me to stop and come back. When she finally got my attention, her face was half-amused and half-mortified.
Hurriedly, I got back into the room and produced the sample she actually needed and scurried back to my truck, hoping that not a word of this would make it to my manager. "Hoping" being the operative word, because as soon as my light went green on Teams and Outlook, my desk line rang...
And there it is, I have added "bastermated on company property without getting fired" to my ever more extensive resumé.
Last week, I got that message on Teams and the email. When she noticed my light was amber because I was on break, outside cutting the front yard, she sent me a text asking if I got them. I ran inside and checked, responded "on it" to her text, changed shoes and hopped in the truck to go to the center for the test.
13 minutes later, I walked into the center and signed in on the kiosk. They called my name to the window, saw the order and reached down and grabbed the specimen cup. She pointed across the hall to a bathroom and said "you can use that bathroom right there, put your specimen in the window when you're done."
Simple enough, right?
RIGHT?!!?
Wrong™!
I went into the room with the cup and somehow went out of my fucking mind. I saw the cup in my hand in the eight steps from the window to the room and had a flashback to my college days when I was a paid donor to the sperm bank. I closed the door and opened [website redacted] and went right to the task of doing what I remembered how to do.
5 minutes pass... 8 minutes... At ten minutes, a knock on the door comes "are you okay in there?" to which I respond "I'm good, gimme a minute."
Stifled and having my concentration broken, I basically had to start over but finally got the job done. I closed the specimen cup before I put it in the box and washed my hands. I stepped out and asked "anything else?" and was on my way back to the house when she shook her head no.
No sooner than I got to the exit door, I heard the woman at the desk scream "OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUHHHH?!!?" in a lobby full of people waiting to have blood drawn. She gathered herself and ran after me in the exit vestibule, yelling "excuse me!" to get me to stop and come back. When she finally got my attention, her face was half-amused and half-mortified.
Her: "Sir... we needed a urine sample, not semen."
Me: "Well damn, the room just said 'specimen' and I just went for what I knew."
Her: "We can't send this, and you got 6 minutes left to produce what we can send."
Me: "Well I guess I'm coming back in real quick."
Hurriedly, I got back into the room and produced the sample she actually needed and scurried back to my truck, hoping that not a word of this would make it to my manager. "Hoping" being the operative word, because as soon as my light went green on Teams and Outlook, my desk line rang...
Me: "Hi boss."
Manager: "Phillip, what just happened?"
Me: "I went to the patient service center and produced a sample for drug testing, as you told me."
Manager: "That's one way of putting it."
Me: "It's what I did!"
Manager: "Another way of putting it is that you gave the tech a heart attack."
Me: "Well to be fair, I've had more experience producing the kind of specimen I initially gave than the one I eventually did."
Manager: "I don't think I wanna know..."
Me: "You probably don't. How did this get to you, short of firing me for a failed drug test -- which you won't have to -- anyway?"
Manager: "The tech was so freaked out about the ordeal that she couldn't stop crying, her team Lead called their supervisor who used the name on the sample to find you and eventually me."
Me: "We SUPPORT those centers, are not both sure that a properly-contained sample that can simply be tossed in the biohazard bin in the corner is mild compared to what they normally get?"
Manager: "Well... true."
Me: "I mean, it's not like I had a panic attack and fainted at the sight of the needle like the one lady I heard in there while I was trying to concentrate."
Manager: "Y'know what? I think it is best that we just never speak of this again."
Me: "Agreed."
[Phlip note: do you know how HARD it is not to say "cup of jizz" when discussing a literal ramekin of semen with your manager, on a potentially-recorded work line?]
And there it is, I have added "bastermated on company property without getting fired" to my ever more extensive resumé.
... and the piss test came back clean, for the record.
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