Before I could “officially” be offered my new job, I had to be screened for drugs. I’ve never had to have this done before, and I was told they would be taking a hair sample. I also assumed that I would be peeing in a cup, because – I don’t know? Isn’t that what you do? Nervous that I wouldn’t be able to provide a sample on-demand, I purposely drank a bottle of water in addition to my morning coffee…and then held it until I got to the testing facility.
But…
I got lost on the way there. According to Google Maps, the facility was located in a McDonald’s in a neighboring town. I am not making this up. So I call up the place, and turns out it’s on the campus of a hospital I’ve never been to before. And by “campus” I mean my undergraduate campus is probably smaller. And the buildings weren’t numbered, and blah blah blah.
Still really had to pee.
Once I found the building, I couldn’t find the suite INSIDE the building. I LITERALLY walked in a complete circle through the entire first floor. Like, I was heading down a hallway thinking “Ok, it should be the next door on the right,” when I get to a door and it takes me back outside. Where I started.
I finally ask for directions from probably the nicest old woman on the Earth, and turns out I passed the office not ONCE, but TWICE.
This was a walk-in type of thing, and when I arrived, there were three other people in the waiting room ahead of me. And so I wait.
For about a half hour.
My name is called, and I go into an exam room where a nurse cuts out three BIG CHUNKS of hair from different places on my head. She then very deliberately puts them in the sample pouch, explaining what she’s doing the entire time: “Now I’m going to place the seal that you initialed on the envelope…blah blah blah.” I know this is for legal purposes, but I can’t really hear her, on account of the whole about-to-wet-myself thing.
Then she tells me “Okay, you’re good to go!” Wait, what? “That’s all you need?” “Yup.” “No other… samples?” “Hmmm?” “Never mind.”
I look at my watch. I am now almost 45 minutes late for work. Well, shit.
So I arrive at work, almost literally running at this point. My boss thinks I am racing in because of my lateness. I know otherwise.
I realize that I have my belt unbuckled and my pants almost unbuttoned BEFORE I enter the stall. But I do not care. Desperate times call for desperate measures. My boss is lucky I wasn’t doing this as I walked through the door.
Lesson learned: never assume you’ll have to pee in a cup.
the sloppy copy 