Finally, a day of rest. It feels as if I haven’t stopped
moving for the past two weeks. I’ve had one day off over the past eight days,
and worked 11 of the last 14 overall. I suppose that’s just over normal, but I
hustle when I’m working and sometimes don’t realize how tired I am until I get
home and crawl into bed. Now I get to enjoy three days off in a row, followed
by a few days at the laminating factory before I return to the kitchen.
This morning I had the pleasure of taking my first pee test
for Ramsey County Corrections. It used to be simple. The probation officers and
the drug testing facility were in the same place, the Spruce Tree Center. I would
go see my agent, they would tell me whether or not I had to take a test, and I
would go down the hall, or I wouldn’t. Now testing is done by a private
company, on the other end of town. I received a call yesterday while I was on
my way to work from my agent who said I had until the end of day Friday (today)
to go pee. The odd hours of the testing site lined up with my rotating shifts
at the Xcel Center, and I went down before I came to Nina’s to write this post.
Giving a urine sample for the purpose of drug testing can be
rather awkward. By nature, people don’t want to be caught using drugs when they
shouldn’t be, so there are a number of safety features in play. When I arrived
they asked me for my identification, and we filled out some simple paperwork. I
took a seat and waited for a man to finish reading a newspaper article, and he asked
me to step into the bathroom and rinse off my hands. I’m not sure how many
products are out there that are designed to trick the testing process, but one
of them must be something you put on your hands and add somehow to the urine
stream. I looked down to my left and saw a full-length mirror just to the right
of the toilet which would put my genitals in direct view of the tester who would
stand right behind me.
I flashed back to a
different time when I found out how easy (or maybe difficult in this particular case, as I never saw her again) it was to fake a clean test if you
happened to be a female, and I wondered how many guys came into this room high
on something and thought they were going to trick the man who was now standing
behind me. Is there a thing that a guy can put inside his urethra to make sober pee? I don’t get high or use any drugs, but in the back of my mind, I
always feel like there’s a chance that something will go horribly wrong, and my
test will come up positive, even though it’s never happened. I couldn’t imagine
coming into this confined room full of mirrors with a bladder full of
meth-water expecting anything other than catastrophe.
I was in my head and didn't even notice that the process has continued on without my attention. Before I knew it I had filled the receptacle to the appropriate
level, and we made the hand-off. We sealed it and both agreed that it would not
be tampered with, without an obvious blemish on the seal that I had signed with
my initials. I washed my hands a second time, and exited the bathroom, and then
the building.
And that is how you properly pass a drug test.
