Pee here, please

“Pick a cup, any one you want, either shelf,” the woman at the MacNeil outpatient clinic instructed me this afternoon.

I have landed a reporter job, provided I pass a urine test for drugs, which I should since I’m drug-free and haven’t eaten anything with poppy seeds in ages. Here’s hoping the sesame seeds on sushi rolls (devoured en masse last night) don’t provoke a positive for opiates.

Peeing on command in a cup is fairly humiliating, though my lady aide did her best to keep the atmosphere light and everyone’s dignity intact. Also, puzzling that my Mister, who works for a company subsidiary, had to take the test 5 years ago, and the first time I wrote for the company four years ago, I did not. Puzzling, too, they wouldn’t check for, say, something like functional alcoholism. Not that it matters to me. 

And so it goes. Who said corporate America makes any sense? Certainly not this girl.

The pee test didn’t take too long. I had some idea of what should go down since I once profiled a really funny woman who oversees the court-mandated drug and alcohol testing at the courthouse in Bridgeview, Ill., (Cook County Fifth District). She laid out for me all the tricks people tried on her throughout her years as the PP Queen, and said the protocol has evolved so that she actually has to watch it come out of the person during the test while holding the cup herself. They’d drop stuff in, fake the peeing, try the old sliparoo…

I feel lucky I got to shut the door.

Clinic calls the employer directly with the results, cutting out this middleman.