This morning my supervisor came into my office and told me I had been selected for a random drug test. I work a behind-the-scenes desk job in the private sector, and don’t drive company vehicles. All my performance reviews have been satisfactory or better.
After lunch, I travelled up to the seventh floor where a group of HR drones were milling about outside the bathrooms they had closed for the testing. “Hi, are you neuroman? Sign this, sign that, initial this, now piss in this little plastic cup.”
I walked into the bathroom, let it fly, and filled up the vial. Then I had to walk back outside to the hallway and wait in a line for several minutes while holding a cup of warm squirt so I can hand it over to company representatives. These representatives are eager to get their hands on my urine so it can be sent off and analyzed to make sure that I’m only putting legal poisons in my body during my hours outside of work.
I neared the front of the line. My thoughts were black. Why was I here? If I had been in a cartoon, there would have been a big, ugly thundercloud right over my head.
Two smiling young ladies manned the waste collection station that lay at the end of the queue. The gentleman in front of me handed them his tepid yellow excretion, and as he did so he cheerily said “thank you!” “Thank you for what?” I thought. For treating you like a criminal? For having your privacy invaded and being put under a microscope for no good reason?
I had to take a test before I started working here, but that didn’t bother me as much as this did. Before I was hired, they didn’t know me. Now they do. I have been here a year and a half, doing my job and getting my work done. (Yes, I have occasionally slacked at times, but whenever something needed to be done, I did it.) Today my company displayed how much trust they have in me.
Fuck this place, and fuck the authoritarian troglodytes who run it. My job search begins tonight.