I am on the verge of having a nervous breakdown after today. Ok, here’s the story: I have been unemployed for a long while and finally, finally, FINALLY landed a job - a GOOD job two weeks ago, via a job placement agency. At the end of the job interview, I was told quite incontroverably “You’ve got the job!” The company did have to do a mandatory background check and drug test before I could start, but that was no sweat on my part. There is nothing in my background for me to worry about, and all I had to do was go to a Quest Diagonostics Lab within 24 hours and provide a urine sample. Then wait. I have not had so much as a drop of alcohol in years, so again nothing for me to worry about. I wasted no time getting to the Lab first thing the next day, giving them a sample, and then all I had to do was wait for them to say “come in!”
This morning I get a call from the recruiting agency saying I’m all set to start on Monday morning at 8:30am. I was SOOOO happy to hear that! “Yay, I have a sense of purpose, a place to go to in the morning and a steady paycheck!” I felt great.
For about an hour. Then I get a call from the agency. “We’ve got a slight problem, and may have to push back your start date. Also, we need you to take a drug test.” I explained that I already had, about two weeks ago (the day after I had my interview.) The recruiter asked me a bunch of questions "What lab? What day? Do you know anybody who can verify this? in what I can only describe as a troubled sounding voice. I explain where and when I took the test, and in response they tell me “Uhhhh, we’ll look into this.”
When I filled out the paperwork at the place I am theoretically employed at, the HR person made a big point of emphasizing that I had to provide a urine sample within 24 hours of the interview. This was the one and only concrete, steadfast, un-negotiable, YOU-MUST-GET-THIS-DONE requirement. I did what I was supposed to do. And now two weeks have elapsed, and my sample has seemingly disappeared.
Since the lab I gave ths sample to is just a few blocks away from where I am currently staying, and I had nothing else to do, I walked over there and asked them about it. I told them “I provided a urine sample for a drug test two weeks ago, but my employers never got the lab results.” The lady at the front desk instantly blurted out “That can’t be right. We immediately send all our samples to the central lab the day we get them. It’s not our fault.” She made no effort whatsoever to verify that, or look up any record that might prove that. She just simply gave me a phone number to call and send “talk to them” and with that passed the buck.
I called the number. After waiting 30 minutes to talk to someone, that person said I was not considered a client - my employer was - and therefore I was not allowed to hear any information about a test I had taken. I tried to explain that I don’t even care about the results - I know they will be negative - I just want it confirmed that I had provided the sample within the 48 hour window I was given by my (potential) new employers. She hung up on me.
I’ve waited all day for word back from the recruiter. I called them twice, only to be given a run around. So at this point, I have no idea what the situation is, nor if I actually still have a job to report to on Monday.
Just so you have some context - I had a great job that I enjoyed and paid me a living wage back in '10. Then I was let go because of the crummy economy. For the past five years, I have been either unemployed, or underemployed. I have struggled along in a succession of minimum wage or next-to-minimum wage paying jobs that did not cover my increasingly frugal monthly expenses. At one point, I had to go on day-long fasts once a week because I simply could not afford to buy enough food to cover every day of the week. (I went from 184 lbs to 152 lbs in the space of a few months.)
I have exhausted every last penny of my savings - my regular savings account, my retirement savings account, and I have maxed out three credit cards all just to stay afloat. Last fall, my unemployment benefits ran out. My only source of sustenance now is an EBT card that is rapidly dwlndling.
I lost my apartment in Brooklyn in August after I finally had to admit I could not afford it. I have been basically couch-surfing ever since. I had to move out of NYC (am now in Philadelphia) because I simply couldn’t find a place I could afford to live. At one point, I even filled out a job application at McDonald’s, and got no response.
All this should give you an idea of how desperately important this job is to me. I am facing the very real prospect of having to go live in a homeless shelter if I don’t get working soon. And as if the idea of not getting the job wouldn’t have been painful enough, I had actually LANDED THE FUCKING JOB ALREADY! And now the thought that it might be snatched out from under me because of a bureacratic screw-up is enough to make me lose my fucking mind.
So this afternoon, as I sat waiting and fretting anxiously, I happened to glance across the kitchen at the stove, and at the oven - the gas oven. And for the first time in my life, I truly contemplated the idea of just ending it all. “Everybody has to die some day,” I thought to myself. “It sure don’t like is going to ever better.” So why not just get it over with now and spare myself however many years of endlessly, pointlessly struggling just to keep existing?
Well I’m wracking my brain for a reason why I shouldn’t. I am drawing a blank.
