OP wasn’t worded the best, but here’s the deal. I am required to give up my urine tomorrow for a drug test. Fine by me. I assumed that I would be heading over to a Quest Diagnostics or a Dr.s’ office. Nope, I go to the temp agency and pee there. How is this medically/sterilely/logistically sound? Or even legal? This is a temporary employment agency. How are they allowed to collect my urine without potentially compromising something? These are office workers. I mean, I know that collecting pee from someone isn’t rocket science; I’m just surprised that they’re allowed to handle this aspect. Any ideas?
I dunno - I’ve had I think four in my working history, and none of them have even remotely followed the posted procedures for making sure the sample is mine and sterile. I could have smuggled an entire different PERSON in the back door for one of them and no one would have known the difference. And mine were all at actual offices dedicated to collecting the things! Given that slack attitude, I can’t see they’d have much problem farming out the actual cups and bathroom to an agency.
From my experience, it’s a legal CYA, a time-sink for the applicant, and a way to see if they’ll follow through on directions to go and do it. HR at my current workplace tells me that about one in every 20 or so attempted hires never actually shows up for the pee test. Either they applied and never thought they’d get it, so they weren’t worried about their pre-existing drug habit, they got high to celebrate their hiring, or they’re so flaky they couldn’t make it to the appointment - either way, the HR lady figures that’s a good additional weeding-out tool.
I was drug tested at a previous job. It was monthly and random. THEY came to US, set up shop in our conference room, locked up the excess bathrooms, and we submitted our samples in the office. Imagine the smell. Some cups would still be sitting on the table from the person who was there before me, and because it was such a small office, you knew whose urine it was. In my case once, it happened to be the boss’s wife, whom he had on the payroll so she was forced to play along (she got paid for that), and just for TMI’s sake, her urine was very, very dark and reddish. Something was wrong with her.
I would hate that job.
Does sterility matter when you’re testing for drugs? I’d think that would be more for bacterial testing. I agree, though, that it’s odd to have office workers handling that. Ick.
Yeah, I mean I had to do the pee test thing once before at an actual diagnostic facility and these guys meant business. It was taking me awhile to “go” and I had a guy knocking on my door say, “Ok, you’ve had enough time in there. You need to finish up and get out.” To me it’s also icky to pee in a cup and hand it off to just regular office-type personnel. Just seems weird.
That happened to me last year. The dark reddish pigment was bilirubin, which is normally broken down further by the liver instead of being excreted and the fact that it wasn’t set off a billion red flags with the doctors and I spent a few days in the hospital getting every test they could think of done to rule out a billion different liver failure scenarios. Turned out it was just a rare complication of mono that went away on its own in a few weeks, but there were a billion things it could have been that all were cancer-level or worse.
So yeah, I hope your boss’s wife went to the doctor.
Well, those guys weren’t doctors and didn’t really care if she had a problem. Just that she didn’t have drugs in her system. So she probably didn’t.
Nope, it doesn’t have to be sterile at all, just what is called ‘clean catch’. And obviously, you want it going into a clean container that is certified free of anything that would contaminate the test or give false results - such containers/cups for medical use are usually also sterile, but they don’t have to be.
Needless to say, universal precautions are an absolute must when handling body fluids of any type, including urine. That’s for the protection of the handler. Hopefully, the office workers have had some training in that.
Is it possible that the people handling the testing are actually contractors brought in from a lab to do the work on-site? That would make a little more sense. I know one company I worked at had a small lab set up just for this in the corner of their facility - someone from another company comes by at regular intervals and handles all the drug screening there rather than sending people across town. At least in this case, though, it’s a lab, not a conference room!
I was once forced to wait an extra hour or two until I could pee again to fill a second cup because the idiot technician at the place forgot to check the temperature (to verify it was “fresh”) of the sample, and by the time they did it had cooled down too much to be acceptable. I was livid, since it was clearly their fault, but they threatened me with “if you don’t go again, we will tell the hiring company that you FAILED the drug test” which I’m pretty sure was illegal of them, but I wanted the job and the drug test was mandatory (especially since it was for a pharmaceutical company where I had access to a ton of drugs, including narcotics and opiates!)
Are you using sterile in the sense that the test is not compromised by untrained persons?
I can see that there would be some major issues there if it were to become a court case, however, if you work for a temp agency, and they are too cheap to have it done correctly, then I’d just find another temp agency.
I don’t think its a big deal. The container you had should have been sealed when they gave it to you. YOU broke that seal so you know the container wasn’t tampered with prior to your business.
After the peeing, you should have closed the container, then placed a different seal over the container, a label or something. Then the labs would know that the sample wasn’t tampered with AFTER your business.
That’s at least how it went for me.
I feel really bad for the women. That must be hard to pull off.
I once took a “urine test” for a temp agency in their office. They never even sent it to a lab to test it. They checked to see if it was the right temperature and dumped it in the toilet. Needless to say, I ending up working with a lot of drug addicts through them.
Ew.
I am not opposed to random drug testing in principle, and I tend not to be a wave-maker at work. But I have to believe I’d raise a stink (!) if I were subjected to this. It sounds highly unprofessional, not to mention just plain gross.
If a pee test isn’t performed to certain standards, it won’t stand up in court. What you went through was a rinky-dink operation that is probably more for culling out the more blatant druggies, as Lasciel described upthread.
“Clean catch” is the protocol for a complete urinalysis that includes testing for bacteria and infection. Drug screening doesn’t give a hoot about that, and the cost for drug screening won’t cover the extra steps for a clean catch.
The MAIN POINT in the collection for a drug “piss test” is to verify that the urine sample is actually produced by the person in question. This type of test, done properly, means the person has a witness who SEES him/her urinate in the cup.
The urine is tested with a dipstick.
The person administering the test needs to be gloved, and must comply with all procedures in handling medical waste.
If the test isn’t witnessed, if medical waste disposal procedures aren’t in evidence, the whole deal is extremely unofficial, and it shouldn’t raise your hackles much.
~VOW
My urine looks like that for a day or so after i eat beets. (ETA: it’s called beeturia)
If i ever have to take a drug test, i think i’m going to have a large beet and asparagus salad the night before.
And now, the rest of the story. I had to report at 10:30. By 9:30 I had to urinate urgently. I arrived on time, ready to burst and the nice lady at the temp agency hands me a “swab” to hold in my mouth for a couple of minutes. I felt like an idiot and was about to pee my pants. She said a lot of people assume it’s a urine test. Uh, then maybe tell them right off the bat! Grrrr…
It can also result if she’s taking AZO or similar products.
I don’t eat beets, so I wouldn’t know about that, although I do know she drank a lot of champagne. I do know, however, that at our other office (with the field workers, not office workers) they’d lie their asses off to get the employees to come in and take the test, because one would come in, and realize, and call all his coworkers. Who would then not show up. So they’d let everyone show up, literally lock the doors, and test them. One guy who was a very good worker, got caught putting something into his urine to fake out the test. Not in the middle of the test, but after, when it was actually tested. Got fired.
I’ve also heard from friends that if you go to those places that sell “drug” paraphernalia, even if it’s for cigars or etc., you have to ask for it by name. You can’t ask for “that thing that makes it look like I didn’t take drugs.” They’ll feign innocence unless you tell them the actual name of the thing you want.
Are you sure the drug test is urine? I worked for a security company that did onsite drug testing using an oral swab. Much cleaner/easier than urine, though not as effective at determining drug use for periods longer than a few days.
Yes, the OP updated us in Post #16. She said she found out it was a swab test after all, and not a urine test as she’d assumed at first.