Donations, Please

So, I got a call today to go see the clinic. That means my lucky number came up and I was required to donate a couple of samples for drug and alcohol testing. I am required as a condition of employment to donate anytime I am called upon. No big deal, I've done it many times before, ho hum.

Only this time, I was about to go to the field, and had just suited up with my flame-retardant overalls, boots, hardhat, goggles, gloves, earplugs, earmuffs, safety glasses, badge, wallet, and a couple of booklets I would need while doing a field tour. So when I got the call to go to the clinic, it was inconvenient, but I had no choice. Resigned to just get it over with, I went right over (you have to arrive within 30 minutes of getting the call).

So I arrived and was told I was going to be their guinea pig. They had a new system and apparently I was the first one to be subjected to it. And, the nurse was apparently new. No big deal to me.

First I blew into the breathalyzer. It read +0.000, no alcohol detected. I signed a piece of paper verifying that I saw the reading on the machine, half done already. But then they gave me a cup for a, um, sample. I said I didn't think I could donate the amount they were requesting. No problem, they said, we'll just put you on "the wait list". I was told to have a chair, drink some water, and keep track of how much I drank, but to not drink more than three cups of 5 oz. each. Ok, no problemo. After 15 minutes I announced that I thought I was ready.

The nurse took me into a bathroom and showed me a toilet with a blue dye in it, and told me not to flush. She gave me the cup and told me to fill it at least half full. I was really in a hurry to get to my other appointments by this time, but was nervous about the quantity requested. I closed the door, and did my best to fill that cup halfway. I just couldn't get there, and was wondering what they would do now?

I took the sample back to the nurse waiting just outside the door. She needed to make sure I hadn't scooped any blue water out of the toilet as a substitute sample. I hadn't. She looked at the sample quantity and thought it would be ok, and split it into two smaller containers. Whew!

Now, back to the room where we started to complete the paperwork. Nurse sat at the computer and pulled my name up. It asked if she wanted to remove me from the wait list. She clicked yes. It asked if donor (that would be me) had refused to donate. She clicked no. It asked if she really wanted to remove me from the wait list. She clicked yes. It removed me from the list and went to the opening screen. She realized she had deleted me from the system--a real boo-boo.

Nurse called another nurse (I guess; he wasn't dressed like a nurse; meep; were you stereotyping there? yes, it was a he-nurse) to see if he could help recover me. He couldn't.

They called tech support for the software. After 15-20 minutes, the nurse got mad at tech support and told them they would hear about this from Corporate, and that they should know more about their own system. Then Nurse called Corporate for help. Corporate couldn't really help either. Nurse continued to fiddle with the system. Nurse took out a piece of paper with bar code labels on it to label the two samples. He got the first label on but the second label got all boogered up (that's a technical term) and couldn't be used. Corporate called back and they kind of got something working on the computer. Another set of labels were pulled out, and they got boogered up, too. A third set, and then a fourth all got applied to the little yellow samples before a bar code was finally readable by the bar code reading machine. There were so many labels they were afraid they wouldn't be able to open the bottles! So an hour and fifteen minutes later, I was released. Samples, off to some lab somewhere. What a job someone has--analyzing samples like this all day long!

The things I deal with that my ancestors never even had to think about!