6:45 p.m. - 2003-08-19
pissy attitude
I finally had a job interview today. They'll call me back a week from today when my drug test and background check both come back clean, and theres no reason why they shouldnt. And then, Oh glorious day my dearest reader! I will finally have aquired gainful employment. Many months of poverty are soon ended. Glory be to the Paycheck in the highest.
Its a crappy cashiering job in one of those enormous stores that everyone looks down at, but everyone shops at, that sells some of everything and puts other stores out of business. Insultingly low wages, but anything is infinately better than nothing.
I was filling out the paperwork at the end of the interview and they had me sign a drug screen consent form, (which I've signed for every job, but never taken seriously because nobody has ever enforced it) and then the woman hands me a sheet of paper with a map and instructions that says I have to go all the way across town to pee in a cup WITHIN 24 HOURS of the interview. What fresh hell is this?!?! For THIS job?? I thought you had to be on drugs to want to work here.
(At this point the very very squeemish may wish to move on, go read about about some 16 year old girls crush on a boy who treats her badly, and how much she hates homework and her parents. Much of the rest of my story takes place in and around a bathroom.)
I'm one of those people who can only go to the bathroom with the door closed and locked, even when theres nobody else home. Public restrooms dont bother me, except when one of my friends cant be pursuaded out of being "nice" and accompanying me to the bathroom and standing right outside that stall. Why would you want to do that? Give me some freaking privacy!
Mind you, I've peed in cups before, but as part of physicals, by real medical professionals, and usually after all the other batteries of tests, weighing, poking, prodding, jabbing me with thick needles and sucking out my precious precious blood. After someone squeezes gobs of jelly, a cold metal apperatus, and an entire gloved hand into your Holiest of Holys, you've already given up all semblance of dignity and peeing in a cup and walking back with a cup full of your own urine and handing it to some poor nurse, doesnt seem all that bad by comparison.
Anyway, I drink several glasses of water and head on down to the drug screening place. Its a grungy little office that does nothing but drug screening. I doubt that they're trained mediacal personnel at all, but theres no doubting that they are very very rude. Surly even. Not conducive to pissing. I wait my turn, and I feel like a could pee a little, which is usually all they need, so he gives me the cup, shows me the line I have to fill it to, and I go in, try to pee, but I'm only filling it halfway to the line, so I sit there for a little while trying to make myself pee more, which is a very strange thing to have to do. I was thinking to myself: "Why am I doing this? Because I need the job, because I need the money. Why dont I just put a camera in the toilet and then pee, and sell it to perverts on the internet. Cut out the middleman."
I wasnt really worried about time limits because when I went in there was nobody else there waiting. A few minutes later the guy pounds on the door and yells at me! "If you cant go youre going to have to wait outside!!" So I come out and ask him if what I had was good enough but he says it isnt because theres a time limit. If I take too long the test is invalid, and have to do it AGAIN. And now the lobby is mysteriously full of people. And theyre all looking at me. And they know. I'm that retarded girl who cant even pee right, theyre all thinking.
So I sit and wait in the lobby. Waiting and drinking water, forceing myself to need to pee. Waiting and drinking and waiting and drinking and waiting and drinking. My stomach is painfully full of water, when I move I can feel it slooshing around and am nauseous. Finally everyone else has gone, and I can try again, and this time I succeed! And now I take a sick sadistic pleasure in handing the man a cup full of my warm piss, knowing this horrible rude little man has to do this all day long.
Suddenly cashiering doesnt seem so bad.
