A Quick Word

In case anyone wonders, things are nuts here. The clients on my case load seemed to have lost what little sense they may have had. There brains fried and they are now running in extra stupid mode. This means MORE work for me. Example. I can't go into too many details yet as we haven't gone to court, but one of my beloved micreants called and rescheduled do to work issues, then he missed the meeting. I called and set a new appointment up. His wife called the night before the appointment and said he was in Nashville at Vanderbilt Hospital with his father who had had a heart attack. Now let me give you a bit of history. This man had worked at the same factory for about 3 years. He had just a month ago changed to a construction job. He claimed he was passed over for a promotion and quit. I was later told, after the missed appointment, by another client that he had been fired for a dirty urine test. He was also supposed to be being evicted for failing to pay rent and lying about his new job. Now someone was verifying the job over the telephone, but it was a cell phone number. I had not seen an actual paystub. Anyway, I would not reschedule his appointment. Not ten minutes later he called and begged me to reschedule claiming he did not want his wife to have to drive to Nashville that night to get him. I stuck to my guns. From the conversation, it was implied that he was in Nashville at Vanderbilt and she was here. When I hung up, I checked my cell phone. They had both called from the same number. He was supposed to be 100 miles from here. Either she was already in Nashville with him, or, more likely, he was here. There was no way they could both call from the same number and not be together. He was here at 8:30 the next morning and his urine was VERY clear, it was also very positive for amphetamines. The lab confirmed amphetamines at a high level and a low specific gravity. In other words, he had taken the speed recently and had spent the night drinking water, or using detox kits, or drinking some of the nasty crap that are supposed to defeat drug screens.

Latest trends in attempting to defeat the drug screens. Drink surejell. That's right, the clear gelatine stuff used to make jams and jellies. Drink it. If you don't like that drink bleach. Yep, if the phosphates and detergents don't kill you, you might not fail the test. Another traditional trick is to scape the white crust off the top of the bottle and wedge it under the fingernails. Then they try to pee across there fingers.

My experience with the bleach is that you usually get a chlorine odor off the urine and the test kit usually doesn't register positive or negative. On surejell, water, or detox kits the urine is usually very clear. If it isn't the middle of the summer and/or the client isn't a farm or construction worker, this is suspicious. Some of the detox kits are smart enough to add a "b" vitamin to color the urine, but the yellow color of this tends to be a very bright yellow that is different than the normal urine color.

Probation officer tricks: examine fingers before test looking for stuff under the fingernails. Calling them in for a drug screen a week earlier than there appointment. Don't let them wash there hands until after the screen is complete. Don't give them the lid for the sample, put it on yourself to notice any chlorine odor (you don't have to sniff it, it is usually strong enough to notice in a small room if you leave the lid off for 3o seconds or so.)

This isn't even counting the sneaking someone else's urine in. So far I have seen pill bottles, balloons, condoms, syringes, baggies full of piss. They usually screw up trying to get it into the cup. They also can rarely keep it warm enough, so the thermometer on the cup should show low.