It honestly surprises me how sometimes seemingly minor occurrences can bring forth long-forgotten memories. Even though these recalls can happen frequently, I always find myself excited to experience them.
This time the memory recall was due to a pre-employment drug test. Having to submit to one is not a common thing for me. Counting this most recent one, I have only had to submit three in my lifetime.
The first two were just under 25 years ago. That job was as an operations secretary at a school for youths at risk. In an earlier story titled: The Ride Stops Here, I describe the school and some of my duties.
Before being hired at that school, I was expected to submit to a pre-employment drug test. Of course, as I expected, I passed with flying colors. The second test occurred in the same place as a random drug test set in motion by the following incident.
At the end of one of my workdays, I was in the process of finishing up a few reports when I heard loud voices coming from the hallway outside my door. The voices were clearly coming from some of the older teens. It was also quite obvious to me that a fight was about to break out.
I did not think twice about investigating. Most of the students were completely manageable when treated with compassion and respect. I went out to where these kids were and was blown away when I saw that there was, in fact, an adult there who was allowing the argument to escalate!
The particular man had been the operations manager (my boss) when I first started. He had been promoted to project manager a few months after I started.
He was always pretty hard on the kids. When I had first started, I found myself thinking he was too hard on them. After a few weeks, it didn’t take long for me to understand these kids needed tough love to learn how to function in the real world. They needed to know that the roads they were traveling were not healthy ones.
As the months wore on and I was getting a feel of the kids and how the school worked, I began to think that this guy was bullying, and tough love had nothing to do with how he interacted with these kids. Around this time, rumors began that when he would find drugs on these kids, he would, of course, confiscate them. The stories, though, were that he was using drugs too. It was also said that he had key kids that were supplying him.
At the time of the above incident, none of the rumors had been proven. Also, at that time, I had no knowledge of the stories.
As I came out of my office door and saw this argument escalating, all I could think of was the urgency of stopping what was about to happen. I ran up between the two boys and yelled for the aggressor to back off as I stood directly in front of the boy that had been forced back against the wall. I turned and faced this boy and kept saying to him over and over to not engage. I told him he was doing so great at the school, and it was not worth going back to jail.
The project manager who was supposed to be supervising them, I could now hear that he was actually egging these boys on trying to get them to fight!
The young man I stood in front of was starting to hear me and calm down. Upon seeing this, the project manager started screaming at me to get back inside my office. I did not move until I was sure the boy I had been talking to was utterly calm, and he assured me he was alright before walking away.
Looking around at the rest of the kids, seeing that none of them would go after this young man, I went back to my office. The project manager came storming after me, yelling that he would have me fired for what I did. The adrenalin was still pumping inside me as I whirled around and told him that if being fired was the action for deflating a totally out of control situation, then so be it. He stopped yelling and left. Talk about being rattled! Every part of me was shaking. Only it was not from fear, but absolute anger!
The next day I found I was still angry about what I witnessed, so I went to my boss. I told him everything I had seen. He could clearly see how upset I was. He assured me I had done the right thing at the moment, and he told me it was also the wrong thing. I could have been seriously hurt. He saw that I didn’t care. I was that committed to these kids.
Later that day, the executive director called me into her office. When I walked in and saw my boss there, I found myself wondering if maybe I was in trouble. She assured me I wasn’t and asked me to describe what happened between the project manager and me.
A few days after that meeting, she notified 10 people; she and I were included in that group and were chosen for a random drug test. The project manager was, of course, also one of the people in the group. What happened next was unbelievable.
When it is decided that a random drug test is happening, everyone involved is supposed to drop what they are doing and get on the bus outside. These people are not allowed to take anything with them except their I.D. card. The project manager said he had to go to his car and get his I.D. card. We watched from the bus as he basically tore his car apart, looking for it. Then because he couldn’t find it, he talked the executive director into having the bus take him (and the rest of us) to his house, 10 miles out of our way, to get the card. Upon arriving at his home, the executive director had one of the other men go in with him. The two of them were in there for a good ten minutes. I found all of this quite suspicious, but I did not say a word.
After finally arriving at the facility and settling into the waiting room, we found that they would be taking us in for the test, two at a time. I was sitting next to the executive director, just kind of staring at the floor in front of me. I was vaguely aware that the project manager was pacing around the room, but I did not give it any thought. That is until I heard something small drop onto the carpeted floor and saw that it was a small clear bottle, with clear liquid in it, which rolled under the coffee table in front of me. It was immediately followed by the project manager diving under the table after it. The project manager was a tall and rather bulky man, so this was almost amusing to see. I saw him tuck the bottle into the waistband of his shorts. I whispered to the executive director, “Did you just see that?” Her reply was that she had not.
I told her what I saw, and the light began to dawn on both of us. She told me not to say anything. Ironically, the project manager was called in just before the two of us.
She and I were waiting in a hall directly across from a closed bathroom door when we distinctly heard glass hitting up against porcelain. When the door opened and the project manager came out, we both knew what we had just heard. We just looked at each other with our brows raised.
After he went back out to the waiting room, the executive director got up and spoke to one of the nurses. She then called me over to verify what I had seen in the waiting room and what we had just heard behind the closed bathroom door.
When all of us were back in the waiting room waiting for dismissal from the facility, the nurse came out apologizing that one of the vials submitted for testing had accidentally become contaminated. She called out the social security number associated with the test. As the project manager stood and went back in to resubmit his urine, he looked quite nervous.
Back at the school, the call finally came with the results of the tests. The project manager was the only one who had failed his urine test. He was escorted to his office to gather his personal belongings before being escorted out of the school.
Jumping ahead to the present time, I am happy to report that my latest pre-employment drug test experience was thankfully quite dull in comparison to the one described above.