I went to college for this?

"I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample, it had an olive in it." - Rodney Dangerfield

We did surprise drug tests this morning. At the city's recycling center, which is the fancy name for the big, stinking barn where probationers sort trash into piles of the reusable and the disposable. There's no heat in the big tin barn. Only a cavernous expanse of trash. No air conditioning either. I'm so glad I don't have to do community service.

You can imagine the lovely restrooms they have there. They're clean, thanks to community service workers, but the toilets are rickety and wobble back and forth, making the concrete floors a damp and sloppy mess. The paint is peeling off the walls and the sink sported a huge green pattern of crusty water deposits that covered the bowl as a result of an ambitiously leaky faucet. The bare bulb over the sink lends a certain Alcatrazish sort of ambiance to the whole scene.

We had one woman who just couldn't go. There's always one. It wasn't that she'd been drinking or using drugs and her urine was going to be 'dirty'. She just can't pee on command. I don't blame her. I can't do it either. And I certainly couldn't pee with a stranger standing over me, watching to make sure I don't dip the cup in the toilet water or try to cheat by some other even less pleasant means.

Of course it was cold this morning -- only a few degrees above freezing and sitting on the pock-marked toilet seat must have felt like sitting on a penguin's nest. We'd tried twice already and now the rest of the crew was all done and she was the last to go. She'd drunk half a gallon of water and I had the faucet in the sink trickling suggestively onto the porcelain. It was working - for me, if not for her. The woman shivered and chattered while pushing and straining to fill the cup.

"Relax," I said, hopefully soothingly. "Just relax your muscles and let it flow." Where on my resume should I list 'Can talk urine out of a turnip'?

She tried and tried and strained and pushed. Then I heard an unmistakable noise. I bit my lip and feigned deafness. Her shoulders slumped.

"I farted," she said, totally unnecessarily.

"Keep trying, hun," I sighed. "We can't test a cup full of fart."

This is such a glamor job.