Reputation is defined as: a widespread belief that someone or something has a particular habit or characteristic.

A donor recently came in and gave a specimen my collector would not accept. I am not sure of the exact reason, but the most common reasons are that the specimen’s temperature is out of range or suspected substitution (we get lots of synthetic urine around here.) The collector explained to the donor that we could not accept the specimen because we did not believe it came from his body, and he was welcome to provide another specimen, but, if he left the clinic, it would be a “refusal”. The donor became a little belligerent and wanted to argue that he was not refusing to take the test – he gave us a specimen and we were the ones refusing to accept it. We tried to explain what a “refusal” meant as it relates to drug testing. In the drug testing arena (as in most industries) we have a unique vocabulary that has definitions that differ from society in general. Here are a few of those terms and how they are defined by our industry:

As First Choice Drug Testing Collectors, our best weapon to thwart cheaters is not the temperature strip on the cup; it’s our “6th sense”. Over the years, we have developed an ability to sense when something is just not quite ordinary about how a donor is acting. It’s not just one thing and it’s not always the same behavior – cheaters all have different mannerisms and verbalizations that usually give them away before they even hand us their sample.

It never ceases to amaze me what donors will try to pass off as urine. We recently had a donor supply a sample that the collector (a mom and a pretty good cook) swears was chicken broth. I guess the color is somewhat similar, but the smell gave it away instantly! Perhaps she had gotten away with using chicken broth in the past at some other clinic. We hear quite often from cheaters that they’ve done drug tests for years and have never had a specimen rejected by a collector. They seem dumbfounded when we tell them that we cannot accept what’s in the cup and we discard it.