A donor came in for a Federal DOT (department of transportation) test, and, had you walked in behind him, you would have thought we were a marijuana dispensary. We concluded he must have been smoking in his vehicle because the odor was so strong. For reference, marijuana is still federally illegal and DOT employees (truck drivers) are not allowed to use it. We proceeded to start the regulated drug test already very suspicious based on our senses. The donor produced a specimen we would not accept because it had a strong ammonia smell.

We had a CDL driver come in for a pre-employment DOT drug test recently. We were quite busy and were not able to attend to this donor for a few minutes as we were helping other clients. The donor, a transgender man, seemed to have anxiety and he could sense we were not going to get him to the collection area right away, so he asked to use the bathroom indicating he could no longer “hold it” – you might say he was doing the pee-pee dance!

Federal drug tests (aka DOT tests) are regulated by the federal government. As with many things run by the government, there are many, many rules that the laboratories, employers, and even the drug test collectors must follow. Some of these rules, as you can imagine, seem pointless. An example of one of the rules that seems pointless but does have a purpose is something the donor must do at the beginning of every DOT drug test. Before the collector gives the donor a cup to pee in, the collector must instruct the donor to wash their hands… That’s right, they have to wash their hands BEFORE the test. This rule is designed to prevent the donor from having a foreign substance on their hands or embedded in their fingernails – a substance they may then use to attempt to adulterate their urine specimen while in the restroom.

The collectors at First Choice undergo a lot of training to ensure that the person coming to work for your company is drug-free. Most of this training is passed from collector to collector, and some of it comes from online tutorials. However, all the training in the world cannot prepare you for some of the things we see at First Choice.