We recently received a call from a client informing us of an individual coming to take a drug test. This individual had failed a drug test in the past and his employer gave him a second chance a few weeks later. If he could pass this one, he could get his job back. There was only one catch though…this drug test had to be directly observed.

Drug users are the most convincing people in the world; we see this every day at our clinic. Those that get the news they tested positive swear that they don’t do drugs, and those we catch trying to cheat try to convince us the specimen they gave us came out of their body, even though our training tells us otherwise. Its human nature to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this cant be done in the drug testing world. Training and science are always on our side. That being said, we have heard many excuses over the years after we catch someone trying to cheat a drug test. Most of them involve needing to leave immediately after we reject their first specimen; whether it be a doctor’s appointment, needing to get to work, or even sick relatives. Some people even claim that their grandparents pass away conveniently after we call them out for trying to cheat their drug test. Of course, we have no way of knowing if any of these situations are true, but the timing suggests they are not. We can’t bend the rules for anyone, even if it does mean they will be late for a doctor’s appointment or late to their job. If the person taking a drug test leaves before giving a specimen the collector will accept, it’s a refusal which is the same as a positive, no exceptions.

We recently had a donor come into our clinic for a drug test. He was accompanied by his friend, I guess for moral support, both looked to be about 18-20 years old. The first specimen we were given was way too cold, so the donor was told he would have to try again. When someone tries to cheat a drug test, we move them to an isolated waiting room. We do this because over the years we discovered “friends” would show up at our clinic and give the cheater some more clean urine. We separated this donor from his friend so they couldn’t pull off any such shenanigans. The donor’s friend must have suffered separation anxiety, because he was pacing all around the main waiting room. He would come up to the window where the First Choice Staff was working and ask us questions. He asked us everything from “do you like you jobs collecting pee all day” and “do you guys test for STD’s”(we do not, some samples just aren’t worth collecting). As he was talking to us, he was spending a lot of time looking down at our consent forms and playing with our pen attached to the lectern where donors sign in.

Temperature isn’t the only way to tell if a donor gives a good urine specimen. There are many, many, other ways our collectors are trained to determine if the urine came out of the donor’s body. Sometimes the temperature can be perfect, but we will still reject the specimen; I won’t go into details that determine if we reject a specimen but if you ask a First Choice Staff member they will happily share some of them. This particular cheater story involves a specimen that had all the signs of a bad sample.