What has world has come to when your job depends on your ability to pee on command? Why now? Why is that woman shouting instructions through the door and why in the heck is the cup so small?
These were questions running through my head in the face of my first UA, urinalysis, test. I must have overthought it because I could not accomplish a drip. I tried. Really, I even scrunched up my face and gave it all I had. The only things I didn't do were the "mom" tricks I used to get my kids to pee, because they are NOT allowed or they fail you.
I knew I suffered from test anxieties, but the humiliation of failing to pee for a test was not an option and the more I thought about it, the only water flowing was my tears.
I got to spend the next 10 minutes listening to a lecture about diluting my sample (that was assuming I was ever going to be able to pee again) by drinking water to accomplish my goal in time period allotted, and questioned as to why I would react to a test like this. I had (up until that point) never been treated like a criminal especially for something I didn't do.
I then spent the next two hours allowed in a space about 10 by 10 feet waiting for the blessed event the urge to pee under the watchful eye of a woman.
The only urge I began to feel was an urge to quit my job. I realized the irony of the saying "pissed off." Here I was mad at being treated so badly, and yet I could not pee.
A call to my husband the only man I know who would drop everything while at his job to take a call from crying woman whose first words were "I can't pee! She's watching" helped.
"Nan we do this all the time. We make choices as to what is worthy to give up our personal freedoms for on a daily basis. Do you want to order online? Then we have to give up our privacy to give them info so some monkey can track us, or better yet, we handed over the family's privacy to be shook down by the government so that your brother can get his security clearance he needs for the Air Force. It's a choice and you are the only person who should decide to give your rights away."
I hung up. He was right he will faint to see that in print I give away my privacy to get rewards from stores.
I like my job, so I decided it was worth it. I still felt dirty, like I had done something wrong or prostituted myself for money.
Over my drama, I was able to accomplish the job.
It made me think about what I have given away without thinking, the stuff not worth giving away, mailing lists, telemarketers and online purchases. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how conditioned we have become to hand our rights over.
I have been come hyper-aware of what people ask or tell me. I am aghast at the types of information just handed over.
Worse than that is what we allow other people to take from us line tapping, fingerprinting, background checks and term limits, to name a few.
The last is a pet peve, and Tuesday is a day to go out and exercise our most basic, and for me, important right, to vote. I'll be darned if I am going to let someone tell me how often I can vote for someone I like on the premise that it is good for me.
This is not my choice. My civil liberties are worth more.
If we don't get to choose we might as well flush the democratic system down the toilet and skip the pretense of a pee test altogether, because we would all be guilty of giving up.
This column is the opinion of Clarion newsroom assistant Nan Misner. She can be reached at nancianna.misner@peninsulaclarion.com.
Editorial