I work at a small town laboratory where we also do drug screen collections for Occupational Health.
One day, we had a guy in his late 40’s who came in for his pre-employment drug screen. To rule out specimen adulteration, one of the things we do is to check urine temperature.
Unfortunately for this guy, his urine was below acceptable limits. The company wanted us to recollect to make sure.
We told him the news and suddenly he is worried about his 80 year old mother who is sitting in the car by herself. Per protocol, he is not supposed to leave the premises in the middle of the procedure. He asked if he can briefly go outside and check on his mom, and we said “no”.
Later on, someone saw him pacing near the women’s restroom. About 15 minutes later, he was able to pee but to our dismay, same thing happened. His urine was too cold (less than 90F).
Not sure how this happened since both times he was able to pee right into the cup. Theoretically, it should be warm or close to body temperature.
We accepted the collection, noted what happened, and moved on. About half an hour later, registration called and told us his mother actually walked into the building.
Now it started to make sense. Both times he asked him elderly mom to pee for him. To his demise, he wasn’t able to keep the urine warm and end up failing temperature checks. When my team and I checked garbage bins, sure enough we found an empty supplement bottle with a bit of yellow liquid at the bottom which definitely looks like pee.We called the employer and told them what happened. Case solved!
People try to cheat the system. But bringing their elderly mother to pee for them is ridiculous! We all had a blast from the experience. Great detective work as well!
Submitted by:
Joseph Murdock
Medical Technologist/Scientist
Iowa, USA
