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Tale of the HR drug test form
Posted by Fired Fred on April 2, 2007 5:57 PM
This little prank I pulled a while back, long enough to be past the statute of limitations anyway, was pretty much my finest hour.
My mark ended up being an affable party hound we'll call Tom to protect his privacy and my facial structure. We were among a hundred cube dwellers doing customer service in a call center. Like a lot of companies, they insisted on a pre-employment drug screen.
One day, I had to go to the copier to do something work-related, and one of the HR drones had left an original, signed form on the glass. This was the form that applicants aspiring to cubedom had to take to the local piss-taker and make a contribution.
Remember kiddies, whiskey is a perfectly acceptable drug marking the consumer as a decent all-around type person. Pot or other illegal substances meant you weren't going to be allowed to confine yourself to a cubicle for nine hours a day, less lunchtime and breaks. I'm not about to discuss the war on drugs here, but the testing served to inspire me to this little gag.
I quickly snagged the form and headed back to my cube. Between calls, I composed a masterpiece of a letter to Dear Associate. He'd been randomly selected for a new corporate drug screening process. As it came from the corporate level, he was prohibited from openly discussing it with co-workers or supervisors. An included toll-free number could be called to "consult" with a third-party firm about the testing (I think I made up one that turned out to be a real number for drug counseling).
He had to take the test within one hour of the end of his shift. Failure to do so would result in his termination. At the very bottom of the letter, which I'd printed on a pilfered copy of corporate letterhead, I wrote in 6-point font, "If you've read this far, you can relax. This is just a joke. Gotcha!"
This was on a Friday, and I managed to slip it onto his desk before he went to lunch. I enjoyed a quiet chuckle, then finished my day. We both had to work Saturday morning, and I looked forward to finding out how my little prank worked.
As it turned out, Tom didn't read all the way to the bottom of the letter. He told the story the next day.
Upon finding the letter, he'd nearly had a coronary. Tom had done some harmless partying that would be a corporate death sentence in a drug screen. Rather than enjoying his short lunch break on Friday, he hauled over to the nearest GNC and spent more than $25 on stuff the clerk assured him would "clear him out."
Tom didn't talk to anyone at the office. He did try calling the number I'd provided, which as I mentioned turned out to be a legit drug addiction counseling service. They didn't know anything about the screening. That freaked him out more.
After work, he sat in his car, sweating bullets, hoping the supplements had made some impact, reading the letter over and over. Until he finally got to the bottom and knew he'd been had. At which point, he says he screamed out loud.
Tom was several inches taller than me, and when I confessed (while convulsing with laughter) on Saturday morning, I fully expected to get pummeled. It didn't happen. He was a great sport about it. I thought I was being put on, but he was serious. How weird is that?
To think, I have HR to thank for my best prank.
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