Hi. Sometimes I still have weird thoughts that aren't related to Disney films! Tonight's one of those nights where I'm having trouble sleeping, because anti-depressants have a way of simultaneously making me drowsy and giving me insomnia. (They also have a way of making me more depressed, always, no matter what it is. Truly, anti-depressants are the masters of confusing contradictions!) I'm hoping that having to endure my own ramblings on will finally be the thing that renders me unconscious for the night.
So, let's say that, hypothetically, you were an employee of some sort of government agency, of the sort that has to drug test a bunch of people. Let's look past the idea that you've somehow stumbled into a job where you have the misfortune of having to process copious amounts of urine, which sounds like a pretty horrific nightmare to me, as it would be to anyone, really, who isn't gross and icky and awful. (Hello, unspecified former roomie!)
Your hypothetical job is a very delicate one, of course. There's so many ways that things could go horribly awry. We've all heard about that silly myth about how indulging in a tasty poppy seed muffin can mark you as a reprehensible heroin addict and, oh wait, it's totally not a myth at all! And then, of course, there's the issue of pills.
Pills are everywhere. If a condition exists, or even just theoretically exists, there's a shady corporate monolith selling a chemical for it, jammed into a capsule of crushed into a tiny, colourful disc that looks dangerously similar to Sweet Tarts. And people gobble them up, like hungry little Pac-Men and Pac-Women, for that's just where we've managed to wind up as a society. (Nice job, everyone.) Sometimes, people take them when they're "supposed" to, as directed by a doctor, as directed by a shady corporate monolith. And then, sometimes, people find ways to take them when they very much are not supposed, because some pills are supposedly "fun". (Hello, unspecified former roomie's unspecified sibling!)
So, if you're commandeering this drug-testing, there HAS to be a way to differentiate between the chemicals that someone has decided an individual is supposed to have, and those that he or she very much isn't. It's such an obvious problem that we've surely developed an elegant solution, right? Weeeelllllll......
Okay, I'm sure you fancy big city folk in fancy big cities have a reasonable way to keep tabs on prescribed medications. But I, unfortunately, live in a not-fancy non-big un-city, where the local government has developed a rather inelegant solution for drug testing in general. A solution wherein you have to "register" for your "intake analysis" in one building, and then actually go get it done in a completely different building, like, a month and a half later. (I can't imagine they'd "catch" many people with this system, but then again, criminal stupidity never ceases to amaze.) So, when Surprisingly Pleasant Government Employee in the first building has to register a future testee, it's her job to make a record of whatever prescription medication that person is on, for the reference of the people in the second building.
Their solution is to have the future testee bring in his or her prescription bottles, throw them onto an old black-and-white photocopier, and produce an almost entirely black sheet of paper, with a smidgen of the label visible, which may or may not contain enough information to properly identify just what the fuck it's supposed to be for the people in the other building. (I'd probably be horrified to learn just how much of the county's tax dollars go into paying for all the toner it takes to print out all that empty non-bottle space.)
I daresay that any solution to any problem that involves trying to photocopy a three-dimensional object is an idiot solution.
Labels are removable, right? If you can place a label on something, you can un-place it. I can't, for the life of me, understand why they don't just take the label off, and lay that flat on the photocopier. So, y'know, they can get ALL the relevant information on there, with the prescribing physician, and the dosage, and everything. Not that the current "solution" doesn't produce useful information. I'm sure that one or two syllables of the drug name and a greyscale version of the pharmacy logo are very helpful indeed! But this would.....this would be considerably more useful.
Or, well, they have to take a photograph of the future testee, so the second building can recognize that he's someone with an actual valid reason to be there, and not, say, someone who has merely confused it with a urine bank and wants to generously make a donation. And it's a colour photograph, of course. Why can't they just take a photograph of the pill bottle? You'd have none of those weird shadows that come with photocopying, and it would be in colour, so they could appreciate all the totally radical shades they make prescription bottles in these days. (My Wellbutrin is in a rather deep, captivating, sapphirey blue, the perfect accessory for any formal occasion.)
In all seriousness, I'm in a portion of my life where I'm genuinely afraid. Not just standard Jesse anxiety, where I grind my teeth a little too much, and chew on my nails, and pick at my skin without entirely realising it, because the very concept of people is somewhat intimidating. It's actual fear. And I know I have nothing to be afraid of, because I am a well-behaved, cooperative, and very much not evil member of society. (New Avatar is enjoying Pedicularis densiflora, a wholly legal folk remedy for anxiety.) But....when this much confusing unfairness has been heaped on me already, it's hard to believe that being well-behaved and cooperative and very much not evil is enough. I don't want to go into the intricate details here, but when you have a mother who likes to lie to the police just to teach you a lesson about being more enthusiastic about having to watch reruns of Dr. Oz with her, and these lies are taken completely seriously, and suddenly your future relies on your ability to successfully recover from a condition that didn't exist in the first place......well, it's pretty hard to believe that everything will turn out just fine simply because they have every reason to. I now live in pretty much constant fear of whatever thing I might not do next. And, I find, the best way to address fear is to distract oneself with the mundane details of the situations I find myself in, which feel like they're very much the opposite of mundane.
And so, we have this. And so, I also extend a Challenge to the Reader: If you've read this far, then you, too, should contribute a solution, one that would be more elegant than making a black and white photocopy of a cylindrical object. Surely you can manage that, right? Points will be awarded on an arbitrary basis for creativity.
No comments:
Post a Comment