I was a urine analyst. Urinanalysist? I’m not even sure that’s the right term. I checked people’s piss for drugs. It was a hypocritical position to take, but it was better than homelessness. The goal of the company I worked for was to help big corporations pry into private lives to make sure no one was having too much fun. Our company’s motto was “Only the Best.” It was supposed to make you think that junkies can’t do their jobs. If that was the case, then America would’ve collapsed a long time ago.
I remember my first day, shaking the recruiter’s hand, walking into his office. I remember his question, “Would you like to make a difference in the world son?” I held on to that for months, that I was making a difference, that the job had a purpose. It didn’t. It was a shit job, but it’s not the sort of thing that usually leads to cracking a guy’s head open. Well, it’s not supposed to be.
In my case it was.
My whole thing, this whole fucking fiasco, it was all linked together - urinalysis, the clinical trial, drugs, flamethrowers, Grey Plague, strippers, murders, cults, Kansas City, the end of the world, all of it. It started with the piss testing.
Urinalysis isn’t exactly what you might think. You might picture men in white lab coats carefully measuring colored solutions and gently dropping them together before some sort of magic poof that indicates someone was high sometime recently. Everything is industrialized now. They didn’t need scientists in white coats. They needed bodies, hands, legs, manpower. What urinalysis actually looks like is acres and acres of tiny bottles of piss with little barcodes on them with dozens of people frantically scurrying around a poorly ventilated series of cubes finding the exact right bottle of piss to stick under some machine that does all the real work. My job was to sort piss bottles and try not to be late. As long as I did that, I got a poor wage, a few benefits, and the privilege of coming to work every day to be browbeat by whatever hard-working, mortgage-paying, nose-to-the-grindstone type had just been promoted over me.
The moment where everything went wrong was the first moment I did something different.
Most urine stinks. It stinks terribly. I'm not an expert at many things, but if there was a gameshow called “Name! That! Piss!” I’d take home all the prizes. Grand Champion. I’m the guy they bring back for Sweeps Week, the guy that guest hosts when the regular host is out, and the guy that does the interview for Game Show Magazine or whatever and gets the cover story. Head honcho. A#1. I’m “That Guy”.
Now maybe the guy or gal giving the sample chugged 64 oz of water right before. No odor. Maybe some young executive comes in hungover, and he’s been chugging 20oz coffees all morning to try and make it seem like he’s coherent. When they ask him to produce a sample, he spits out something that stinks like burnt shit. Or even worse, you get a gal with a nasty urinary tract infection? You can almost spot those from a distance the urine is so thick. Smells like European cheese that’s been left out for days. The worst though is vegetarians. Lots of asparagus. Did you know not everyone can smell the chemical that makes asparagus color your urine with such a pungent odor? I read that one time. Everyone metabolizes asparagus the same way but only a blessed half of us are able to detect the body’s readout. And I was the most blessed of all.
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“Dr. Robins?” I knocked on the door of the Senior Director of Analysis meekly, expecting the same brush off I had received a number of times before.
“Yes, come in.” The good doctor fumbled around his internet browser to close whatever gossip website he had been staring at. Apparently, he was more focused on the science of starlets.
“Did you know that all our samples that correspond to patients that have eaten large quantities of asparagus show up positive for heroin?” I was so nervous I barely got the question out. I meant to tell him that I had done some research. That I had looked into this. That there were was a basis for my blurting out this random factoid. Instead, it was straight to the point.
Dr. Robins laughed. “I did. How did you know that? You’re right regardless, well, almost. Not quite. We don’t measure “heroin” as you call it. We measure the presence of a long-lasting metabolite called 6-acylmorphine. Do you know how our HPLCs work? The machines that you use every day? The lines that go up and down are determining how much of something is in each urine sample. What you are actually seeing is a false positive. It means the assay got goofed up. Unfortunately, this is something we’ve known about for a long time. If samples contain extremely high levels of a compound called methyl-thiobutyrate we cannot determine the levels of 6-acylmorphine. The lines are too close together. We just ask for a new sample at no charge to the customer and have a separate assay that detects methyl-TB as we call it. If we find methyl-TB in the second assay, we notify the customer it was a false positive and problem solved. It’s a small loss honestly, and our methodology is otherwise the best in the business. It’s all in the paperwork.”
I smiled. “Did you know that is the most anyone has taught me in the four years I’ve been here?”
“It’s the most I’ve taught. This is a business. You learn everything they want you to know on your first day. Otherwise…” he drifted off. “You should be going honestly. This is probably more ‘teaching’ than the upper brass would prefer.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The singular moment that altered the shape of my life, really everyone’s lives, is the fact that I stopped and did exactly what I was told not to do.
“Hey, what’s the name of that stuff again? The stuff that screws up the machines?”
“Methyl-thiobutyrate.”
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Do you know how many stores sell methyl-thiobutyrate? I do. Lots. Basically any supplement store. And it’s not harmful or illegal, you can get as much as you want. And it’s cheap. A common nutritional supplement.
Did you know most corporate espionage happens from within institutions? For every million-dollar ransomware, there are thousands of instances of guys like me watching someone else type their passwords in and stealing access. You see, any sample I get is coded. I have no idea who it is. I can’t leverage that. I needed names. Phone numbers. Addresses. It was no bother. The coders were sloppy with their typing. It was mostly old women who henpecked everything because they never learned to type. I found a reason to be a few feet from one of them and watched her peck out the whole password.
It’s a business. You learn everything you need to know the first day.
Here’s one I bet you did know - people usually get fired if they test positive for heroin. It’s not because they are bad at their jobs. Jobs are repetitive and boring. The nuances are small and mostly inconsequential. If you got fired for every time you missed a nuance there wouldn’t be jobs anymore. Everyone would be fired. You can do normal jobs and be a heroin addict. Right now, all over the country, there are people loaded on smack who are currently mopping the floors, signing affidavits, and measuring concentrations of drugs in tiny bottles of piss. Corporations can’t have it though. It would create an imbalance. “If Janice gets to do heroin, then I should get to have a mid-morning Chardonnay.” These imbalances get discussed in committees and managerial meetings and video conferences. Sides form, left and right, pro and con, until there becomes an all-out war. Work stops getting done. We all have our vices, and in corpo-world the worst possible outcome is imbalance.
They prepare you for this for a long time. It’s like my kindergarten teacher said, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
I took all this information, and I simply put a puzzle together. I have a product I can get cheap. I know the customer base. How do I integrate my product into the Company pipeline? I didn’t like calling it blackmail. Maybe I offer my product as a service? I just need to pick the right clients.
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When you sit down and you know you are going to make a bad decision it’s not usually done in a vacuum. I was a fuckup. I had spent a lot of time trying my hardest, found that it rarely helped or made a difference, and came to accept that I was, at my core, a fuckup. I was 28, I was unmarried, and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Union City, GA just south of Atlanta. My hobbies included rampant masturbation, drugs when I could find them, alcohol when I couldn’t, staring at my tv, and falling asleep. The funny thing is that even though my job was simple, I still wasn’t any good at it. The fuckup’s curse. Or maybe it’s hard to care about how good of a Narc you are on a day-to-day basis when you find yourself racing home to smoke pot. My only motivation was making rent, buying drugs, and not being homeless, and really only because of the stigma. If someone was to make a tombstone for me, it would say “John S. Brunsen – human male.” My parents were dead. I didn’t have a lot of close friends anymore. I didn’t have a lot to lose because I never really gained much to begin with.
I’ve heard that all crimes are crimes of opportunity. People commit crimes because someone forgot to lock up their store, a bank manager failed to monitor accounts, you know, shit like “it’s her fault for getting too drunk at the party.” Is it possible that crimes can be due to lack of opportunity? I was decidedly average in most things. I wasn’t that smart, I wasn’t that good looking, I wasn’t that lucky, and I didn’t come from money. I made more than minimum wage, but barely enough to survive and I hated every minute of it. Did I become a criminal because I didn’t have any opportunities, or did I become a criminal because it’s the only opportunity I had?
Stolen story; please report.
When I started planning how to operate my new business, I made a lot of the decisions upfront. We’d deal in quality over quantity to keep the cash transactions manageable. It would be a boutique store, catering to particular clients. No face to face and no repeat business. I needed folks that could actually afford to pay me but weren’t going to call 9-11 three seconds after they hung up the phone. You couldn’t just approach anyone. Lots of these folks didn’t give a fuck. I mean, for Christ’s sake, if you’re shooting copious amounts of heroin then losing your job is typically not your numero uno concern.
Do I find a guy with a family? Or a woman who takes care of her sick aunt? I thought about it and crossed those off. Robin Hood steals from the rich, not the desperate. Speaking of, no one poor, they can’t afford it anyway. No one political, they have too many friends. You need the right person. You need Business Assholes with a reason to keep going to work. All this info was in the database. All this info was at the tip of my fingers.
My first call was a beauty. Still one of the best moments of my life. I set in my one-bedroom shithole apartment, on my dusty old couch staring at my broken tv and made almost half a year’s salary in 3 minutes.
“Hi Business Asshole (I don’t recall his name), I am an Associate (he didn’t need to know mine) with a local drug-testing company and I wanted to call you with your results.”
Hard gulp on the other end. Good sign. “Yes?”
“You tested positive for heroin.”
Hard gulp on the other end. “That can’t be right.”
“You know, that’s what I thought too. I thought that can’t be right. This fine and upstanding gentleman must’ve had an error in his test. If only there were a way we could rectify that together.”
Long pause. “Fuck you. You can’t blackmail me,” he said.
I laughed. “This isn’t blackmail. It’s an opportunity. You see I consider myself an outside consulting firm. I take special interest in specific clients who I think might be wronged by our Company’s actions. The Company and I don’t see eye to eye on all things, but that’s aside the point. I think I can help you.”
Another long pause. “How?”
“The next step is always a confirmation sample. Your HR will get your results tomorrow and will immediately ask you for a second sample. You will probably be placed on administrative leave. This is our suggested protocol, and most companies use it. That sample will be expressed to the front of the line, we will find whatever you have in your urine, and you will likely be fired and prosecuted.” Would he be prosecuted? I have no idea. Probably not. The threat seemed real though.
When he started crying, I felt bad. I genuinely did. I almost hung-up. But then I heard myself talking. “I can help, but it isn’t cheap. You need to leave $9,500 cash at the location I am texting you now. Not 10K, not 9K. $9,500. This is a burner phone. If you try and call the cops they will trace this to a trash can. When you get to the site, there will be a small bottle taped beneath the water fountain. Drink it. If I don’t find the money, I’ll make sure you test positive and absolutely nothing will help you. You leave the money, everything else will solve itself.”
Long pause. “How do I know this will work?”
I said, “You don’t. But you’re fucked already, so I’d take the rope being thrown at you before you drown.” At this point, I didn’t know if it would work either. He’d take the dose. I’d spike the original. After both were re-tested, it should be false positives.
“$5,000”. Later I’d learn they all try this, but I wasn’t really in the mood to negotiate.
“Goodbye sir.”
“Wait! Ok!!”
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When I saw the results “false positive, both samples” flagged for my first client, the near heart-attacking inducing anxiety relented. It worked. I was up $9,500 regardless, but it still felt good to know the whole thing worked.
Over the next few months, my business was very successful. Integration into the Company pipeline was virtually seamless. At $9,500 per unit, my profit was around $9,498. Keeping the values below $10,000 kept me and my clients below disclosure values. Keeping the clients classy and happy kept me making money. There were probably tax implications, but I was too chickenshit to learn about them (and they were definitely criminal) and figured as long as I kept things low key the IRS would be too busy for me.
I fell into a classic trap though. Too much success too early. After my 20th or so successful run, I started getting texts at all hours of the night. People asking for my services. Willing to pay more. Did I do cocaine? What about weed? The highest offer I received was a million that went up to five million when I said no. He was positive for cocaine and I couldn’t do anything about that. Part of me wishes I had just taken it and ran. Rejecting more than ten times your life’s earnings when you are sitting in a 300 sq. foot dump staring at old pornos and a half-broken bong was hard. I was still in control at this point though. I still had a head for it. That didn’t last long. How could it? I didn’t feel any pressure. I didn’t even stop to think that doing something illegal might catch up to me. Was it even illegal? All I was doing was giving people a harmless supplement I told myself. White collar crime. Worst case I do 3 years in minimum security. Probably less since I can afford a decent lawyer.
I had slowly converted all my funds to cryptocurrency and retirement was maybe 3-4 years away. I was approaching Easy Street, my turn signal was on, and I didn’t have a care in the world.
That lasted a few months. The money kept coming in. I kept doing business.
I never saw it coming, but when I saw two security guards at my cube, I was concerned. When I saw the head of HR I was terrified and when I saw Dr. Robins, I knew I was fucked. Do I run? What if I just never come back. I split off from my usual path into the bathroom. I looked for vents. How do they do this in movies?
“Mr. Brunsen? We need to talk when you are available.” The sound of Harry from security’s voice echoed throughout the bathroom.
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I was in a small room now. I was alone. It smelled like coffee. There wasn’t anyone else in the room. I was nervous. Very nervous. I pissed myself a little. How poetic.
Then they came in. Harry the security guard, some Suits, Dr. Robins, etc… "We can help you," they said. "You’re in trouble, big trouble." "We know everything." "If you play ball, maybe you can keep your job." "We’d have to move you, but it’s a possibility." "Just tell us everything." There was a mix of straight up “you’re fucked” style hardball and your classical good cop, bad cop. I was in trouble and they were only here to give me a hand and maybe fix this thing in a way that could keep all our heads above water.
It was like hearing my own pitch thrown right back at me.
I guess that meant I was the client, but was I the right client?
When everyone was finished, when they were giving me the opportunity to come clean, I started talking. I hadn't really heard anything they said. I'd just been thinking. “I think there has been a big misunderstanding.”
“John, you should help yourself here.” Dr. Robin’s concern for me was both real and endearing, but I had other plans.
“No.” I said. “This is definitely a big misunderstanding. If what you were all saying is true, then the Company would have a huge problem.” Wait, how the fuck am I even doing this? Am I really this guy?
A guy in a suit I had never seen before responded. “We are prepared for that option.”
I interrupted. “There would be an internal investigation, I would be fired, the police would probably be called. That sort of thing leaks like a sieve. Probably all of our biggest clients would hear about it almost immediately. Because if what you are saying is true, we lied to dozens, I’d guess close to 34 clients by this point about top-level executives. Right now, the CFO of a major financial Corp is laced to his fucking gills with top shelf China-White and we didn’t even find it? What about ‘Only the Best!’ That certainly would make us less than the best. There would probably be lawsuits. Big lawsuits. A lot of people would get fired. Maybe the Company gets shut down. Maybe Bankruptcy? How long can you fight lawsuits from a half a dozen major corporations? How many years can we go without income? And what if the FDA finds out?”
I stopped. I had to breathe. I can do this? I can do this. I interrupted before anyone else could start talking. “I’ve been tardy a lot recently. You’ve probably noticed Harry. I snuck in through side doors. Dr. Robins, when I approached you in your office, I remember the conversation being very rude. Isn’t that so?”
Dr. Robins gave an apprehensive look but raised an eyebrow in interest. “John, are you sure…”
“Yes, I was extremely rude to you. I called you an asshole for never promoting me. I’m sorry Dr. Robins, that was rude. You were good to me. I regret not doing more for you and how I spoke to you.” I stopped to breathe again. I told myself I was almost there.
I continued. “What’s done is done though. I understand that the Company wishes to fire me, and I will leave willingly. Because of my tardiness and my brusk and inappropriate response to Senior Management. I don’t expect a positive referral.”
Harry leapt from his chair. “This is bullshit, the cops are on their way and they are going to search...”
The suit placed his arm on Harry’s chest. “Ahem…I don’t think we need the police for a little HR incident like this Harry. Mr. Brunsen apologized and has accepted his actions. Dr. Robins has accepted his apology. I think he will probably focus on his next job a bit better. Maybe get his life straightened out. If everyone could give Mr. Brunsen and I the room, I would appreciate that.” Harry and Dr. Robins filed out almost immediately.
I stood after the left. “Thank you for the opportunities I received here sir. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors.” I stuck my hand out to shake his. The Suit did not stick his hand out.
The Suit clenched his teeth. “Did you really think you would get away with it? Right under our noses? Who do you think you are Brunsen? Above the system? Better than the job? You think you’re just this guy who can do whatever he wants?” Veins bulged from Suit’s neck. “You think this is funny right? You know I could have your ass if I wanted. Your little stunt doesn’t mean shit to me Brunsen, and whatever nonsense you were talking about with the CEO of some company you had better keep to yourself.” The Suit pulled a piece of paper out of a folder. “Random sampling Brunsen! You agreed to it in your contract. There it is!” The Suit slapped down the paper on the desk. “Hot as a god damn Carolina coal mine!”
I looked down at the piece of paper. It was one of our standard forms. It said I pissed positive for THC. Marijuana. I was being fired for smoking pot. They had secretly taken my piss from a toilet and tested it, but I was the fucked up one?
“You make me sick.” The Suit left the room.
This was the best news I have ever received, period.
I hoped no one noticed the stream of urine down my pants when I walked out the front door with the biggest smile on my face of my entire life.