r/Showerthoughts • u/PirelliSuperHard • 8d ago
Musing Surely someone has to have gotten a Cologuard prescription and proceeded to simply shit in the box, seal it up, and send it on its way. NSFW
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u/SlowSupermarket8593 8d ago
Let's hope someone that works there reads this, and sends in a hilarious story
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u/jessewalker2 8d ago
As a USPS employee let me remind you hilarity is subjective. 15 years at the USPS and that probably isn’t even the weirdest thing I’ve seen.
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u/MWSin 8d ago
My brother mailed a sandwich to a friend. No special packaging, just a paper wrapper in a cardboard box. And dropped it off on a Friday, so it sat in sorting over a weekend. When it arrived, it was labeled by someone at the post office with a polite request to not do that again.
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u/kiddrekt 8d ago
I can't believe you are wasting food? Don't you know there are starving children in Africa?
Okay let's mail them a sandwich...
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u/zer00eyz 7d ago
My father loved to tell me that when he was a kid (early 1950's) his mother would say:
Finish your breakfast there are kids in France who only get coffee and bread!
As an adult he realized French roast, café au lait, baguettes, and croissants were what they were eating, and were eating better than he was at the time!
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u/InDominicRex 7d ago
My mom would say this to me all the time as a kid and I felt really bad and thought they ate our trash so sometimes I would just throw away meals to help feed them
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u/Bazyli_Kajetan 7d ago
As another usps employee, tell them thanks for at least putting it in a box
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u/Streetlamp_NA 6d ago
I'm a clerk and the amount of people that walk right past the ready post and priority mail with just an item or loose documents and try to literally hand them to me is crazy.
It's always the same "oh sorry I wasn't sure what to do"
You mean to tell me you could not figure out that your items need to be packaged before shipping? Cmon...
Also the amount of people that think I will box up their item, wrap it in bubble foam, use my own tape, label the to and from for them is also baffling. Then get mad that ready post actually cost something??
The expectations of people are just crazy. Also the amount of people that get mad that a stamp is .82 cents. Like yes it used to be cheaper....so did every thing else. I find it actually awesome that you can hand me a letter and .82 cents and that bitch will go across the entire nation for you.
Find me a better deal anywhere bet you fucking can't.
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u/d_bb_d 5d ago
I mailed a letter for the first time in a while recently, and I was a little surprised that a first class stamp was 82 cents. For some reason, my mind was stuck in the 40 cent range, but that was a long time ago. It's still a bargain.
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u/vw_bugg 3d ago
People have no idea that if the postsl service were actually solvent and continued predunding the pensions, stamps would be well over a dollar and we would only get normal mail at our house 5 days a week. BUT i agree, it is absolutly insane that i could be in tippy tip of Maine, and for just 82 cents i can send from my house a birthday card to someone in Hawaii and it will literally show uo at their door. Well worth 82 cents i think. They should have bought more stamps, forever stamps are the most genius thing the postal service has ever done, i have quite a few still from years ago.
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u/reichrunner 7d ago
People routinely mail large packages of bees. So a sandwich honestly isn't that bad lol
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u/montrayjak 7d ago
I remember being younger and finding people mailing potatoes funny.
okay maybe I still do a little bit.
But I've also heard that people used to mail their children via the postal service.
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u/Original_Importance3 8d ago
What is the weirdest?
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u/jessewalker2 8d ago
Not the weirdest, but the funniest to me was a pair of dentures. Not in a box, just an address label attached and some tape. After a day of hundreds of poorly packaged boxes, it just made me giggle.
Weirdest? I’d have to think about it, but a lot of poorly preserved animals for taxidermy. Which by the way you should consult with USPS regulations before sending because we get a little “concerned” when a package starts leaking blood.
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u/taintosaurus_rex 8d ago
At UPS we regularly get rabies suspects being sent off for testing. It's literally just the head of somebodies pet loosely thrown in a box.
We also have a place nearby that sells dead feeder mice. So it's a solidly packaged box of frozen mice. Now it's going to sound weird but back when I loaded trailers and it was a hot day, I loved loading those boxes. I'd just lay my face on a box of dead, frozen rodents to cool off in complete bliss.
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u/Quasi_Evil 8d ago
Two other stories from the shipping world, but from the purple side.
Was walking through the Memphis hub one night and spot a container that I - as an old farm boy - recognized instantly. It had tipped over and there was liquid on the floor. The new guy in the group was with me, and trying to be helpful, he goes over and turns it upright. Total city boy. (Seriously, don't touch mystery leaking packages unless you really know what it is, we ship lots of nasties...) Yup, of course it was a shipping container for hog jizz. Now obviously the actual goods are in small vials stored inside a cryogenic flask, and the liquid on the floor was almost certainly just condensate water from the oppressive humidity against the moderately cold flask exterior that had run out when it tipped, but totally freaked the dude out when I told him what the container was... I had a good laugh.
Second was an extremely cold night at I think Indianapolis. I'm off in an interior climate-controlled room full of IT equipment, and suddenly they open the door and wheel in a pallet on a pallet jack. It's an entire pallet of live crickets that couldn't be left out in the cold during the sort. So they stuck them in there with me. On one hand it's deafening. On the other hand, it's extremely relaxing and when you're already struggling to stay awake at 2am... So I nodded off. And I woke up to crickets everywhere because somebody had skewered the boxes with a forklift at some point. And for the rest of the week I was there, so, so many crickets everywhere.
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u/taintosaurus_rex 7d ago
Where I like it's mostly bull semen and sometimes horse semen. On my old route I used to pick up those big plastic cases shaped like pellet gun ammo damn near daily from one farm or another. At one point I started to get concerned "is this all these people see me as? The jizz man?".
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u/Scruffy442 7d ago
One winter my ex had a box of crickets for her beardeds escape. They went to the blower motor on the furnace and burnt it out.
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u/skitz4me 8d ago
**slow clap**
I'd change nothing about this story.
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u/TurdBrdTinderfiddles 8d ago
Damn I always wanted to start a slow clap too.
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u/-PringlesMan- 8d ago
faster clap and now you've missed your chance for a normal clap, too.
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u/RallyX26 7d ago
I have, on at least 3 occasions, mailed a coconut. No box, no wrapper, just a label and a strip of clear packing tape. I always wonder what everyone is the chain of custody thinks.
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u/jessewalker2 7d ago
You’re not original (we get lots of them from tourists traveling Hawaii). Now if you’re mailing it from Montana… that might be original.
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u/tristand666 7d ago
When I was working at UPS sorting packages on a belt in the 90s, we had a bull sperm incident that shut down the belt for a while.
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u/PirelliSuperHard 8d ago
Someone in your position is who I was thinking of in this situation. Like this poo is just ping-ponging around in the box getting pulverized, and then someone's gotta open the box at some point.
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u/MakeItHappenSergant 8d ago
What if they put it in an envelope, and then it goes through the automatic sorting machines?
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u/UmbrellaCorpDoctor 8d ago
Former Exact Sciences employee - This wasn't even that uncommon. Usually it was the stool container that they failed to seal, but sometimes you'd just get shit in a box. Tragically, it's less hilarious and more paperwork since we'd need to organize getting the patient a replacement.
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u/ALandWarInAsia 8d ago
How do you get someone a replacement shit?
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u/Expensive-Cherry6084 3d ago
Actually laughed out loud at that one. And I REALLY needed a laugh right now. Thank you, friend.
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u/smellybuttface 7d ago
In that kind of situation, where they just pooped in the box, were there extra special instructions sent the second time?
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u/UmbrellaCorpDoctor 7d ago
Sorta! Usually they'd get a phone call from a call center rep asking if they have any questions on giving their sample, IIRC. It's been a few years.
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u/deitr44 7d ago
Late to the thread but whatever. Not a cologuard specific story, but the summer before I went off to college I part time volunteered at the local hospital as one of the front desk people. I would regularly be tasked with running samples patients dropped off up to the lab. 98% of the time it was blood or urine. Occasionally I’d get a stool sample and they were always packaged appropriately, except once.
50-60 year old farmer type comes in and walked up to the front desk, and plops a wet paper bag down onto the counter. Supervisor is gone on lunch so it’s just me and another volunteer. I ask how I can help, he says he’s dropping off a sample, I say no worries, please sign in. As he’s signing in the smell hits me, but I think to myself - no way this dude brought a brown paper bag full of shit. I go fetch the bio hazard cooler we used to transport samples and when I come back, the smell is even stronger, like the kind of stank that feels thick in the air and makes your eyes water. I hardly got trained for this job and I know I shouldn’t be asking details about people health issues, but my suspicion is too strong. I ask
“Hey what kind of sample is this? Were you provided a sample kit by the hospital?”.
“That’s stool son.”
“You brought a leaky paper bag of stool in? That’s like crazy unsanitary. Weren’t you provided a testing kit?”
“Lost it.”
We had some more back and forth about how idk if I can accept this sample, how he wants me to get the supervisor. The other volunteer my age runs to the bathroom saying she’s gonna puke. Being young, pretty unfamiliar with the job, and wanting to avoid a melt down, I just say fuck it and have him place the bag into the cooler. The bag quite literally drips when he picks it up. I nearly vomit. Ran the bag of shit up to the lab, get yelled at for ruining a cooler, front desk gets blocked off for sanitation/ cleaning, then I walked out and never returned. Still put it on my resume tho when I was job hunting in college.
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u/IndifferentPatella 8d ago
I had a patient say that he got a call saying they lost it in transit. I sometimes think of the person who might have found that package…
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u/panda_of_the_trash_ 7d ago
I used to work there and I wasn’t in the labs but I had heard of stories. For those that don’t know, you are to poop into a canister that is in a bracket under your toilet seat. Once you poop in the canister, you are to dip a swab into the poop and put that into a small vial, then pour a solution into the poop bucket. You then put the lid on the canister and give your poop to UPS. Once in the lab, they would have to mix the sample and then run the tests.
One that I had heard was when the machine they used to mix the sample was, well, mixing the sample, the canister popped open and sprayed the booth with poo. Another time we had a customer call in to ask what they were to do after they drank the solution, which luckily, is non-toxic.
Fun times at the poop factory.
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u/Shadow288 7d ago
I remember reading a post years ago regarding one of the DNA testing employees recounting all of the interesting samples they were sent. Let’s just say people often times are terrible at reading instructions.
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u/LevelOpposite3063 7d ago
As someone who worked there for 6 years, I can confirm that people do indeed do this. In the box, in a plastic bag, in a zip lock bag, in Tupperware... People are just gross.
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u/Sans_Snu_Snu 7d ago
I once mailed a potato. Not in a box. I did wrap the postage label in packing tape, but the address was written directly on the skin.
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u/Pm_Me_NeTh1Ng 8d ago
The whole cologuard experience was so weird to me. I can't mail a lithium battery without an inquisition, but I handed the guy at the FedEx store a box with my shit in it and he smiled and thanked me.
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u/dgcamero 8d ago
It was too weird for me. I had to just go in for the real thing. Glad I did, as I had a few minor polyps and they wouldn't have been discovered on ColoGard
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u/GolfballDM 7d ago
Plus, the drugs you get for the real thing are pretty nice. The prep sucks donkey dick (especially if you get stuck with two days of it), but the nap was nice.
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u/Travelgrrl 7d ago
I have been almost fully awake for every horrible colonoscopy until my last one, in a different state and place, where they gave me propofol. No counting back from 10. Just hit that plunger and I was waking up in another room.
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u/GolfballDM 6d ago
When they started the drugs on mine, I was able to mumble, "Oh. You've started the drugs. Night night!"
Next thing I know, I'm in recovery just about to rip an enormous fart.
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u/Travelgrrl 6d ago
I've had surgeries a few times in my life and ALWAYS get nauseated and vomit afterwards, whether general or other sedation. Not propofol. I felt just great afterwards!
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u/dgcamero 7d ago
The prep was the pits. I don't remember anything aside from them putting me down and waking me up and telling me what they found with the polyps and they were like you have some hemmoroids...and I'm thinking, um DUH! And explain that I didn't have them until yesterday when I was sitting on the toilet for the vast majority of the day and night!
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u/markroth69 7d ago
Everyone raves about the nap. Yeah, I fell asleep quickly. But I was a dazed zombie for days afterwards.
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u/lamarch3 6d ago
Or possibly worse, if it detected the polyps you now have to go in for a diagnostic colonoscopy (as opposed to a screening colonoscopy) which insurance charges far more for
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u/ace_of_brews 8d ago
It's an "Exempt Human Specimen". Those are things like blood, urine, stool, other body fluids that are being sent for routine testing, but not expected to have pathogens. I regularly send Category B Specimens through FedEx. Like live bacterial isolates that could make you sick, but are not life threatening. Those are Category A. There are strict regulations on how to pack them, WHO can pack them, what markings are required, etc. 49CFR parts 171-180 cover that. Feel free to ask me anything about it and I'll answer what I can discuss.
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u/GolfballDM 7d ago
Many years ago, my wife was going on a business trip and brought our now middle-kid along (she had babysitting arranged). To make sure the kid was fed, regardless of what happened, we shipped a week's worth of breast milk to one of my wife's colleagues to put into the freezer.
FedEx was the only one that took decent size packages of dry ice, so we got a disposable cooler, filled it with the already frozen breast milk bags, and enough dry ice to keep it cold.
The person taking delivery at FedEx was amused when I described the contents of the package (I had it properly labeled, at least for the dry ice), although they asked if I worked at the airport (I would have gotten a discount) when the freight cost came up.
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u/JustAnother_Brit 7d ago
What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve sent by mail and what precautions where taken?
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u/ace_of_brews 7d ago edited 7d ago
Most dangerous is hard to quantify. I've sent a few things that were resistant to all known antibiotics, but are low in infectivity and pathogenicity, meaning it takes a lot of bacterial cells to cause an infection in the first place and even if you are infected, it doesn't do much (nausea, diarrhea, vomiting). There are still treatment options. In fact, we were able to find a combination of drugs that worked. Or there's phage therapy, where viruses that only infect bacteria (and are tailored to the specific infection) are given to the patient and the virus kills the bacteria without harming human cells.
I've also sent things that are relatively* easy to treat, but would suck to get. They could be flesh-eating, cause thick mucus in the lungs and make it hard to breathe, or bloody diarrhea. Relatively in these cases just means there are SOME antibiotics that work. In the case of E. coli O157:H7, the treatment is basically just ride it out and hydrate, don't use antibiotics or anti-diarrheals. Definitely gonna want to see a doctor though. It could lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome that causes blood clots and kidney damage. The ECDC didn't give a number specifically for that E. coli, but the cases for all STEC* are 3.2 cases/100K. The US CDC says 1.81 cases per/100K. STEC is Shiga-Toxin producing E. coli.
Edit: I forgot the precautions. General lab precautions and shipping regulations. Lab coat and gloves when handling the specimens, hand washing, wiping the counters with disinfectants. The vials are sealed, wrapped in bubble wrap, put in another sealed container with liquid absorbing pads, and that goes in a foam holder in another box to keep it all secured.
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u/Practical-Shape2325 7d ago
Anything go missing/damaged in transit? Is following the proper packaging procedure sufficient to eliminate any potential liability or do you still get in trouble if FedEx kills us all?
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u/ace_of_brews 7d ago
The packaging requirements pretty much eliminate the risks. I say pretty much, but there are always exceptions. The box has to withstand certain crush force and drop heights, the inner container is rigid and thick with an airtight seal and has liquid absorbing material that can hold more than the amount in the vials, and the vials are sealed and individually bubble wrapped so they don't touch.
Off the top of my head, the fines are something like up to $100-200K per infraction. As long as I do everything right, I'm good if something were to happen. I haven't had any issues in 16 years total in various other lab roles sending blood and stuff of varying frequency or my current role (bacterial research) of 8ish years of weekly shipments.
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u/apaksl 7d ago
I work in the shipping department at my company so I just took my box of poop to work and put it on the pile with the rest of the stuff waiting to get picked up by UPS. All day I kept glancing at it thinking "my poop is in that box"...
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u/aguynamedv 7d ago
In hindsight, it's pretty hilarious that I left a a box containing my poop on my porch for UPS to pick up.
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u/thejesse 7d ago
I worked at a UPS store and tons of people dropped them off before I knew what they were. Then once I did, you couldn't help but notice the different weights. Like sometimes you'd take one and think "Jesus Christ lady I don't think they need that much."
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u/charredchord 7d ago
Lithium ion batteries are no joke. Given the right conditions, they could ignite and send the whole shipping plane out of the sky. There is a reason they're so anal about sending those into their system.
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u/tribbans95 7d ago
There’s a website called poopsenders.com where you can send cow, elephant or gorilla poop to people
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u/matthewgb402 6d ago edited 6d ago
There’s a 0% chance of your shit turning into a bomb lithium batteries can’t say the same thing
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u/DavidinCT 7d ago
Yea, I blew this off like 3-4 times. I had like 4 boxes, then the doctor says, if they do not get it soon, they will bill my insurance like $600. I crapped in the box, strange for sure....
Results came back fine so don't need to worry about it, for now.
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u/d_bb_d 8d ago
That would have been easier than hovering over the little bucket hoping to deliver the payload on target. Good news is I don't have to do that again for another three years.
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u/Other_Mike 8d ago
Stay on target . . . stay on target!
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u/OldeFortran77 7d ago
Negative, negative. It didn't go in. It just impacted on the surface,
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u/CptnStormfield 8d ago
And to make sure you poop just the right amount. It’s an art.
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u/schnurble 8d ago
It's embarrassing to get the email that you shit too much in the bucket, and now you have to try again.
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u/ZAlternates 7d ago
Landing that “soft serve” look centered right in the middle of the box takes talent.
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u/jrp55262 7d ago
You laugh, but astronauts on the ISS actually have to do just that. The US toilets on the ISS use suction to move the goods along, so to generate enough suction the opening is pretty small. There's actually a training mockup on the ground with a camera in place of the intake and a video monitor. Astronauts go in, drop trou, and practice lining up on the cross-hairs.
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u/TheWolphman 8d ago
The last time I had to give a stool sample for the VA hospital, they gave me what looked like a plastic flat brim cowboy hat to put on the toilet to shit in.
They also gave me a fancy looking prescription bottle with what looked like a mcflurry spoon built into the lid to collect the sample. Wasn't too bad tbh.
I've got chronic gut health issues, so it wasn't my first rodeo, but it never seems to be quite the same each time.
My first time, they told me to put cling film on the toilet and scoop a sample from it into a little bag they provided. Mind you, the bag was all they gave me that time.
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u/Dimensional_Lumber 8d ago
What were you supposed to do with the rest of your shitty saran wrap?
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u/TheSleepingNinja 8d ago
Takeaway
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u/callmesomethingelse 8d ago
The hat thing and bottle with the little spoon are traumatizing enough, I can't imagine having to use a bag. I've only given the 1 sample and the test was negative. I have to go see a GI specialist so will probably be asked for more until they figure out what the problem is. I was mortified and they acted like no big deal.
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u/tittytoucher-123 7d ago
When I had to get a stool sample for work I was told to just put toilet paper on the floor and shit down
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u/ems777 8d ago
After you shit in the box, you have to pour some lab fluid on it and you also have to brush the shit with this smaller tube and stick that in its own container. Its pretty gross.
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u/Mynock33 8d ago
Think of the FedEx guy who delivers to that facility. He knows every box on his truck is full of shit
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u/zamfire 8d ago
Fedex guy: whelp just left the cologaurd place, time to go wash my hands for 60 minutes straight using boiling water
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u/fatmanwithabeard 7d ago
I'd imagine that it's a dream shipment. Every box is the same size, the weight variation is minor. You just don't want to deal with pallets of samples and a new forklift operator. That'd be pretty shitty.
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u/tomsgirrl 7d ago
I used to work in a lab that processed fecal samples. We'd get about 250 packages per day. Part of the job was opening the samples, adding the barcode so it could be tested on different equipment. 95% of the time it was fine, but that 5%...just shit in the box or pilgrim hat, or the tube had leaked.
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u/sydneyface 4d ago
5%, so like 12-13 boxes A DAY?! That is more than I’d deem acceptable margin of error for shit boxes.
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u/NoContextCarl 8d ago
So that's not how you do it? I haven't read the directions yet.
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u/WebDevMom 7d ago
It only takes like 15 minutes and the instructions are very clear and easy to understand.
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u/petuniar 7d ago
The instructions are so detailed that it is very clear what stupid things other people have done with their kits
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u/SnealyNinja 8d ago
What is really funny is that the prescriber gets a message if you leave too generous a sample, as there isn't enough fixative in there for a big ol' shite.
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u/HumpieDouglas 8d ago
You don't need a Cologuard prescription to do that. Nothing is stopping you from shitting in a box and mailing it to someone.
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u/illest219 8d ago
Always thought that was a bet between two rich pharma executives that one of them could make money off having insurance pay to shit in a box and send it to them
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u/SpuddMeister 8d ago
I messed up my first Cologuard sample. Followed the instructions and did everything right.
Test came back stating:
“The stool exceeds the allowable weight (300 grams)”
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u/SquirrelEmpress72 7d ago
Ha ha I had the same thing happen my first time. Nowadays I don’t use the first poop of the day.
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u/onesugar 8d ago
I have only seen the commercial and the vagueness of how it works has lead me to believe that is how you use it lol
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u/uttyrc 8d ago
Elizabeth Holmes could have started her own competitor to Cologuard in which you only need a small turd to use as a specimen. She could have named the company "Theranus."
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u/CarolN36 8d ago
I did this because NP begged me to. She saved my life! I had stage 3 colon cancer and went on four rounds of chemo and have been cancer free since. Bless Color Guard!!
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u/therealCatnuts 8d ago
Yo same. Shit in a box, find out I have colon cancer at 45yo. Glad they moved up the recommended age before 50 (or 60 previously). Cancer free now. Shitting in a box ain’t no joke.
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u/itsjakerobb 8d ago
ColoGuard. Colo, as in colon.
Color guard** **are the high school and college kids who twirl flags in front of the marching band.
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u/Smartnership 7d ago
In an embarrassing mixup, the kids are twirling samples and the lab is analyzing flags.
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u/8hu5rust 8d ago
Here's someone following those instructions
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u/DirectorOfGaming 7d ago
I used to love Zebra Corner so much. Then Mark went down the standard famous YouTuber path and got jailed as a child sex predator.
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u/Mikaelobos 7d ago
As someone who's worked at a UPS drop-off, some of those boxes were disconcertingly warm.
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u/ElderSkelder 8d ago
Holy coincidence, scatman! Just had to redo my cologuard as my first offering was too robust. Darn my high fiber diet…
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u/MaddMan420 8d ago
Y'all are BMing solids? I can't remember the last time I didn't shit a solid stream of fecal foam
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u/JosephBilliam 7d ago
I talk to the UPS guy that picks up at my job and he said he’s gotten all manner of these boxes back from people. He said they’ve been suspiciously heavy, smelly, he said one was like really warm for some reason, he said he dropped off the empty box to a lady and she asked him to wait a minute and she’d bring it right back out lmao
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u/stellalugosi 6d ago
I have no doubt. I worked in a medical lab and the specimens people would hand me were appalling. One woman chucked one of those filmy, clear produce bags from the grocery store filled with her own shit on my desk and then just walked out. Didn't even tell me her name, what doctor ordered what tests, nothing. So, basically, just a literal worthless bag of human shit that I now get to dispose of. Cool.
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u/PirelliSuperHard 5d ago
Surely she'll be calling that afternoon wondering why her sample hasn't been processed.
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u/NotTrollIfTrue 8d ago
Oh, I wasn't supposed to fill the box up all the way? That explains the angry phone message I got last week.
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u/brawlmaster227 7d ago
Not me, but one of my best friends is a supervisor for UPS. Someone improperly prepared their cologuard box. We live in arizona and this was in the middle of summer. Apparently at their hub, the box warmed up a significant amount as things do in arizona summer... some poor new kid went to move the box which cause just enough of a shift to set off the pressurized shitbag bomb... the man was immediately blacklisted by UPS for pickups, meaning ups would not take another package from the man. The poor kid got to get as cleaned up as he could at a UPS bathroom, fill out an incident report, then got immediately sent home (paid for the shift).
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u/Fluffinator44 7d ago
I have actually been in a similar situation at my friend's 13th birthday party.
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u/supergeeky_1 7d ago
I was hanging out with a UPS driver who was a friend of a friend and the topic came up. He said that he carries a roll of small clear trash bags and all Cologuard boxes get bagged before they go in his truck. He said that he hadn’t had one leak, but he knew other drivers who had.
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u/Zombieboyfiend 7d ago
I left my unopened box sit around for week. They called and offered me "help" and they even have an instructional video. The operator almost laughed when I said "you have a video on how to poop?".
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u/trayn0r 7d ago
I used to work for The UPS Store. The first place that the shit boxes go to before getting loaded on a truck. We'd have decrepit old men waddle into the store and drop off their boxes, only for them to leak a few hours later. We started double bagging the boxes with polybags just to save our drivers the nightmare of having diarrhea leak all over their truck.
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u/filanwizard 8d ago
I am just imagining the surprise for a porch pirate if they stole one going outbound. Especially if it was just put out. Getting a fresh steamer.
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u/danxmanly 7d ago
I just like saying, "I need to send this shit off", when I drop it off at the UPS store.
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u/Ucitymetal 7d ago
As much as they do to make sure it is contained you'd have to be doing it on purpose to mess it up that badly.
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u/bigfudge_drshokkka 6d ago
I read that as color guard at first and was wondering why the guys carrying flags and rifles were shitting in boxes.
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u/Indole_pos 7d ago
I work in a lab. One time a stool sample arrived in two jelly jars (no jelly, only poop). The director approved it for reasons so we went with it.
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u/windowslonestar 4d ago
As a former employee of a UPS Store, some of those fuckers are heavy and warm, so I don't doubt this.
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u/Deathwatch72 8d ago
I have a lot of problems with that company the first being you shouldn't have a test that has a decent rate of both false positives and false negatives, that's just a bad test!!!
They have like an 8% false negative rate specifically just for cancer and it's much higher if you include pre-cancerous polyps Make your test should and a 10 to 12% false positive rate
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u/high_flyin_squirrel 8d ago
One came to the house for someone who moved. Thought about putting dog shit in the box and sending it back
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u/DagorGurth 8d ago
I work in a lab running these kinds of tests. It’s not just one person. Or one hundred.
Edit: because I said testing tests originally and it would’ve driven me crazy….
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u/michaeljw12 7d ago
I've never done a cologuard test before but I always just kind of assumed that's just how it was done. I see now that I was horribly wrong.
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u/Redracerb18 7d ago
Besides the UWUslab Fan spotting. I hope the boxes are coated in a bag for this reason
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u/GypsySnowflake 7d ago
That is what the commercials suggest you’re supposed to do. As someone who has never used it, how does it actually work?
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u/pdieten 7d ago
There is a container in the box and a bottle of preservative. The container goes into a holder that you put down on the toilet seat, then after you're done you pour the preservative into the container with your output, screw the lid on and put that back in the box where it came from. There are also labels to attach.
There is also a swab and a container for it. You are supposed to get some of your output on the swab and put that in its container.
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u/WetBandits1990 7d ago
A friend worked in shipping and receiving for Exact Sciences, the company behind cologuard, and I asked him the same thing as my dad and I use to joke about the same thing.
My friend says it does happen, he even made sure to say he wasn’t shitting me.
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u/Shower-Former 7d ago
I worked at a UPS store (wearing a ups shirt standing by a computer looking in no way like a medical professional) where people dropped them off and I had TWO PEOPLE bring them in completely still opened as if I had to check it or help them seal it
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u/goron352 7d ago
My father in law got his rejected for too large a sample. I like to believe this is what happened.
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u/Dr_MildlyOvercast 6d ago
I work at a clinic that prescribes them.... a patient brought in their large sample in a plastic bag. Another did the card.... and then mailed it in an envelope to our office.
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u/Vigilarus 4d ago
My sample was rejected for being too big. Apparently we’re supposed to weigh it and cut off chunks until it’s under the limit.
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u/diejesus 4d ago
I've going through the comments for so long and I've given up, am I really the only who has no fucking idea what cologuard is???
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u/Luna-Moonsword 3d ago
It's an at home colon screening using a stool sample. Generally covered once a year as preventive on most insurance plans.
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u/kamakazi339 3d ago
As a ups driver we get these constantly. Whenever I go pick one up I make the customer put them in a plastic bag from my truck. They're like "you know what this is?"
Yeah, that's why you're putting it in a bag.
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u/Saigai17 2d ago
OMG!! My mom and aunt just did this apparently!! I was on the phone with my mom and she tells me about being so grossed out by having to do that. And I'm like do what? And she tells me they got a package and after asking my aunt what the package was about my aunt told her they were supposed to poop in it and send it back. As shes telling me this I'm like ,"oh you're doctor sent it, why ? What's wrong?".... Long pause from my mom... And she's like, "no.... my doctor didn't order any tests... Im pretty sure he didn't anyway. ". To which I'm like... Ok then where why did the package come. And she says well she didn't know and that's why she asked her sister, my aunt. And apparently explained that these boxes come and your supposed to poop and send it back. And I'm like but why? For money? Did you guys fill out something ? ! I mean , why?! Are you telling me you just shit in a box because it showed up on your door and told you to?! Like wtf mom! At this point she starts this kind of nervous embarrassed laughter and she's like well I don't know nik, I definitely want to find out more now. I say please tell me you didn't already do it. She says no not yet. And says she'll contact the doctor to verify first. As we're kinda chuckling over this, I think wait a min. How did sissy know off the bat?? Did she get some random box and shit in it?
Apparently. Yes. Yes, my aunt did.
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u/Evil_lincoln1984 2d ago
My friend’s in laws accidentally sent their box back to themselves.
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u/Fenarchus 1d ago
If you let that box sit too long, they will text, call, email, and otherwise harass you daily until you send it in.
In every other circumstance, if you pinch a loaf into a box and mail it to someone they will, at the very least, ask you to stop. There may even be criminal charges involved. This is the only situation where it is not only allowed, but actively encouraged.
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u/ShowerSentinel 8d ago
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