so i need to go do something in the lab right now but the people in the cubicles next to me are talking about lab “horror stories” related to things like mouth-pipetting and mystery contaminations that may or may not have been intentional sabotage and frankly this eavesdropping is far more interesting
Julia you gotta relay the stories to us. Liveblog that shit
omg i will definitely update yall on the snippets i could hear
apparently they have a lab member who has a bad habit of leaving used pipette tips on the pipettes, and another lab member (the person telling the story) one time accidentally bumped his hand on it and got BURNED because it was previously used for hydrochloric acid!!
and then, speaking of hydrochloric acid, the lab manager used to do mouth pipetting (she’s much older), and one time she was pipetting hydrochloric acid and it accidentally got into her mouth. needless to say: OUCh. she said she had trouble even just brushing her teeth for a few days after that?? a;sldkfj
and then they got on the topic of contamination, and one of the dudes was recounting a story from a previous lab (or a story heard from a previous PI idk). one day, the lab all of a sudden discovered all their reagents were contaminated. like it just came outta nowhere, and they couldn’t even figure out what the contamination was. they highly suspected it was a former disgruntled lab member, and after some poking around, found records that he had entered the lab one night at 9:00 shortly before the contamination started. hardly enough evidence, but apparently it was enough to launch something bc i think (if i heard correctly) there was some sort of formal investigation.
D8
God, hydrochloric acid to the mouth is my new nightmare. That sabotage thing is just wild too.
#why do people mouth pipette #i don’t get it
it was just the norm until the 70′s when cheap mechanical pipettes finally became a thing (and also before we knew what we know now about bloodborne diseases). i’m sure we do things currently that in 30 years from now people will put their hand on their chest and go “my word!! what animals!”
Between me graduating college and actually working in a lab again are nearly 8 years and now I’m surrounded by automation (liquid handlers) where I’m not even having to hold a pipette anymore. Wonder what’s next.
what’s next is an all out robot war with self-driving cars and alexa’s and liquid handlers shooting a precise 300 ul of buffer at everyone, and then a big beefy beefcake (but is also actually a robot) drops in from the future to save us (well, in particular, one of us). in this ted talk i will
