You know you've worked too long in a lab when

1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice

2. You can tell what cheap and expensive white coats look like

3. You can't watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy

4. You use acronyms for everything and never stop to elaborate

5. Liquid nitrogen is only about a 1/3 as dangerous as you thought

6. You always seem to use the microscope after the person with the impossible close together eyes

7. Accident reports are a badge of honor

8. You've wondered why you can't drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?

9. You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks "Work for me today or i'll reprogram you with a fire axe" is my favourite

10. You've worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job

11. When a non-scientist asks you what you do for a living you roll your eyes and talk science at them until they've loss the will to live (mainly for fun)

12. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside

13. You realize that almost anything can be classed as background reading

14. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath

15. Although all cooking is a glorified chemistry experiment you just still can't seem to get it right

16. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool

17. Warning labels invoke curiosity rather than caution

18. The Christmas nightout reveals scientists can't dance, although a formula for the movement of hands and feet combined with beats per min is found scrawled on a napkin by a waiter the next day

19. You know which part of the lab you can chill out undisturbed on friday afternoon

20. You decide the courses and conference you want to go on by the quality of the food served

21. You are strangely proud of the collection of junk you've stolen from vendors at trade shows

22. You've used dry ice to cool beer down

23. No matter what the timings in the experiment protocol there is always time for lunch in the middle

24. As has been pointed out to me on several occasions - You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid.

25. Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven't actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench

26. Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many) Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Undergraduates/Alcoholic handwash

27. You've left the lab wearing a piece of PPE (personal protective equipment) because you forgot you had it on

28. You bitch about not being able to pipette by mouth any more (Not me but i've worked with people who do!)

29. Security come round at 2 am wondering why the lights are still on only to find you with your arms up to your elbows in a glovebox

30. you have made some kind of puppet out of a nitrile glove and kept it as a pet (I know this isn't just me!) (Putting dry ice in makes for a rapidly expanding if short lived pet)

31. When at a Fall Out Boy gig you wonder why everyone is going round with Faecal Occult Blood (FOB) written on their head

32. You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman stylie cos it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat.....Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab.... (The worlds of strippers and lab workers collide, not pretty)

33. You still get amusement out of "freezing" things in liquid nitrogen!

34. Blinking real fast has saved your eyesight on more than one occasion.

35. You've removed your gloves to find a small hole which has left you with either - wrinkly old person hands, a brightly coloured finger (histologists especially) or a burning sensation and dermatitis and some point.

36. You've bent down to pick something up off the floor only to scatter the contents of your top pocket under the largest machine in the lab Common problem i believe

37.When you rejoice when grabbing a handfull of eppendorfs/bijous/anything and it turns outs to be the exact number you needed

38.You can`t wait for lab clean-up coz you get to do random pointless "experiments" to figure out whats in all the dodgy unlabeled bottles

39. You hate having to change your lab coat to a new one because 'it just won't fit right' and because the wrist bits are way too tight

40. You know you have worked in a lab too long when you actually threaten your cells whilst waving a bottle of virkon

41.Your nose invariably itches when you're doing mucky stuff with your hands so you develop the habit of scratching it on your upper arm. Unfortunately you sometimes carry this habit over to real life, where it looks like you're sniffing your armpits (Trying to find a clean bit of lab coat can be fun as well)



Originally posted at - Live Journal

now I know that i have been overworking in the alb