For all the lab rats out there

This is kind of longish, however, received this in my inbox today- thought some of it was funny- especially someone who's worked in a lab would appreciate most of them- believe me it's very true! :-)

someone who hasn't been a lab worker, still some of them could be funny- read at your own risk-









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 favorite

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.(Cheers Lesley)

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 bottels (Sniff test is a bit of a gamble )

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 (They never get my 'cut' just right either )

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

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)

42. When as the senior of morphology you threaten each new registrar on their first day that oil and x10 dry objectives do not mix and will result in violence

43. when you say goodnight to your microscope on a friday night and tearfully hug it goodbye as you won't see it all weekend
44. When you start making patterns in your pipette tip box as you take the tips out. I made a beautiful spiral today

45. When you wonder how much it will hurt if I pour just a smidge of this phenol:chloroform/trichloroacetic acid/any random chemical on myself (Best try it out on some one else first Mike)

46. You've seen how far away you can hit a target with a squirty water bottle or seeing how far away from the bin i can fire pipette tips.

47. The fire alarm ceases to bug you. You only evacuate when you see the fire. (Hand on the floor to check for heat is a good indicator)

48. You know when you've been in a lab too long when you make 6 litres of medium, but wonder why no one makes "high" or "low".

49. When you organise your kitchen cupboard contents the way you would your chemicals..all labeled in alphabetical order

50. When you've got that callus on the side of your thumb from opening PCR tubes

A few more sent to me by a colleague, dam that's another one - you call your friends colleagues "my colleague is just getting the beers in"

51. You open the toothpaste with one hand.

52.You wash your hands before and after using to the washroom.

53.When you hear tween, you think of the surfactant not the age group.

54.For you, media is something which increases your culture.

55.You can identify organs on road kills.

56.You have a callus on your thumb.

57.You use the word "aliquot" in regular sentences.

58.Sometimes you momentarily vanish from social activities because of a time point.

59.You've never worn a clean lab coat.

60.You don't fear rodents, rodents fear you.

61.You say "orders of magnitude" in regular sentences.

62.You flinch when you hear the word "significant".

63.Showing up at 10AM and having a coffee is a productive day.

64.You can't stand god-like physicians, while secretly wishing you had their job.

65.You're very good at diluting things.

66.You're also very good at transferring small amounts of liquid between containers.

67.You are fed up of people saying alcohol, when they mean ethanol.

68.You say “conjugation” instead of “sex”, and "pili" sounds dirty.

69.SOB is not an insult; it's what you grow your bugs in.

70.You say "mills" and "megs".

71.No-one in your family has any idea what you do.

72.You can make a short film in power point.

73.You consider a green laser pointer to be science bling.

74.When your fruits go bad and you get fruit flies, you can't help but check their eye colour

75.You own invitrogen t-shirts and actually wear them.

76.You refer to your children as the F1.

77.You've suffered carpal tunnel from the pipetman.

78.You've used Kimwipes as Kleenex.

79.A timer clipped to the hip is not only practical, but dead sexy.

80.You've played Battleship using tip boxes.

81.The front page of Science is your light reading.

82.You think the following is a quality insult: "I've seen cells more competent than you!".

83.The scent of latex reminds you of work, not play.

84.You've used, "I'd like to get into your genes" as a pickup line.