When you are working as medical technologist in the lab. . .
1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice.
2. You point to the scar on your right thumb and proudly state that it’s from an accident with a GLASS pipette!
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. You always seem to use the microscope after the person with the impossibly close together eyes.
6. You’ve wondered why you can’t drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?
7. You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks “Work for me today or I’ll reprogram you with a fire axe.”
8. 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).
9. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside.
10. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath.
11. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool.
12. Warning labels invoke curiosity rather than caution.
13. You’ve used dry ice to cool beer down.
14. No matter what the timings in the experiment protocol there is always time for lunch in the middle.
15. 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.
16. Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven’t actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench.
17. Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many) Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Alcoholic handwash.
18. You’ve left the lab wearing a piece of personal protective equipment because you forgot you had it on.
19. You bitch about not being able to pipette by mouth any more.
20. 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.
21. You have made some kind of puppet out of a glove and kept it as a pet.
22. You can`t wait for lab clean-up coz you get to do random pointless “experiments” to figure out what’s in all the dodgy unlabeled bottles.
23. 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.
24. You still propel your used gloves like a rubber band across the lab into the bin.
25. You know the molecular weights of bench top chemicals by heart.
