I wash fancy dishes Mom, you just don't understand
Also if I'm not careful I could dissolve my finger lol
I remember in high school we had to wash beakers with sulfuric acid to make sure there weren’t any traces of heavy metals left.
At my high school, teachers always said that there's a biological hazard in the lab (they used the same lab for chemistry, physics, and biology), hence no laboratory class/experience. But that exact lab/room was available and used for teaching classes such as math, history, etc.
If I try to guess, it was just a ridiculous excuse instead of saying, we aren't adequately equipped to manage a laboratory and will not want to be liable if an accident happened.
AHEM. Ackshually petri-dishes are mostly made of plastic these days and discarded with the rest of the biohazardous waste... At least in microbiology labs.
Also I love the word autoclave.
That is indeed a soothing word.
"Kim wipe"
"Standardized cuvette"
"Parafilm"
"disposable pipette tips"
Like the -80c fridges, it just gives you comfort that nothing is going to go wrong.
Those are much cooler dishes!
Or, some times hotter. IDK. (Maybe I should check this before washing them.)
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Yes and subject my hands to the harshness of not just soap solution but also acetone, sometimes pet ether or even chloroform, not once, not twice, but several times in a day, every day.
Dude, if you really got into it, you could probably make a serious career out of cleaning chem/bio glassware.
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$12/hour, no benefits, lots of overtime. It was my first job as a bench chemist out of school and it was worse than dishwasher at a restaurant. As the new guy, "glassware/sample technician" was the role and it involved cleaning everyone's used glassware after they often used gnarly stuff, plus signing out samples to everyone in the morning and signing them back in, in the evening. When anyone was working with a controlled substance sample (medical grade marinol/meth/coke/sufentanil/remifentanil) they couldn't be outside storage overnight and had to be weighed in/out with a second witness so you're always last to leave. Worst glassware ever to clean: "midget impingers" used for the determination of sulfur dioxide in medical superglue. But at least I was the one who dirtied that glassware.
My previous coworker (I could write a book on the shitty lab practices she exhibited on a daily basis) would shake out the glassware and hang it to dry. She didn't understand that I could actually see the discoloration from previous tests. My bosses gave no shits, I did extra dishes, I gtfo at first opportunity.