My lab supervisor was explaining a procedure for growing up (very specific) bacterial cultures, and more importantly, how to keep them from being cross-contaminated.
After setting up a burner for me to work under, he told me, "Obviously there's the problem of contamination from your hands, but you can always flame those quickly over the burner before you start."
I looked down at my plastic-gloved hands.
I looked at the small pillar of flame from the burner, currently glowing in "third-degree if you even think about touching me, bitches" blue.
I looked down at my hands again.
And then yelped "What?" with an extra dose of wtf.
...at which point, the post-doc at the other end of the bench started giggling into his lab book, my supervisor snorted, and my hands felt notably safer.
"One of these days," said my supervisor, "I'll get someone who falls for that."
2 comments:
Ahem, they're called "full thickness burns" nowadays :P
Oh, and I know someone who would actually fall for that. I mean, she's even fallen for 419s and "we need your PIN number" scams *rolls eyes*
Aw, perhaps the researchers noticed your similarities to a small furry mammal and decided to perform cruel experiments on you - :P
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