Lab dressing
This is following from a comment from my previous post's.
Fashion in the lab.
Or lack of.
I've been thinking about going to town to buy some new jeans. You see, I got fat, and currently I have only two pairs of jeans I can fit into, of the.......half dozen I own. I'm stingy, I don't want to buy new stuff when I can perfectly fit into my old stuff if I starve myself and excercise to death for half a year. Anyway.
So I've been wearing these "bigger" jeans for half a year or so, and they are FULL of brown spots - that shows up really well, as they are kinda distressed colour, so not the full indigo of normal jeans. I mean, I look scruffy! But if there is a question, my scientific mind asks me the question - what are these brown spots?
I have a theory.
I think they are drops of developer solution.
I hand develop my film.
I mean, I have to. We don't have a machine developer. Grrrr.
Anyway, I do wear a lab coat. But it usually gets buttoned down to like, the third button, which is above my belly-button (I can't walk in them with them buttoned down, they naturally come undone). That leaves most of the lower body exposed to stray drops of developer.
My "developer" theory is confirmed by the fact that my t-shirts are all okay, bar a couple of brown spots around the belly. Also, the spots get more pronounced as you near my ankle. However, I cannot see any spots on my normal shoes. Might be because my shoes I wear to work are waterproof - GoreTex rules. Or might be because they are brownish anyway.
And I need new shirts. Some of them have some small holes around the belly - the substance which caused them are unidentified, but I won't be surprised if they were also developer or fixer, and the act of laundering them caused them to eat throught the cheap thin cotton (thanks, Gap, for making me pay 20 pounds for that cheap shirt).
Okay, back to the topic of lab fashionwear.
I was once a Ph.D. student, working in a lab where a postdoc actually wore proper, stylish trousers and top and boots for work. I didn't do things like developing films then.
Then I started working in a lab where the boss (female) wore t-shirt, jeans and running shoes to work. When I started working there, I had to walk from one end of the building to the other just to use the dark room and developer. (Is this developer thing a common theme or what).
Then I started another postdoc, in a far worse lab. And hand developing. And all these brown spots appeared.
So the conclusion is, developers destroy your wardrobe.
Anyway, what do I wear to work?
If you see me, you might think I am really messy, as I always wear the same lightweight fleece jacket (have two of the same make, different colour, but I normally wear the same one until the other one gets washed), same jeans (as I only have two I can fit into now. I can hear that song in my head, "I've had the same jeans on, for 4 days now..."), but change the t-shirt everyday. And my underwear.
Hey, I shower everyday, and I use eau de toilette everyday. I'm clean. It's just that I don't yet want to destroy my whole entire clothes collection.
Which means I never wear my lovely leather boots. I never wear heels (unless it's strictly desk work day - and those don't happen often). I never wear make-up (although I invested a good part of my montly income last month on the whole she-bang). I don't wear nice tops (developer alert!). No skirts (unless I am not developing, or it's summer and it's hot). Having said that, I do an occasional lab faux-pas by wearing sandals. Hey, my office is not airconditioned (I do change them to a toe-covering shoes when entering the dark-room though)!.
You know, when the only thing looking at you are glassware, little parts of organisms, little bugs, you kinda forget about it. And on top of that, you can get away with it...
