Antick Musing's Fridays, Black and Otherwise

[james_davis_nicoll]

[...] [M]odern Westerners can be separated by the work they did when they were young and unskilled. One great mass worked in retail, selling goods of one kind or another. A second cohort worked in food service, waiting tables or working a grill. And the third group, seemingly the luck ones, were those rich or privileged enough not to have to work at all -- the ones who were children, then entirely students, and then set off on their careers, without ever having had "just a job."

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My first job for pay was cataloging several years worth of potentially hazardous chemicals (This would be what led to the "James knocks over a bottle labeled 'picric acid'" incident). The great thing about that job as a starter is that pretty much everything I've done since has been much less likely to end with me scattered over a wide area or reduced to a slurry.

[kpreid.livejournal.com]

For the Nicoll Event collectors: This one was a bit hard to find and is not in The List. Google Groups page, Message-ID <1992Dec30.183458.3066@julian.uwo.ca>

	Back in 1980, I was hired to count and record the contents of a
local university's collection of waste chemicals. One of the more interesting
bottles was labeled 'picric acid' (sp?), which is fairly unstable when
crystalised. The bottle had no  fluids in   it, so I decided to treat
it as though it had crystals in it, and not move it until I had informed
my boss. However, being young and stupid, I also decided to   continue
inventorying. The next  container was full of  silver nitrate, so I
marked it and  moved it to the section I was storing the containers
I had dealt with, without much concern, since I didn't regard it as
a potential bomb. In doing so, I clipped the alleged picric acid with
my elbow, knocking it onto the floor, between me and the door and on
the other side  of a bucket  of lithium pellets.  As it turned out,
it was just an empty bottle with  a  misleading label, but  I didn't
know that as  it was falling. Most stressful...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Same job, earlier in the inventory, I picked up a jar of something and both my work gloves immediately began to melt.

[mr-mediocre.livejournal.com]

One semester in high school I was the chemistry teacher's 'lab assistant' and did various preparations while she taught a different science section. Most of the labs I have utterly forgotten, but on one occasion I was supposed to prepare a solution of (IIRC) ammonium chloride. The only bottle of the stuff said 'anhydrous', so I poured a bit of the powder into a flask of water. The small explosion produced a big gout of fumes, but I think the flask held together until it hit the floor. No injuries, but a memorable lesson in checking with the teacher when the label doesn't *quite* match the directions.

Nicoll List Update

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for pointing me to that post; I'd missed that one. (I can only collect the ones I see.) I've added it to my master list, and emailed my updates (quite a few; I've been remiss in keeping it up to date) to dd-b for posting to the website, so when he's got the time, the List will now include it.

--Cally