Oh, and another one. Chemistry teacher.
We used to use mouth pipettes for everything. No sophisticated rubber-bulb health and safety rubbish for us. If you get a mouthful of conc. NaOH it's your own fault. (It tastes fizzy, by the way, as your taste buds spit their last dying impulses.)

Anyway, one day we were mouth-pipetting oxalic acid solution. "Don't get this in your mouth, boys," he says, "really." And then, while 20 of us are sucking this stuff up, proceeds to read the rather horrific symptoms of oxalic acid poisoning from the Merck handbook.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Sat 31 Jan 2009, 21:11, 3 replies)

You know, when I started my lab work at university, there were signs all over the manuals and the lab specifically saying, "DO NOT PIPETTE BY MOUTH".
And at the time, I often wondered who would be so unutterably daft as to attempt such a potentially lethal operation. Now I know who would - kids under instruction from cheapskate teachers!
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 31 Jan 2009, 22:10, closed)

The old folks tell me that bacterial cultures don't taste so good
I've done the same safety courses so many times I could probably teach them without notes. Every time when they bring up the 'no mouth pipetting rule' the younger people in the room laugh because, as you say, who'd be so damn stupid?

But there's always the one or two older researchers being forced to redo the same stupid course over again (it really does get tedious) who feels so terribly old and feels the need to defend themselves to the newbies. Apparently back in the day there was no other option. It's not just the teachers being cheap - those rubber bulb things are apparently a reasonably new invention. I enjoy that moment because it's when I can safely feel that while I'm definitely now one of the grown-ups, I'm not old yet! :)
(xanthine, Sat 31 Jan 2009, 23:35, closed)

It is interesting though.
Teaching you to get sucking down to a fine and delicate art.

*coat*
(Angie the Redneck Wonder, Sun 1 Feb 2009, 8:49, closed)