My mum used to work in research, in a dairy
They had to wear lab coats with the chest pockets. One of her jobs was to test temperatures and so on, so she generally had one of the old fashioned glass thermometers on her. She absentmindedly put it in her chest pocket when she went to the bathroom, pushed aside the coat... and naturally the thermometer fell out and smashed on the floor.

I asked her if she got in trouble. Answer: no, it happened maybe once a week for the year she worked there, there were lots of thermometers, and it was considered a standard expense to have to replace them.

It's nice that the dairy preempted that people would be that daft, but even so...
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 11:42, 6 replies)

They get broken a lot in our lab, too.
Thanksfully, we've replaced all the mercury ones with either alcohol thermometers or thermocouples.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Mon 7 Mar 2011, 11:47, closed)

My calculator
eventually gave up the ghost after years of me using it, putting it in my top labcoat pocket, and promptly tipping it out to smack into the floor the next time I bent over to get something from an underbench cupboard.
(oball needs Satan more than he needs me, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 12:55, closed)

Did the endless exposure to mercury eventually drive her mad?

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 19:44, closed)

Wouldn't it have been cheaper
to buy lab coats with covering flaps on the pocket?
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Mon 7 Mar 2011, 21:34, closed)

*shrugs*

(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Tue 8 Mar 2011, 9:30, closed)

Covering flaps?
Isn't that more the job of the underwear?
(speedevil, Tue 8 Mar 2011, 10:29, closed)