#work talk

The first thing I need to cover is that there are different levels of clean room. So a clean room is what it sounds like, a room where you don't have a bunch of dirt and crap contaminating your expensive instruments, but they range from "just put a hairnet on" to "we count the number of particles per cubic foot in the couple thousands." Which clean room you need depends on the kind of instrument you're building - magnetometers for example are pretty resistant to random skin oils or dust, whereas dust detectors are obviously highly sensible to dust.

Especially dust detectors which are on planetary missions. Where we are possibly investigating space near planets or moons or asteroids for signs of life.

My lab builds these dust detectors so we have one of these super clean rooms. One such instrument was shipped off to California for spacecraft integration by another lab. While they were doing their final tests, they found... A spiderweb. In the very expensive dust instrument. Which was supposed to be so clean from contaminants that it was only touched by people wearing 3 layers of clothing and doubled up face masks.

Big big problem. They had to do a very careful job cleaning it. And California lab actually got the spider web genetically tested because they wanted to know who had spiders in their clean room and was thus at fault (valid question, but also would make my lab look very bad!)

the new owner is pissing me off so bad because everything i say is being misconstrued and i think she has it out for me. i don't know why else she would take things Like That. example:

me: [making specials] has not been my responsibility up until now and i'm unfamiliar with the manager's recipes, but i can order in some ingredients and cook something up the owner relaying this to my manager: we had no specials last week because they said it wasn't their job

me: (answering her question about what needed ordering) we need to order sausage rolls for monday, tuesday & wednesday

the owner, again, relaying this to my manager when nothing had turned up: they said they didn't need anything

I honestly dont know much about them, they are older but have a great shimmer and clarity.

The basement floods when it rains. Known issue, with work orders going back several years. (Actually, the ceiling drips now too, which is such a cool development, but not relevant here.)

Anyways, they put down these mats that are filled with super absorbent powder that drinks up water and becomes a gel, like the stuff that's in diapers.

No idea who put those mats there, but they've never been replaced since they first appeared a few months ago. So they're oversaturated and leaking wet gel-goo all over the floor now.