"Extra Sh!t" - Sequel to "Not water = Acetone"

[poofy_puff]

First day of labs is tomorrow (Continuing Ed / Extension School). The teaching-fellows have been in and out all week getting their act together. This includes cleaning out and stocking the drawers and hoods. I just finished putting some solvent drums away, and I find this in one of the hoods (Real Professional™ - NOT!):

[jerkface11]

I can't wait till you find one with a strange liquid in it labled "WTF"

[poofy_puff]

I can't wait till you find one with a strange liquid in it labled "WTF"

When I do, you folks will be the first to know about it!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So where's the shit that's not "extra"?

[poofy_puff]

So where's the shit that's not "extra"?

It's all over the place.

I thought of that too. There are bins FULL of the type of items (funnels, stoppers, and graduated cylinders) that were in that beaker. Those are the REGULAR shit; these are the EXTRA shit. Spares, you know.

I can feel my brain liquefying and my IQ dropping already. Soon I shall resemble little more than a quivering pulp whose vocabulary consists of, "Stupid assholes", "Jerks", and "Douchebags". Every morning when I come in, you'd think I have imaginary friends that I say this stuff to.

[Dips]

That reminds me of a lazy co-worker in the research lab...

One day I went to use the hood and found a 250ml beaker half full of...something purple.

No label. No nothing. Which means I'm screwed. I can't dispose of something properly if I don't know what the hell it is. It could be flammable, a carcinogen...or perfectly harmless. But I have no way of knowing.

So I asked everyone in the nicest possible way. My goal was not to make anyone feel bad or even clean it up, I just wanted to know what it was so I could get rid of it. Being mean or accusatory might scare the perpetrator away from 'fessing up, right? Nevertheless, nobody would tell me.

In frustration I finally put a sign on the beaker and left it where I found it. In the hood. The sign read "Whose purple s*** is this anyway?" I planned to eventually contact our safety department so they could analyze it, which would be expensive and come out of our limited budget.

I didn't have to. The guilty party took offense to the note and accidentally showed his hand. I eventually got him to tell me that the stuff was the remnants of a phenol/chloroform extraction. I showed him how to properly dispose of it and never had that problem with him again.

EDIT: By the way, my daughter is no longer a chemistry major, which makes me sad. She's still attending the same school as you did, but changed her major to criminal justice.