Nail polish and masculinity
Background: Sometimes, making slides requires nail polish. To secure a cover slip over your sample and seal in anything that might evaporate, you need something watertight, fast drying, and transparent. Nail polish is the cheapest thing I know that fits these requirements, and that is why I have a bottle of it sitting on my bench. I also have q-tips but that’s another issue.
This morning I overheard a conversation between some members of the lab next to me. They were concerned because they were out of nail polish (had been for a week, actually, but they’d been making do by borrowing mine) which meant that one of them had to go buy some. Their PI (“principle investigator” ie the professor who runs the lab) would pay them back with his grant money, but apparently they were all tired of the weird looks from the cashier at CVS. So of course I had to open my mouth and suggest that they must not be confident in their masculinity if they couldn’t handle buying nail polish. They all, including the PI, agreed that I was right and now somehow I’m stuck buying it.
This morning I overheard a conversation between some members of the lab next to me. They were concerned because they were out of nail polish (had been for a week, actually, but they’d been making do by borrowing mine) which meant that one of them had to go buy some. Their PI (“principle investigator” ie the professor who runs the lab) would pay them back with his grant money, but apparently they were all tired of the weird looks from the cashier at CVS. So of course I had to open my mouth and suggest that they must not be confident in their masculinity if they couldn’t handle buying nail polish. They all, including the PI, agreed that I was right and now somehow I’m stuck buying it.