How manufacturers of scientific instruments go door to door
The sand dollars had arrived via Fedex and were sitting on the table, still in their foam box. Visiting professor Joyce Stamm, lab tech Kat, and I were all staring down into the box, wondering how we were going to get gametes out of them. Professor Stamm had never seen a sand dollar, much less experimented with one. Kat had forgotten exactly what they had done in developmental biology last year. And I was plenty fascinated just looking at their hairs moving.There was a cheerful voice at the door. "Hello there!"
All three of us turned around to see a well-dressed Asian man holding a large picnic basket and a redheaded woman in a sundress standing by a small metal cart covered by a yellow patterned sheet and a catalog. They looked en route to a picnic. Seriously. The man smiled. "We're from VWR! Are you guys busy? We can come back later.."
Joyce and I peered back into the sand dollar box. "Er....kinda?"
"Well, do you want some muffins and cookies then?" He motioned towards the basket.
"Sure!" Kat apparently likes free food more than I do, and leaves to wash her hands. Joyce follows her out to do the same. Gosh knows what those sand dollars might have brought in...
The man turned to me and asked me my name, then what kind of research this lab did. By this time I had recalled from my neurobiology stint at Rutgers that VWR was a company that made "scientific products," ie the stuff we use once and throw away. (The environmentalist in me cringed everytime I had to throw away a Millipore filter system after using it once) Or the bigger, more badass, more expensive instruments.
"This particular lab is for developmental biology, but we have some research going on..." I wasn't sure if he was expecting something more fancy. He offered me his card and the chance to enter in a drawing for gift certificates.
I was a bit confused. "Um, for your products?" For a moment I wondered what I would do with a massive centrifuge in my room. Whatever that thought was, it DIDN'T involve collecting post-synaptic densities from Squee and Dot brains. Wouldn't get much out of only two guinea pigs, anyway. (I distinctly recall Wei holding up a centrifuge tube with 0.1 micrograms - if that - of purified post-synaptic density and declaring in her broken English, "Eighty-two rats!")
"No, for Target, Starbucks...that kind of thing."
"Oh."
By this time I was thinking, Ah, so this is how they go door to door...but I'm only a student. Even if I was doing something more akin to cutting up rats like at Rutgers, I'm not in the position to order anything for the lab. Sorry, can't help you, dude.
Joyce and Kat returned to grab some cookies and to make relevant chitchat about scientific products and the like. After the two salespeople left and Kat had entered the drawing for nonscience-related gift certificates, we resumed poking our sand dollars.
After 15 minutes of failing to get three of the sand dollars to release any gametes, I forced myself away in order to get to class on time. As I walked down the hall, I passed the two salespeople again, who had gotten Prof. Martinez to browse through their catalog. For those who haven't had Prof. Martinez, here's a sample quote from intro genetics:
So, what the phage prefers to do is to lyse the bacterial cell. Kill the motherfucker! Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that...In classic Martinez fashion, he was pointing at something in the catalog saying, "What is this pathetic little thing?"
The woman tried to be pleasant and informative. "It's a freezer.."
"Well, do you have one that doesn't have that...thing?"
I chuckled as I made my way up the stairs. You wouldn't pay me enough to be a door-to-door salesperson, no matter what the heck I was selling.
posted by sugarfiend @ 7:56 PM
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