Iodine

In preparation for the SQF audit, one of the things we've begun doing is the "broken glass report."

Essentially, standards require that we take inventory of all of our glass and brittle plastic once every shift. Because of the amount of glassware we have scattered in various areas around the lab, we are not totally complying with that standard, but we have a sheet where you write it down every time you break something, so that supposedly some kind of inventory could be maintained. It is then checked off daily if something got broken and cleaned up properly, or if everything was "ok".

Junior says (and I am beginning to believe her) that since the broken glass sheet was posted, she has been much clumsier and keeps breaking things. Yesterday, she broke the 64oz volumetric flask that we use for milk. (A $498 value.) Last night, she managed to do one better and dropped a liter bottle of 0.02N Iodine.

The stain on the floor can only be described as epic.
Mopping yielded no result.
"Will chlorine get it clean?" MH wondered. I took a napkin, wet it with straight chlorine and scrubbed a tiny piece of yellow floor. It worked.
MH and I spent well over an hour scrubbing the floor in the back of the lab with scrubby pads and undiluted chlorine.
Once it was clean, we spent the rest of the night taking care of start-ups and plating and what-not...completely high on chemical fumes.

Gel-hell

Last night I was not remarkably busy. I was running jello, which is the simplest product to test and has been much easier to deal with lately because we haven't been adjusting the blends (supposedly they are creating new specs?). As a finished product, we test jello once every hour.

In my eight hour shift last night, I did TWELVE finished product jello audits.

Stats lie

I was wrong about there being a one in fifty chance of #1 speaking to me this month. The chances of him actually sharing a meaningful conversation with me, explaining why he has been or even (yeah right) apologizing for being such a jerk are slim, but he did talk to me last night.

...About my car.

That's not sqf

We have this big, important audit coming up next week. The audit is to see if we meet SQF (safe quality food) standards.

We had a plant meeting to discuss what everyone needs to know, what we need to start doing, and what we need to stop doing. At one point the manager running the meeting told us he was going to tell us how to wash our hands. Not when, how. Awesome.

Anyway, all night and probably forever on, every time anyone sees someone do something...questionable... They say, "that's not SQF."

Things that are not SQF:
-chewing gum
-cell phones
-sneezing in the plating room
-prying open the door to the plant with your safety glasses

Weird night

Last night just started off strange. I witnessed this woman (whose name I could not spell if I...looked at it on her nametag every day....) do this crazy booty dance. I have no idea what it was about, because I just couldn't bring myself to ask.

Within the same hour, I walked into the control room just as JK let rip this big fart pretty much right in my face.

I'm sure both of them were more embarrassed than I was, but everything just felt a little surreal.

allergen shmallergen

Allergens are like this huge deal that they spent months trying to find some time to train me because it was sosososo important that I learn how to do them.

I haven't done allergens in over a month.

I was assigned to allergens/pudding last night, which is kind of a weird combination, but way better than allergens/milk, which has happened a few times. Trying to do a delicate test for particles of milk protein at the same time as you are testing half gallons of actual cow's milk off line every half an hour...that's a joy let me tell you.

I kind of forgot how to do the test.

It took me half the night just to test sixteen samples, which is not a large number at all, but I did it and they all passed.

Yay me.

PS we still have not proved that I am even remotely qualified to be doing this test, since I failed the customer-mandated weekly blind samples the first time and have not done them since.

Got 99 problems and sugar free pudding is always one...

Statistics:
-I understand one sixth of every conversation I have with Beavis.
-Seven out of every ten pudding runs have major problems.
-Twenty percent of ESL chocolate gets put on hold for low/high solids.
-Every "minute" DK needs to talk to you takes at least ten minutes.
-The more viscous, smelly or sticky a product is, the more likely you are to spill it all over yourself.
-It is 80 degrees in the lab, 88 in the plating room. 100% humidity.
-The likelihood of getting an air conditioner in the plating room before summer ends is approximately one in thirty.
-The likelihood of #1 speaking to me before the end of the month is approximately one in fifty.
-The odds of someone in the lab quitting in the next two months are about one in twenty.
-There are currently twenty lab techs on staff.

Sundays are boring with four people

Last week, they only scheduled three techs for Sunday night, which kind of made sense, because it was a holiday and because everyone was working six days, so they couldn't have put anyone else on without giving her off a different day. Because of the holiday, it wasn't so bad having just three of us.

This week, they scheduled three of us on Sunday night, because...they are insane.

I was scheduled as 2&3, which is normal for a weekend and almost always really busy. I had pudding blending, homoport checks, bnb transferring and 48hr and 5 day for both pudding and bnb. With dailies and weeklies, that's more than enough to keep me busy.

RD was scheduled for 4&5, probably with the assumption that all the tetra lines would be down. They weren't, so I took over most of main lab, too.

I forgot my ID card. It was the best possible night to do so, since I only left the lab/production area ONCE all night.

Funny things

I sprayed a hose in the wrong direction. I am a genius.

I discovered a silo of enlive (pharmaceutical and therefor our most strictly regulated product) that hadn't been checked in over twenty hours. Oops!

Junior says, "I won't eat it, but I love it all over my body." ...She was talking about jello. And also being sarcastic.

We are still not speaking, but I overheard #1 singing Mr. Sandman.

DK has definitely forgotten about screaming at me about my attitude problem.

Yet another discussion about using processing terms in the bedroom..."I think we broke a seal, better separate off to be sure."

Unintentional hiatus

It's not that I forgot about you, dear Internet. It's just that I missed one update and then meant to post two the next day (and even knew what I was going to write about!) and then another day went by and another and now it's just been too long to go back and make up for it.

Let's start fresh. Two nights ago, DK yelled at me and insulted me until I cried. Not in front of him, but still. Last night, he was trying to be my best pal again...and #1 made me cry! I am having an awesome week!

In all fairness, I think I may have hurt #1s feelings as well, but at this point he kind of deserves it! (We're not friends again.) I have had a really rough couple of weeks, mostly because of him, but I promise you, Internet, tonight, there will be something funny. No matter how much I get hurt, there's always something to smile about.