Here is what working on a Saturday feels like. Actually working on the weekends isn't bad at all except for getting up early and going to work. I just took this picture as a joke to send to coworkers. Only a few people work on the weekends so the lab is mostly dark and quiet and calm. Usually overtime on the weekends is not necessary however, we use it as a chance to catch up on dishes when it's busy, or if we need to make up hours for doctor's appointments etc. Doing dishes in the laboratory business means washing analytical glassware. Glassware includes things like beakers, buchner funnels, volumetrics, and flasks. Our dishware is mostly glass, but we have a few items that are teflon or other plastics. We wear kevlar gloves and then layer up with those huge green gloves in the picture. We wear a lab coat every day all the time in our room, or in the hallways and coolers getting samples, but in the dishroom we wear an extra layer of plastic apron over our lab coat. We wash our glassware with hot water and citranox, a liquid acid cleaner. Here is the MSDS on citranox. An MSDS, or material safety data sheet, is where you find information about the product you are using. Labels are often not read and overlooked but worth the read always!
<https://www.alconox.com/Resources/StandardDocuments/MSDS/msds_citranox_english_ghs.pdf>
After a wash with soapy citranox, the glassware is rinsed with tap water in a sink and then washed again in a solution of sulfuric acid and water. Sulfuric acid is known to stick to glassware, leaving a residue on the glass. Because of this the final steps to washing analytical glassware include rinsing with tap water and then DI (deionized) water. We take the finished glassware back to our regular O.E.P. (Organic Extraction Prep) room where at our leisure we rinse out glassware again with a squirt bottle mix of acetone and methylene chloride.
