If you don't work IT, retail, or food service what do you do for work?

SSTF@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 290 points –

Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.

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I'm glad to see there's a few of us in the 5 figure salary club here!

I'm scientific support for a major pharma company. I tell people my job is essentially to be Hank Hill, as I'm in charge of compressed and liquid gases. I keep everyone squared away with liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, liquid argon, and any number and size of gas cylinder.

It's not a bad job. Pay is ok for what I do, people are generally nice, and most days I'm done the bulk of my work in 2-3 hours, so the rest of the time is mine unless someone needs something.

The rest of the day I'll prep and respond to posts here, study music, read comics or books, and watch cartoons. Nobody seems to care as long as the work gets done.

It's low stress and a decent environment, so I got no complaints. It's not as good as my last job, doing data analysis of hazardous chemicals. The place was generally run really well and almost all my work was doing daily reports on inventory. I made macros to do everything, so my work was done in less than half an hour most days and I got to work at home.

Being a nobody in pharma is pretty great as long as your group is cool.

Mind if I ask a work question? I purchased a cannister of CO2 for a kitchen appliance, but have another project requiring nitrogen. Are there any cleaning procedures or vacuum seal requirements before changing gases to prevent contaimination/interaction?

It's more of a warehouse job than a science job, so I'm probably not qualified to help, but I love learning, so I did some reading.

Different mixes of CO² and nitrogen are available for both carbonating/nitrogenizing beer, and further mixes designed to pressurize the lines for dispensing. Replacement beverage o-rings seem to come in a number of materials from polyurethane, silicone, teflon, and others and looking at o-ring compatibility charts, they all seem to both be listed as compatible for nitrogen and CO².

Since you're not dealing with liquid gas, I don't think you need to worry so much about material as if you're using something food safe made for beverages, it doesn't seem to be an issue what they're made of or which gas you use as far as I can find. You also shouldn't need to worry about the nitrogen freezing the CO² and forming dry ice from the amount I could imagine you using at home.

Without knowing more about what exactly you're working on, that's the best general help I can dig up. Depending on what exactly you're doing, finding a good homebrew or scuba shop/forum could probably get you the most reliable answer to what you're working on since they'll both be blending those gases in a manner safe for the human body.

I hope that was at least marginally helpful!

You deserve a raise! On Lemmy, at least.

Hah, thank you! I just can't see a question going unanswered! I love learning and researching, so it is usually a fun challenge if it's something I don't know.

If you'd like to see more of me doing my thing, check me out at !superbowl@lemmy.world every day where I research and teach about more types of owl than you could ever imagine.

Thanks for the effort! I assume the exchange guy will have a strong opinion but I do appreciate it!