So, today I went to lunch as I usually do. When I was checking out, the cashier (who is also the manager of the cafe) said that he needed to talk to me when I had a free minute. I found this odd for any number of reasons. After eating my lunch, I asked the staff to point me to said person. It turns out that the manager had been contacted by lab occupational safety to "find the person in the lab coat" and get that person (me) to talk to them (occupational safety). Trying to find someone using the cafe managers seems like an inefficient use of resources as we have such helpful things as public safety for quickly finding a person, but nevertheless, I took the contact information given to me by the cafe manager and, once I had returned to my office, went about getting into contact with said person.

This occupational safety person was, of course, out for the day. I chose to take the route of calling her on her cell phone as it seemed a fitting response to her conscripting the lunchroom staff to find me. Upon contacting her, she explained that someone had sent her an email about me. The sender of said email was concerned that I "wore the labcoat that I'd been using in a chemistry lab to lunch and that it was stained with chemicals that might be hazardous". Now, this characterization was so ill-informed that it made me laugh out loud while talking to her. I informed her that, no I didn't work in a lab (aside from JPL itself) and that my labcoat, if dirty, was only such due to the various vagueries of life. She was, unsuprisingly, confused as to why exactly I was wear a labcoat if I had no need to as part of my job and that there was "an appearance of an issue" which might, despite the lack of an actual issue, require some sort of mitigation. Despite my repeated reassurances that there was no issue, she insisted that we needed to meet, in my working area, before she could "make a decision". What that decision would be, I have no idea. Thus, I have a meeting scheduled with her tomorrow to discuss my lab coat.

I find this whole matter to be completely ridiculous. I've been wearing a labcoat to work for 16 months (more or less) without any issue. What really irritates me though, is that someone decided to report me to occupational safety rather than taking the two minutes to find out if there was really an issue. Because of that, I had to waste half an hour today and I'll have to waste at least as much time tomorrow resolving this idiotic situation.

It makes sense to investigate every report of safety issues--that's just called due diligence--but this seems to be going a bit far. To a certain extent, I almost hope that I'm ordered to stop wearing my labcoat. I think it would be highly entertaining to contest a ludicrous order up the chain of command. I don't know if I would necessarily quit over such a dispute, but I wouldn't rule it out. Hopefully, all this talk is premature and people will act rationally.

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