On summer day in Santa Barbara I was walking through a local cemetery, when I happened across the grave of a cofounder of the large, hair products company, then headquartered in the San Fernando Valley, at which I worked back in the day. Sitting at a nearby bench to enjoy the warm breeze and the view of the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean, I thought back to an incident that occurred at the company, on a day not unlike the present one.
I had been hired on to investigate the effects of hair treatments like permanent waving, straightening, or bleaching on hair proteins. It was a mildly interesting project, not too intellectually challenging. I liked having the run of a laboratory as a senior chemist, and getting to play with advanced analytical equipment like their then cutting edge amino acid analyzer. It was actually fun to go to work! They made one big mistake when they hired me, however. They also made me the safety officer for the lab. Of course I took my lab safety responsibilities seriously, but I was dangerous, and I didn’t know how dangerous I was. One day at noontime I was running a chemical treatment on a hair sample and couldn’t leave while the experiment was in progress. So I was forced to remain alone in the lab while all my coworkers went to lunch. It was so boring sitting there staring at a flask with its hair and chemical contents swirling endlessly on a stirring hotplate. My mind wandered. Looking up, I noticed the safety shower installed in the ceiling of the lab. The safety shower was to be used in an emergency if someone was accidentally sprayed with a poisonous or corrosive substance. But, I thought, I had never seen such a shower in action. Does it actually work? If the handle is pulled, will water actually come out? What if the showerhead was installed in the ceiling, but never plumbed to a water supply? That could be a disaster. I had nothing else to do, so I (rather impulsively) decided to test the shower. After all, I was the safety officer and I would be acting in that capacity, right? The triangular handle hung down from the shower mechanism like an apple from a tree. I gave the handle a slight tug. Nothing happened. Emboldened, I now yanked hard on the handle. It worked! But too well! Water gushed out from each of the myriad perforations in the head. Great, I thought, it’s working, now, if I release the handle, the water will stop. This was when I realized I had made a serious miscalculation. The water didn’t stop. It kept on gushing, and gushing, and more gushing. I should have known the shower was designed to automatically release a certain amount of water before shutting itself off. But I was dangerous. There was no manual intervention. In minutes the water was five inches deep in the lab. It started spilling over door thresholds into adjoining rooms, soaking the carpets. I ran to find a mop. When I returned, the shower had shut off, but there was water everywhere. I mopped furiously. Fortunately a floor drain in the lab took some of the water. There was no hiding my lunchtime exploits, however. When my coworkers returned from lunch, the remnants of the Flood were still quite apparent. The wet carpets and deep puddles here and there gave me away. Word of my folly spread rapidly throughout the company. I was now famous, despite being recently hired. I can’t say I basked in my glory, but it was nice to not be anonymous.
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