Late to the party as ever, sorry...
On 30 Apr 2007, at 14:18, Richard Ellam wrote:
> If these people really are engineers surely they should be wearing
> blue or brown shop coats, not white ones?
>
> I spend quite a lot of time in an engineering workshop where I wear
> a blue 'lab coat' when I remember - white ones get dirty too quickly.
Funnily enough, a couple of years ago I tried to buy a brown coat for
a costume for a TV show. Turns out Arco have stopped selling them, on
the grounds that in warehouses they count as camouflage, and wearers
got fed up of being run over by fork-lifts.
Three of us spent an afternoon trawling the Yellow Pages; none to be
had in Glasgow, anywhere. We had to buy a white one and dye it.
My own view on white lab coats is that one person's lazy stereotype
is another's hard-won brand recognition. If we could only work out
how to steer the connotations, we'd really be on to something. Think
about it; the Nike swoosh, the Apple apple, the Levi rivet, the Ford
blue oval, the Science... coat?
(Full disclosure: ex-Physicist, wore a white coat in other labs. Now
a TV producer who has on occasion asked scientists to wear white
coats but only because they'd turned up for interview in their best
suit or frock, and looked spectacularly uncomfortable. Or as a gag.
Or... OK, guilty as charged. I still have my dad's lab coat, mind...
Oh, and Bryson - I'm not sure if it was the lack of white coat so
much as the earring. That was quite radical for the provinces, back
in the early 90s.)
--
Jonathan Sanderson
'If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.' (Pascal)
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