Sometimes I wish I had a job where people knew what I did

Now I like biology, don't get me wrong, after all I did get a degree in it, but sometimes I wish I had a job where people know what in the hell I did. Accountant, salesperson, engineer, whatever. I think the single most asked question I get is...so what do you actually do? And here's the answer: I work in quality control for bacteriology at bioresources company. What does that mean? Am I curing cancer...no. Am I making drugs...no. Here it is in hopefully understandable lingo.

My company is a production based company, we make products for other companies/people to buy and use. The department I work in makes bacteria. What the hell do people need bacteria? We sell to research institutions (so people can develop vaccines and what not), clinical (hospitals and what not), pharmaceutical, universities, food industry, etc. The production department grows the bacteria and then vials it, then it is freeze dried. Before we can send this product to the customer, it has to come through me. I check to make sure everything is A-OK. I make sure that if we are supposed to be sending them E. coli, they are getting E. coli and not Salmonella. I make sure the culture is viable, that when the customer receives it, it will grow. This requires a bunch of testing via different methods, biochemical testing, genomic testing (through DNA and RNA), etc. Then if I say it's ok, I pass it and it gets sent out to whoever wants it.

What kind of things do I work with? E. coli, Salmonella, MRSA, Streptoccous (cause strep throat), Neisseria gonorrhoeae (cause gonorrhea), Bordetella (whooping cough), Mycobacerium (tuberculosis), Helicobacter (cause ulcers), Vibrio (cholera), as well as bacteria that cause meningitis, botulism, tetanus, lyme disease, etc. We also have (but I don't work with) anthrax and plaque. As well as working with a whole range of non-disease causing bacteria.

It's sometimes hard for people to understand what I actually do and why I do it. That can get soooo frustrating. Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because me brother Craig works as a store manager of a high-end shoe store. My mom and dad went into his store a couple weeks ago to visit and buy some shoes. My dad already always talked about how he was at the number one store, then they moved him to a store in trouble and now he's turned it around and made it the number one store and this is how much he sells, and profits and numbers and blah, blah, blah. Now that they've been to his store, my dad raves to people about how he was so great with customers and diffused a tense situation and even go this guy to buy another pair of shoes. It's all about numbers. This makes sense though, people know about this. Everyone's been to a store, everyone buys things. It's easy to explain about numbers and how the profit it going and seeing how the employee's work with customers. Therefore my dad is always gloating about how great Craig is doing in his job. I swear if I hear about how great he is one more time, I am going to shoot myself. I never hear about my dad gloating about how I finished 10 work orders this week or got that difficult Clostridium to finally grow. That's why I say sometimes I wish I had a job where people knew what I did and understood it and could appreciate how much hard work I am putting in and what difference I am making. Because when people don't know what you do or why then it's tough to explain and get that recognition and appreciation that I'm sure all of us crave at some point in time.