I’m sure people actually don’t care about this, but I explained what I do for a job to someone and I thought I could just copy and paste it here, so peeps actually have an idea.

I have a summer job with ALCAN. I make part of the industrial hygiene team and I take care of the Heat Stress tests. What does that mean? It’s an aluminium plant, right? The rooms where the aluminium is made get really hot (they are called Pot Rooms — No silly comments, please!), especially during summer since the metal fusion goes up to 900°C (Yes, quite hot!). The guys who work in these rooms are exposed to high temperatures radiated by the aluminium pots, increasing their risk to suffer from heat shock.

Now that I gave you the introduction…

The guys work 12-hours shifts. My job is to perform these Heat Stress tests by installing a Heat Stress monitor on the helmet of one of the guys and follow him during the day, noting what kind of activity he’s doing to calculate physical effort and then at the end of the day I have a bunch of temperature records which help me determine if he exposed himself too much and if he respected the proper alternance periods (between working in a hot environment and taking a rest in the air conditioning room).

Someone asked why I work 14 hours? Because I have to be at work one hour before the shift starts so I can prepare my equipment and I have to leave one hour after the shift ends because I have to go in the laboratory, download the data in the monitor and leave things ready for the next day. It depends on the weather, if it’s hot I work 3 days a week, if it’s not too hot, I have regular office hours from 8 to 4, 5 days a wek.

And yes, I love my job.