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Oh also, following corporate policy, there are some things that I can't reveal in this blog. You'll probably notice these things by the fact that through the course of my writing, I become as vague as that one person trying to describe that other thing.
So yeah, my thoughts on working at Eli Lilly and Company after however many weeks I've been here.
I'll start by saying that I really do enjoy working here. I love the people, the environment, the work itself, and just the overall atmosphere of the place. Some background may be useful here; I work at Eli Lilly and Company's corporate headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Lilly's a huge pharmaceutical company most famous for inventing Prozac and Cialis, among others (Zyprexa, Gemzar, Byetta, etc.). My job description is "summer replacement", a term which I suppose qualifies me below interns in the corporate social hierarchy since really, who am I but a temporary replacement worker occupying a cubicle?
Oh yes, I have a cubicle.
I work in an analytical chemistry lab in the newest building in Lilly's labyrinthine corporate complex. From the outside, Lilly's corporate center looks like a random jumble of towering buildings, but in reality, they're all connected underground through a series of well kept tunnels with artwork, wood paneling, and confusingly placed amenities like coffee shops and a dry-cleaning service. To be honest, I didn't even realize that the corporate center was a bunch of different buildings (besides the fact that they're designated Building 87, Building 48, etc.) because of how nice the tunnels were. They're actually more like nicely decorated hallways, really, except since the buildings aren't all of the same elevation, sometimes you get these random passages that resemble sort of a ramp-type business like you're in some strange airport that couldn't fix its terminals correctly.
One of our cafeterias looks like the inside of a Von Maur. There are trees and plants everywhere, with lots of high quality wooden furniture and glass ceilings and stuff. There's also an outdoor picnic area around our lake, which has perfectly landscaped gardens and a shaded island in the middle accessible by a short bridge. Even the fish in the pond are beautiful. Another cafeteria features a dining room a few stories tall, with sheer curtains draping all the way from the ceiling to the floor. The main entrance to the entire corporate center is pretty intimidating, with marble floors accenting the colonnade leading to one of the buildings. There's even a Lilly museum, which shows Lilly as it evolved through the ages. There are fountains pretty much everywhere you walk. Fountains are popular here. Apparently they’re all the rage.
I'm in building 87, myself, which was constructed just a few years ago. It shows in the building itself. Our lobby looks like a modern upscale hotel, with comfortable leather armchairs, beautiful wood-paneled walls accentuated by steel and glass elements, a four story atrium and a huge water sculpture that loops water through a waterfall on one of the walls over warm underwater lamps. Portions of the floor have charming limestone tiles, polished such that you can actually make out some of the old sea creatures that died millions of years ago and somehow fossilized their way into a pharmaceutical company's headquarters.
The labs in our building are very well maintained, with state of the art equipment and solvent storage rooms that could keep the entire population of Slovakia high for decades (or blind, depending on what you use…kidney failure and death if you're especially adventurous with the methanol). Each lab - and there are multiple on each floor - is stocked with millions of dollars worth of equipment, with semi-automated machines doing chemistry type things that I'm probably not allowed to discuss. Remember that bit about how I could get vague? Yeah, here's an example. Hmm....I suppose I could tell you that lots of the things we do here involve lots of syllables. Oh, and acronyms. Chemists apparently like acronyms almost as much as our landscapers like fountains.
Anyway, being the only summer replacement in this building (unlike Building 98, in which one lab has six summer replacements...honestly, I’d rather buy another fancy piece of equipment for a lab than hire clueless college students, but hey, Lilly has money to spare), I actually have assignments and projects to do. I've been able to learn lots of chemistry theory and lab techniques, which would be really useful if I ever ended up on a desert island (with a $500,000 purification machine) and needed to purify myself some, say, linezolid lest I die to an inexplicable MRSA infection. Even though I haven't had chemistry since high school, the lab techniques were very interesting, and I liked learning the theory behind them all (and playing with the machines). Hmm, one thing I really like about lab work is the fact that I get to wear a lab coat. My favorite one has a big "Stacey" embroidered across it, but I like it because it's a women's medium and fits very nicely. Oh and I also get a pair of prescription safety glasses. For free! They look pretty spiffy. You’ll be seeing me in them if you’re ever in orgo lab with me sometime.
Oh yeah, sometimes I get stuck doing things like cleaning the NMR tubes or prepping analytical samples for the CLND or whatever. Remember how I said acronyms were all the rage here? One funny thing that serves no practical purpose (but I suppose is federally mandated) is the braille writing on the elevators. Seriously? You're going to have a blind person walk into a chemistry lab? The only possible advantage I can see them having is if some blind person accidentally swigs a bottle of methanol, well hey, they're already blind so they're ahead of the curve there.
Besides my lab work, my main work involves database type business that again, I'm not allowed to discuss (because much of it is actually proprietary). Suffice to say that in order to satisfactorily complete my database work, I had to've been granted enough access to eight of the servers such that if for some reason I ever messed up the log-in three times in a row on any one of them, the entire system (globally...so like in Lilly Spain and Lilly UK, etc., as well) of the network the chemists use to do their chemist-type business would shut down until the real computer people fixed it. Apparently it would take days to fix. So I try not to do that.
Lilly also sponsors cool events like the Lilly Global Day of Service, in which almost everyone who works for any Lilly site or affiliate goes out and does community work such as plant trees, build playgrounds, read to children, etc. My team got assigned to repaint a run down building, involving two large paint-by-numbers murals on an old pool supply building. We actually did so much work (completed them, actually), that the afternoon shift, who was supposed to paint on another coat and the finisher didn’t actually have work to do, so they got reassigned to refloor an elementary school in need. The mural’s actually really impressive, I’d say, except all five of the numbers in the paint by numbers scheme were shades of blue. Pretty much anyone color blind passing by either wall are going to be seeing a swimming mess of swirling patterns, not know what was going on, and then proceed to run over a blind woman with a stroller because they weren’t paying attention to the road.
So yeah, that’s about my work experience so far. Here’s hoping the next four and a half weeks go as well as the first did. Yeah I figured out how long I’ve been here through the course of writing this blog entry. Sue me.
