In the proud tradition of exposing naive minds to new viewpoints and opportunities (like ‘Take your daughter to work day’, now apparently rebranded as ‘Take our daughters and sons to work day’) comes the more recent tradition of introducing dog-lovers and -haters alike to our furry friends (or, stated another way: today is ‘Take your dog to work day’).

While it would be interesting to ponder our increased desire to literally have our creature comforts with us at all times, what I am more amused by is wondering whether there would be any more impractical thing for a chemist to bring to work, as I have visions of energetic dogs running through labs, knocking things off counters with their crazy tails and licking up the resulting mess… Depending on the feline, I could see a ‘Take your cat to work day’ being equally disastrous, primarily because they could easily get up on the bench and not only push things onto the floor, but also bonk into TLC chambers or step on computer keyboards. The worst, though, might be ‘Take your lemur to work day’, as any creature that can climb up onto chemical shelves and throw bottles at you is not going to make friends.

Perhaps a better holiday would be ‘Take your chemist to work day’, where non-science people bring their science friends to ‘normal’ places, like offices and banks, and clothes stores. It would be a good chance for us science geeks to reacclimate to society at large, and perhaps we could spend some time telling them about all the exciting discoveries we’re making? And anyway, a lot less messy than a lemur in the lab.

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)