Finger Cots

Germ Freak seems to have discovered a way to protect his precious hands from touching dirty things while he's on the job. To him, everything around here is filthy. I don't know who turned him on to it or if he found them purely by accident, but he's been wearing rubber ESD finger cots on both hands non-stop. He filled a small box with a few hundred of them and every couple of hours he sheds the ten he's wearing and puts on a fresh set. If you aren't familiar with what a finger cot is, it's like a miniature condom. I've seen them in various colors over the years but here at Bill and Dave's we have jet black ones. In the electronics industry finger cots are useful for keeping skin oils off of sensitive components and microcircuits. Skin oil will sometimes contaminate circuits that later on will result in dendrite crystals and or rotten solder joints. Dendrites cause short circuits in PC boards. Because they are made of a conductive material, finger cots can reduce static discharge. Finger cots are also useful for keeping chemicals off of your hands if you happen to work with them.

What makes Germ Freak's use of those things kind of silly here in assembly is he doesn't work with microcircuits or chemicals so there is no real need for them here. It won't hurt anything now that he is wearing them all the time though. It's obvious he's quite pleased with himself for armoring his virgin contamination-free mitts. Any time someone drops by his workbench to talk to him, Germ Freak sort of sits back in his chair and places his hands just close enough so that he can tap his fingertips together relentlessly like a zombie. Nobody has said anything to him about it but I can tell everybody thinks he's being extra weird.