Hi, I’m Ben, one of the new lab techs at the Vapourium lab. The lab is where we make and bottle our various e-liquid flavours before they make their way out into the world to be vaped. From the outside it looks a bit like something out of a sci-fi movie - all white coveralls, fluorescent lights, and stainless steel - but the atmosphere inside is anything but sterile (figuratively that is - due to the HEPA filter and airlock the room is kept as particle free as possible, minimising any possible contaminations in our e-liquid).
A typical day at the lab involves bottling up out of stock juice, mixing new e-liquid batches from our flavour concentrates, sterilising equipment, and testing new methods of production and equipment. All as you might expect for an e-liquid lab, but what sets working for the Vapourium apart is the culture and attitude cultivated from the top down of having a fun time at work and of everyone being encouraged to put forth their own ideas about how things are done and what could be improved. It’s a joy seeing the excitement of the whole team whenever a new piece of lab equipment arrives and then getting stuck into working out how to incorporate it into our workflow, making things faster and more efficient, which feeds back into more excitement about how we can make things even better in the future.
This culture was immediately noticeable when I started at the Vapourium, and as someone who usually takes a long time to come out of my shell around new people I knew something was special about the place when I was joining in with the shit talk on my second shift - everyone’s just so damn nice and fun to be around that I couldn’t help but feel at home from the get go. This makes a huge difference when you’re doing what can be precise, repetitive work, and so most days fly by with a healthy dose of laughter and good tunes, barely feeling like a job most of the time.
It’s a genuine pleasure working with so many ambitious and driven people who are always looking to expand and improve what we do and it’ll be exciting to see how we’ll continue to grow and improve going forward.