Water testing is incredibly boring, but also an extremely important job. Quality of water available affects everything in society, from top to bottom. But, I get that it is totally monotonous.
In which case, the job becomes transferring the bottled samples into sample tubes in trays so that the machine can process them, and usually adding a barcode to each sample tube. The sample tubes need to be kept immaculate as well - some of the things that we test water for, like pesticides, are only present in miniscule concentrations. Might not actually save a great deal of time, and you need to buy and maintain a very expensive automated sampler.
When I used to work in the water industry, we were usually able to get PhD-qualified research chemists to do all this mind-numbing laboratory work. There's a bit of a surplus of qualified chemists compared to the number of chemist jobs available, so you got absurdly over-qualified people applying for these roles.
I did automation work for a sewage treatment center that did regular water testing as part of treatment. Most of these kinds of jobs are automated for the most part. There's always a human operator present to supervise and to do some small function that is still cheaper to have done manually instead of by machine.
Thing is most of water testing can be automated. There are electronic meters that can measure most important water properties like pH, electrical resistivity, total dissolved solids, turbidity, etc, which only require calibration from time to time. I am not sure why OOP was hired for manually testing water.
Most of these ātesterā positions are boring to the point of testing your sanity. Monotony is the state of doing little outside of a simple, repetitive routine and it offers a unique hell to each of its occupants. When one is consumed by tedium, they are compelled to consume it in turn, reshaping themselves to fill their fresh wounds like a reluctant ouroboros. You dip, you walk, you place, you return, you dip, you walk, you place, you return. The shining isnāt far off.
Honestly, if it paid well enough and I were to lose my current job, Iād live to be in this sort of job. Lifeās too short to be stressed about work. Just go, do job, get paid, and live my life.
Back in the beginnings of my career, Iāve had a job or two like that and it drove me bananas. I couldnāt stand the tedium, so I left to find āgreener pasturesā. It took me several years, and burning out twice (twice) before I landed on my boring and mundane job that I have now. Itās not even the job itself; itās the company and their chill attitude. Iām not going anywhere else if I can help it.
Honest work, but it's slow and repetitive work, definitely something where you should consider having a book handy for when you're waiting for the strips to be ready to record
Part of my last job actually was taste testing water. A very small part lol takes about 20 seconds all told from grabbing the cup to filling it and then tasting it a few times to make sure it's good and then recycling the cup.