The Zip Ties and Fifty-Pound Bags Behind 'Tell Me You're a Biomed'

“Tell Me You're a Biomed (Without Telling Me)” borrows one of the internet's most durable trend formats and hands it to a profession that almost never gets a turn with it. In the format, someone lists the small, specific habits that give away their job or identity without ever saying the job out loud. This version does it with zip ties, an asset-tag scraper, and a cart that nobody else is allowed to touch.

Where the song came from

Every tell in the song comes from real shop-floor culture rather than a joke invented for the beat. Biomedical technicians really do carry zip ties out of habit, and the field has its own half-serious mantra about them: you always need zip ties, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. The line about scraping off an old asset tag with a peeler comes from the same place. Techs keep naming a dedicated tag-and-sticker scraper as one of their most oddly beloved tools, the kind of thing that shows up again and again on tool wish lists in the trade press.

The second verse leans on a real generational split inside the trade. Veteran techs still haul fifty-pound tool bags out of habit, joking that they need everything along just in case, while newer hires increasingly favor lighter, pocket-sized kits — a genuine and ongoing conversation in the field, not a songwriting invention. “PM” shows up in the lyrics as both a noun and a verb, which is exactly how it gets used on the floor: nobody says they're going to perform preventive maintenance on the infusion pump, they say they're going to go PM the pump.

The cart itself earns its own verse because building one is treated as a rite of passage. Techs assemble their carts out of retired EKG carts and old projector carts, then personalize them with stickers, a speaker, and a cup holder pressed into service for safety glasses, a tradition documented in the trade press's own cart-decorating contests. The closing line about leakage current and ground resistance as “my love language” nods to the electrical safety analyzer, the everyday test tool biomeds use to confirm that a piece of patient-care equipment won't shock anyone who touches it.

Zip ties in my pocket, zip ties in the other oneIf they say you don't need zip ties, they lyin'!

A joke that only needed a beat

None of this needed much embellishment, because the culture had already written the jokes; the song just set them to a rhythm. That's also why the bridge turns into a dare: “Show me your cart, empty your pockets” works as a call to action precisely because every tech's pockets and cart carry a slightly different version of the same story. The tells are specific enough that a fellow biomed will recognize them instantly, and open enough that anyone outside the field can follow along and learn, almost by accident, what actually rides in a service cart.