Lab situations/events that drives you up the wall... - let's share it. (Jun/18/2007 )
1. Anyone had experienced the unfortunate event of dropping your box containing Eppendorf tubes onto the floor and had to search-and-rescue those nearly invisible tubes from the dirty floor? Hate that so much. Statistically proven, you can only rescue 90% of the original content and would most likely forget what were missing.
2. Boxes for Eppendorf tubes. They are a pain in the @$$. You can never ever (amplified a thousand times) fill all of the slots (or spaces) provided. If you can cramp >80% of the provided slots with tubes, you are a genius and have my respect.
3. In a tropical country, where the humidity is very high >90% humid, there's always this problem with the -20 and -80C fridge.... there's just too much 'snow' to plough through to get to your sample. Sometimes, the drawers will get stuck and you'll have no choice but to wait for the "thawing season".
4. Gloves. If the manufacturer of these gloves decide to manufacture condoms, there's going to be a problem of over population here.
To be continued....
5. People. Human factor is the main reason that makes life in a lab miserable... but thank God, it is also people that can bring some cheer and hope in a depressed day... but why the baddies always outpopulate those good ones....?
I don't know about you, but in Australia, the glove manufacturers DO make condoms! Ansell is one of the biggest manufacturers of both items of personal protection...
3. In a tropical country, where the humidity is very high >90% humid, there's always this problem with the -20 and -80C fridge.... there's just too much 'snow' to plough through to get to your sample. Sometimes, the drawers will get stuck and you'll have no choice but to wait for the "thawing season".
totally agree........ esp situation no 1. normally you'll hear someone shouting: *^%$%&@*%&#@!!!!.....when his/hers box drop on floor.......
To avoid scattering the epperdorf tubes after accidentally dropping the box....use rubber band.
Why don't the eppendorf box got a clip or fastener?? like a lunch box with two clips ....no more scattering epperdorf tubes on the floor
I understand Disney Corp. makes some very nice Minnie Mouse lunch boxes...
Money, I agree that difficult people are almost never absent in every lab, haha... but they certainly are not overpopulating these labs. I think they're more of an empty Milo cans, "Hollow inside, but makes a lot of noises when provoked by knocking".
6. Blood sucking pest... still in the tropics, the mosquitoes are a nuisance. Imagine yourself pipetting something and this little flying pests dock stealthily onto your ankle, just above the ankle-length socks, where the flesh is exposed. That's the spot they like to torture me the most. On lucky days, they'll take a single bite and leave you itch only a spot. But sometimes, a single mosquito can torture you by biting multiple spots (esp. when its feast is interrupted) and leave you itching all over. To make matter worst, the flooring in my lab leaves lots of advantage for these pests to camouflage themselves.
7. Ever experience plating LB agar inside a laminar flow and all of a sudden a fly the size of red bean zoom into the chamber and zig zagging, leaving a trail of contaminants? How about a moth doing the same thing?
8. Cockroaches in the drawer, and its droppings. In the tropics, these cockroaches are as agile as a monkey. Forget about madagascar hissing cockroaches, the latter are the speed of slugs compared to the former. Some will fly and run all over your hair and neck if they fancy you.
Talking of insects, I remember being tortured by some notorious kind when was back in school. They used to appear from somewhere exactly a few weeks before our final exam time and stay till they get over. Small, tiny but ugly looking ones - but the worst thing was they used to give strong contact dermatitis. When U are on your desk studying, they were sure to land on the nape of your neck and cause a vigorous dermatitis all over, so much that even slight touch of the skin with collar of your shirt will make U jump up. So, during the exam time, you cannot really raise your head. . and couldn't move your neck much either. And, imagine sitting for a viva in such a pathetic condition. I am glad I don't have to ever go to that place again. I wonder why people chose to settle in places with so many insects. I hate tropical climate because of those nasty bugs.
9. Staining dozens of tubes for Flow Cytometry and later discovering that you have labelled two tubes with same number. Then U r left thinking which one is which.
10. Turning off the FACS Machine and then remembering that U forgot to copy the file to your pen drive.
11. When I do IF, I incubate my coverslip (faced down) on the lid of my multi-well plate and wash it in the well (faced up). Imagine when you move a piece of thin glass for either washing or incubating or mounting and drop it!!! It does not need to fell on the floor. Most of the time it just drops inside the well or on the slide and I am left to wonder 'Just which side of the coverslip are the cells on???' 
It is exactly what happened to me last week but I droped it on the floor in the very last step and couldn't pick it up since it was soooo thin
. It's good to share these experiences...