Insensitive electrical technician - and the mess he caused (Dec/09/2008 )
After the weekend, a colleague's fridge showed some indication of being thawed. Called the electrical technician for inspection. The technician found nothing wrong with the fridge and gave a stupid suggestion: "someone might have tempered it, do you have enemy in the lab who wants to switch off your fridge?".
Not a funny joke....
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may be he was suggesting the cleaner switched off the fridge.
Sometimes, the new cleaner pulled the fridge's plug out, plugged the vacuum cleaner in, and later forgotten to put the fridge's plug back in... the next day everything inside the fridge were defrozed...
I remember someone saying the exact thing last month - is it the same lab?
Not a funny joke, but if there have been unexplainable incidents happening in the lab, something to consider. I never thought I'd see something like this, let alone be a victim, but it was odd when I starting storing some cells in the neighboring lab's incubators (with their permission and done very quietly) and flasks in their incubators were fine but flasks on my shelf were contaminated, especially since they were made in the same passage and only my cells were contaminated.
Last summer, we had a team of electricians in our lab replacing some lights. They unplugged one of our freezers in order to plug in some of their power tools.....and then forgot to plug the freezer back in!
We lost about $10,000 worth of reagents/kits etc., and several months worth of prepared samples.
We were not amused to say the least!
Not a funny joke....
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It often happens in crowded labs. You should never keep the fridge on the same plug with other stuff, and there should be some free plugs available to avoid vacuum cleaner accidents. One bad day, a new student, sudden change of technicians or one especially sinister troublemaker: TV team coming to the lab - is enough to cause a mess.