Several of the labs where I worked were "Category 2" microbiological labs. This means they culture bacteria which can cause diseases in animals, but which have been genetically modified, so could potentially jump to humans. All the waste from these labs, like disposable gloves and tissues used to wipe up goo, had to be autoclaved before disposal, to ensure they were sterile.
We also had two kinds of bins, light blue for non-recycling, and purple or dark blue for recycling. Of course, stuff like tissue paper used to wipe up normal spills, such as water or tea in the canteens, went into recycling, and not the general waste.
Or, you know, just put into one of the clear bags for recyling and tossed into the non-recyling bin. along with some presumably-contaminated disposable gloves! Who cares, nothing matters...
What's this? Somebody, doubtless having been vaguely told "if you want media making, put it in the tray next to the autoclave" has put some fresh media they want made in a contaminated waste dixie, next to the big autoclave usually used for waste! To do so, they would have to have walked past the actual media autoclave and tray, but, to be fair, they would have had to have turned their heads slightly to the right in order to see it, and these thicks think anything that isn't directly in front of them at eye level doesn't exist. Should I find out who it was, and tell them of their mistake?
Nah, they've also tried to "jump the qeue" of autoclaving by adding the water to the media. Once the water's added, it needs to be autoclaved in minutes, or bacteria that inevitably got carried in by floating dust in the air start to grow like crazy in the media, and contaminate it (and oh boy, do I have a story about that!), so fuck 'em, they're getting exactly what they asked for. My patience for ill-or-just-plain-un-trained newbies got left behind in 2010. You want your media, intended to be autoclaved at 121oC for 15 minutes to be autoclaved at 135oC for 30 minutes, do you? So be it...
Why no, it's not meant to be that colour.
Oddly enough, it was back in the waste area pretty soon after this, too. Funny, that.
Let's continue the autoclave theme, shall we? In another lab, the same one where Stammer worked, the autoclave was "special". Apparently it had previously been on a British Antarctic Survey ship down to the (continent surrounding) the South Pole and back! ...oh, and, also, it didn't have preprogrammed cycles. You had to familiarise yourself with the required temperature and duration at which different materials needed autoclaving, and then set it up accordingly every run. If you didn't change the settings, it just used whatever the previous run used. For instance, if somebody had previously run plastic pipette tips at 115oC for 10 minutes, it would be inadequate for sterilising liquids, which require 121oC for 15 minutes. But, this is one of Britain's, nay, the world's most august institutions of learning and research. Of course the scientists here don't just dozily go through the motions of pressing "Start", without glancing at the settings, or even being aware of what they ought to be, right?
What do you fuckin' think?
Still, maybe they'll get away with it. I mean, 121oC for 15 minutes is for theoretical, really hardy bacteria that can produce spores. Maybe 115oC for 10 minutes will be ok, I mean, that'll kill most things, right? Of course, they need to make sure what they are autoclaving actually reaches that temperature. This means the temperature probe inside the autoclave needs to be immersed in the same volume of liquid (usually tap water) as what it is they're autoclaving. They did that, right?
What do you fuckin' think?
Well, you know, the probe being in 250ml of tap water was in more than a tenth of the 2l bottles they were actually autoclaving. And tap water is less pure than distilled, so might have a higher boiling point, so the 2l bottles must have at least reached the 70-odd-oC temperature for pasteurisation, right?
What do you fuckin' think?
Yeah, or, ya know, maybe they've used kilowatts and kilowatts of electricity to make an empty bottle hot. Great fuckin' job.
What were these 2 litres of sterilised water for, anyway? To put in trays at the bottom of the liquid culture incubators, so they stay humid inside. The water needs to be sterile because, well, any random bacteria floating in it is going to adore 30-something degree, super-humid conditions and grow like crazy, floating about in the humidity and contaminating samples, to say nothing of just growing ghastly mould and stinking. Well, guess what happens if your sterilised water is not at all sterile, because you're too lazy and thick to have the faintest fucking idea what you're doing? You guessed it!
Months it went on, months. Hours upon hours of meetings they had, thinking of every possible angle to prevent the contamination. Every possible angle except "let's ask the working-class autoclave operator for advice". Why would they want to have any more to do with scum like me than they absolutely had to? You know what all those meetings came to? They decided the contamination was because of BACTERIA FALLING OUT OF THE AIR CONDITIONER. Yeah, you did actually just read that. Quite apart from the fact that the usual aseptic technique they were using to transfer the not-so-sterile water into the trays would have prevented that,the same as it prevented random dust from floating about the room from getting in, the incubators weren't even directly under the air conditioner.
Though, now that I think about it, I beleive their "aseptic technique" for transferring in the sterile water amounted to just opening the door and tipping it in, so yeah.
At first, they decided to just not use the air conditioner. While also wearing long-sleeved lab coats over their clothes, in a room with big, sun-facing windows, the incubators being kept at 30-something degrees, and the big air pumps in the fume hoods running. Even they mutinied. They expected me to mop and vacuum that room once a week, too. And fuck doing that without the AC on. Anyway, once it became clear that was a non-starter, they ripped up loads of cardboard boxes, got out the autoclave tape, and built a huge comedy "baffle" around the air conditioner, to direct the air upwards. Unfortunately I never took a picture of it, but it was a funny sight, I can assure you. I kept forgetting it existed and then having a good chuckle when I saw it.
Also, being really shoddily built, it was constantly falling apart. Also autoclave tape is meant to temporarily label a glass bottle, it's not meant to hold big sheets of cardboard on a plastered-and-painted wall, so the entire thing just dropped off several times. Oh, and, incedentally, it did FUCK ALL to solve the mould problem. Then one day they left some liquid for me to autoclave. I set the autoclave to the correct settings for liquid, and after that, the problem mysteriously cleared up. Though, at around the same time, some issue with plastic pipette tips getting too hot and "sealing" at the bottom, because they slightly melted, arose. Dunno what all that was about.
This was happening in the same lab where they put a glove box rack on the sliding door sideways, so we're not exactly dealing with MENSA material, here.
Still with Stammer's lab, somebody's asked him where to put the orange biohazard waste bag for incineration. What does Stammer do, I wonder? Does he...
A: Explain in detail that biohzard waste needs to be handled very carefully. First the bag needs to be folded in and tied off, ideally double-bagged too (management circa 2011 decided to save a few bob by getting easy-tearing-tastic thin shitty bags, so we ended up using twice as many). Then it needs to be labelled with a barcode so that all the waste arriving at the city incinerator can be accounted for. Finally it needs to be placed in the trolley, IF EMPTY, or carried to the bins, the hand holding it needs to be wearing a glove, and then everything even the outside of the bag touches needs to be treated as contaminated. In short, does Stammer explain the actual official safety procedures, as outlined in the employee guide and multiple reminder emails?
Or...
B: Does he vaguely go "A-puh A-puh A-puhttit on the tuh-tuh-tuh-tuhrolley by the uh-duh uh-duh uh-duh door" and leave the new and untrained PHD student to just work it out themselves?
What do you fuc - oh, you get the idea.
Not only has some fuckcunt gone and stuffed contaminated waste on top of clean bin bags, several of which are now to also be treated as contaminated and wastefully thrown away unused. It's NOT EVEN THE RIGHT TROLLEY. I have no idea what this other one was even for. I just walked in and found it there, with contaminated waste stuffed into it for some other fucker to deal with.
Mind you, though, what's the other trolley being used for? The one that usually has the biohazard bags in it? The one that, despite being plain steel, and thus unlikely to breed large amounts of bacteria upon it's surface, being used for?
Ohhh ACTUALLY fuck, ACTUALLY you, Stammer.
Yes, that's right. Somebody, likely Stammer, has gone and hand washed the towels from the canteen (never mind, you know, the weekly laundry service) and USED THE BIOHAZARD BAGS TROLLEY AS A DRYING RACK. The towels! From the canteen! The ones people will DRY THEIR HANDS WITH BEFORE EATING. PUT IN A TROLLEY THAT'S USED TO TRANSPORT CATEGORY 2 BIOHAZARD WASTE. YOU ARE ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THIS. The mind fucking boggles, it really does.
In previous entries, I said that purple pipette tip box inserts had to be put into a special bin. A special bin that, despite being labelled, looked the same as other bins, which means frequently other waste ended up in there, or else the box inserts got thrown into normal bins, because "they're all the same, right?". Well guess what happened at the start of 2013? ANOTHER pipette tip company introduced returnable reuseable inserts!
Now these PHD or PHD candidates, at one of Britain's best seats of learning, have to surmount the enormous mental hurdle of "if it's green, put it in the left bin, and if it's purple, put it in the right". And all they have to assist them are clearly-written notices, stuck above the bins, in plain English. Can they do it? Oh come on, this is Figshit Picks, you already know they can't. Why do you think I took the picture? I could see the fuckups coming a mile away.
"What do I do with this useful, unbroken but also recyclable plastic bucket of rock salt, in the middle of winter? Should I save the salt for spreading on the car park? Should I put the bucket somewhere so it can be used for something else?"
"Nah, just toss the lot in the non-recycling bin and let it be some other fucker's problem."