Strap in everybody, because we're in for a big one for these two months. The thicks obviously didn't fuck up enough in March, so decided to make up for it in April. We'll begin with this one...
I don't actually remember what the problem was here, but this was an incubator set at perfect bacteria-growing temperature. If any opportunistic bacteria had fallen into the bottle of liquid media and been left over a weekend, the end result would be ghastly. But that doesn't seem to have happened so, uh... yeah.
Ooh, where's those plastic pipette tips gone? The ones that have to be autoclaved at 115oC for 10 minutes?
Where do you think? Never mind, eh? Nothing matters. Just run "the usual" (actual quote from somebody trying to weasel out because she KNEW she'd done it wrong, but couldn't possibly be corrected by "the help") cycle, who cares?
Also, over 12 years later, I'm now wondering why the autoclave instructions were on a loose, crumpled piece of paper on top. Not that sticking them on the wall, in a shiny laminated sheet, at eye level, would have helped in the least. Also I can imagine asking Stammer if there's a laminator I can use. I'd just get a solid 30 seconds of facial tics spasming off in all directions, his mind vainly wrestling for comprehension, before the eventual "whuh-whuh-whuh-whuuut?"
You think I jest, that's pretty much exactly what I got when I once asked him for something else that's seldom asked-for.
Remember that trolley that just randomly showed up, akwardly blocking the doorway into that building? Here is is again. Luckily nobody put biohazard waste on it this time.
Remember something else from last month? Another company that sold pipette tipes introduced returnable racks to clip into the boxes, for fast refilling. This meant that PHD candidates, at one of Britian's top educational establishments, now had to wrestle with the mighty mental challenge of putting green ones in the left bin, and purple ones in the right bin. With only plainly, clearly-visible labels stuck above the bins to help them. An utterly insurmountable mental puzzle, I'm sure you'll agree.
So do they...
You think that's bad? It got worse, dear reader. It got so much worse.
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Yep, a load of hideously-reeking fucking ICE showed up in the bin clearly labelled as being for "Green Rainin inserts only". It absolutely stank, and was peppered with tubes of shit that expired 3 years previously. I was fucking SCREAMING with rage, of course every fucker kept their heads down and I never received an explanation or apology for this. Much like... everything else.
What could make somebody do that? Seriously, what could make a mind function in that way? I seriously don't think all 'humans' are the same species. There HAS to be a second species, living alongside us, and looking just like us, but with a totally warped sense of logic and behaviour. I mean, how else do you explain shit like this? Is this the action of a rational, thinking being? Really?
"Where do I put this bag of mixed polystyrene chips, recyclable card and must-be-assumed-contaminated (because the council will) rubber gloves?"
"Ehh, shove it on somebody else's chair, make the fucker their problem."
There were several small desks in the corridor because the building was too small and cluttered. Even these were "hot desked" by part-time students. Of course one of the PI's (Principal Investigators - IE the one who gets her name on top of the paper, while her students did the real work - not that kind of PI. My job wasn't that interesting) has a huge office with a vast plain of empty floor space.
Oh yeah, thanks for, say, keeping the biggest box intact and putting all the smaller ones inside it, so it's easy to carry the lot out to the recycling bins. Yeah, ta. Top job there. These people can't envisage possible futures at all. They just float through a world of lights and noises, forever experiencing only the present.
I bet if you went on this place's website you'd find a whole section on their environment policy. Commitment to recycling, installing solar, getting stuff from sustainable sources, having no car parking spaces so no stupid countryside scum can work there, only the superior and enlightened people who live in the city... you know, all the core Green Party policies. That's the theory, how about we look at the practice?
Obviously, there were a load of turbo-nerds working in this place. What did they do the moment they were isolated among themselves, with no bullies around? Start trying to show off how "hard and cool" they are, in utterly ridiculous ways. One of these ways was to tug the green paper towels really hard, so a whole handful of them would come out, instead of just one. They'd then proceed to vaguely brush the top of the handful on their hands, and throw the whole lot away. Many were the times I had to "rescue" totally unused and untouched green towels from the bin, because fuckers just had to show off how "hard and cool" they are.
Oh yeah, nah. thanks for wiping that spilled powder up after you were finished weighing it out, ta. Stammer, to his rare credit, had even put up a sign saying "please wipe balances clean when finished". For all the fuck' good it did. Of course, if I put up a "please don't mix biohazard and recyclable waste" sign, he had that fucker down again right quick, because "wuh-wuh-wuh wuh'never boh-boh-boh-bothered about that in the suh-suh-suh-sixties". Fuck you, Stammer.
Speaking of mixing biohazard and recyclable waste... here's an empty cardboard box chucked in alongside a contaminated sharps bin. The biohazard bags and contaminated sharps had to be treated as if even the outside of the container was contaminated, taken to the bins with a gloved hand etc. Not one of these fuckers made the slightest effort to care about that rule, and constantly left recyclable boxes touching the containers.
Another rule said that biohazard bags and contaminated sharps had to have a special label stuck to them, so they could be traced back if anything dodgy happened when it was going to the incinerator (like it turns out to be radioactive, there's an unaccounted-for human hand in it, or something). Of course they know about this rule, right? Of course Stammer's told the new students about that, right?
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What do you fuckin' think?
Speaking of contaminated biohazard waste, this place also sometimes did animal tests (SHAC, PETA, ALF et al edit footage and lie to you, by the way), and afterwards, the bodies had to be wrapped in their own seperate biohazard waste bags (as they were just mice and rats, there were small bags for this purpose... of course they never actually used the small bags, they wasted a whole 100-litre one on a single dead mouse). The bodies were then put in the big biohazard waste bags to be thrown out. But what if none of those was getting full at the time? Well then the bags with dead animals were put in a freezer...
Or, you know, just left festering in a warm room over the weekend in spring, to stink out half the fucking building. Yeah, that'll do and all. It's not like the flexi-time fuckers who roll in at 10:30 will have to deal with it. Leave that to the help.
I even had a new girl ask me, the guy who disposes of the waste, how to dispose of a dead animal once. Before I can even get the first syllable out, one of the fucking scientists has jumped over my stupid, ignorant, country-bumpkin self and told her "Just throw it in ze bio'aza'd been in ze lab".
No, no, you thick fucker, this isn't how it works. What the fuck?
"Not how it works" applies to the autoclave in that lab too. Yep, here we are again, the one with no preprogrammed cycles, so they have to set the correct temperature and time every time. Do they set the correct temperature and time every time (or ever)? DO THEY FUCK. Do they even know what the correct temperatures and times for each type of load are? DO THEY FUCK. Reading instructions, on a piece of paper that's clearly visible on top of it, is evidently too hard.
So yeah, feel free to run plastics (115oC for 10 minutes) and media (121oC for 15 minutes) (see, I can remember the fuckers and I haven't touched an autoclave in almost a decade) and media ON THE SAME RUN. Nothing matters. Rules are optional.
Let's turn to another lab, and another autoclave. One where there are preprogrammed cycles. It was almost entirely used for waste, which was run on cycle 4. Very (VERY) occasionally it was used for huge amounts of glassware (cycle 1) or plastics (cycle 2). We also had to record the cycles we'd used in a notebook. Once upon a time, I took a day off...
Drew a typhoon on it too, for some reason...
Well, look at that! The day before, I ran a plastic cycle and then a glass cycle. The plastic cycle was probably about 150 boxes with 96 tips in each one. And yet, apparently, the next day, they needed a huge quantity of plastics like that again. The day after! Usually plastics runs were done every 8 months or so, if that! They also did three more glassware runs. That was enough to autoclave every single piece of glassware in the building! It's incredible that they used all if it, washed it, dried it and then autoclaved it... all within 24 hours!
I do hope they weren't running waste in it on cycle 1 or 2, which are not hot or long enough to render category 2 microbiological waste safe. I do hope they weren't just "copying the pattern" on the page without actually thinking about what they were doing. That'd be a Health & Safety Executive investigation and a half, that would. But I'm sure they weren't that stupid.
Oh, and, I have a FAR worse anecdote about category 2 waste disposal for another time...
*Sniff sniff* FEE FIE PHLOW PHLAT - I SMELL A FUCKUP, BY A THICK TWAT
Actually, this fuckup didn't smell at all. I should have used that line for one where they left a dead animal out all weekend. Bollocks.
Anyway, what was the scene that somebody, carrying liquid waste for disposal, saw as they walked towards the autoclave room (this being in the lesser-visited, and least fucky-uppy, though they had one very special "hard and cool" dickhead, third of my main labs).
As they got a bit closer, they would have seen, this. A dixie already containing correctly-disposed-of liquid waste. A bottle placed in the correct (and clearly indicated) dixie, with the lid screwed right down, and with autoclave tape on top.
What would you do at this point?
A: Use your abilities of pattern recognition, the same ability which has been recognised in babies, gorillas, baboons, monkeys, dogs, cats, bees, wasps and FUCKING ANTS... and put the liquid waste bottle in the correct dixie, with it's lid screwed right down, and with autoclave tape on the top.
or...
B: Fuck it up like a clueless wanker?
Oh come on, you're reading Figshit Picks, you already know what happened.
That's right, some piece of shit was too fucking lazy and thick to slightly incline their head downwards and to the right, and notice where the liquid waste goes. No, they had a better idea. The full liquid waste bottles must go back in the same tray where the empty ones are! That's like the animalistic "run to the same door you came in by, instead of a closer, clearly-marked exit" instinct observed in sudden fires or emergencies. Except there was no emergency or urgency here at all. We just have somebody functioning entirely off of animalistic instinct. Even when there's no hurry, and they have time to stop and consider what they are doing, we wind up with no evidence of conscious thought or reasoning at all.
Oh, and, it gets better. Have they screwed the lid on this dangerous, contaminated liquid waste tightly down? Or have they, in attempt to "help me", because they know I'll have to loosen the lid just before putting it in the autoclave, left it loosely on and used tape to just gently attach it to the bottle?
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What do you fuckin' think? Fuckups upon fuckups...
Oh, yeah, and by the way, when I said there was "a" liquid waste bottle in the correct dixie, so even pattern recognition should have shown them the correct place to put it, I actually meant there were TWO.
Fuckups upon fuckups upon fuckups.
But wait, wait, wait. Let's rewind a little. What else are we seeing here?
That's right! Somebody had a "full" dixie for autoclaving. It's the third one from the camera... looks fuckin' full, don't it? What have they done, now that it's "full"? Have they done the right thing? Have they folded the bag over, put autoclave tape on the bag, and put a lid on it? Or, have they neatly lined it up alongside the liquid waste dixie, and the "in use" one being used for waste from that room, because "that's where it goes, isn't it"? Gee I wonder...
Fuckups upon fuckups upon fuckups upon FUCKING FUCKUPS
I can spot a fuckup from a distance... what's wrong here?
Let's zoom in, shall we. Cue the X-filesey 90's sci-fi show sound effects!
What's that? A non-recyling bin absolutely STUFFED with things that can be recycled? Why yes! Also I've found this article's "stinger". This says it fucking all, this image does.
What have we got in there, then? Plastic, card, apparently half a fucking tool kit still in it's box...
Scrap fuckin' metal. There was a scrap metal shortage at the time, people were even nicking the wiring from abandoned buildings and all sorts.
And here's this lot, just tossing boxes of it away... and not even into the recycling bins!
Well, I suppose, you know, that was an awful lot to carry... and the recycling bins were such a vast, insurmountable distance further away.
Well, maybe they can't read. I mean, this is one of Britain's top institutions of learning and research. You kind of expect "being able to read" to be a prerequisite, but never say never.
"Being able to read" notices on drying cabinets (basically a metal cupboard, with glass doors, and a heating element in the bottom that keeps it hot, so glassware or autoclaved pipette tips put inside will dry faster). Notices that say "Do not turn up higher than 1", for instance.
"But I'm a stupid thick twat who doesn't know how to plan ahead! I need these pipette tips right now!"
"It dries so slowly when it's set to 1, if I set it to 2, it'll dry twice as fast! I'm a genius!"
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"Wait wait wait, if I set it to 3, it'll dry... really super fast!!"
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I recovered what un-ruined tips I could for re-use. Precious few, of course.
Shall we end on something a bit special? This is a centre-feed roll. It's like a giant kitchen roll, but the paper is more like thicker toilet roll. You're supposed to tear out the cardboard tube from the middle, so that it pulls out from the inside out. Then you can put it in a dispenser on the walls, and pull paper down and out when you need it.
Some shit-for-brains, clueless fucker, has got out a roll, pulled out the central cardboard tube (there was a knack to this*) succesfully, and then put it in the dispenser. Then, despite having seen how previous rolls come out of the bottom of it, somehow DIDN'T NOTICE THERE IS A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM. They've just wrapped the paper round and stuffed it in the top, to "hold it", and left the dispenser's cover off.
THEY CAN'T PULL A SHEET OF PAPER THROUGH A HOLE. BABIES can do that. GORILLAS can do that. CATS can do that. But apparently such a difficult feat of dexterity and hand-eye coordination eludes a scientist at one of Britain's top institutes of learning and research.
*- Bonus anecdote: On one occasion, somebody tried to pull out the inner cardboard tube from one end of the roll, but it tore off, and they couldn't get their fingers in to grab the rest. What did they do? Try to pull out the cardboard tube from the other end? Use it as an "outside in" roll of loose tissue paper around the lab?
Why no, they THREW IT AWAY. A whole, new roll of tissue paper. They THREW IT AWAY. In the non-recycling bin, of course. I was screaming "THICK AS FUCKING PIGSHIT" when I found it. A bloke from that lab stopped in his stride, stared over, then quickened his steps and disappeared. Don't think I don't know it was you.
