Dont worry, not by me and i was not victim too...
It happened when I was having lunch outside.
When I came back, saw our safety officer wearing labcoat in my lab, then i knew sure something wrong was going on! My 6th sense so true, just went in the lab, that officer started to complain. As expected too, the culprit was the attachment student (I did mentioned him in one of the previous entries). New lab members always do something funny in lab, especially those who using the same old excuse "rushing project in limited period".
After I gathered the info from all the witness and that little boy too, I realised it was such a ridiculous mistake! Someone with a bit of common sense and patient, wont do such mistake i think. If dont believe it, please read on.
Okay, story started from the boy wanted to use beta-mercaptoehtanol (very smelly reagent although not toxic when inhale) for his protein work. He went to look for it in the flammable carbinet. He can't find the old bottle we normally use, then without asking anyone about it, he grabbed the brand new bottle to use (
mistake 1, dont know how to save reagent) . Then he brought the bottle back to his bench, and wanted to pipette out some volume of the reagent into his buffer. When pipetting, he dont actually look at his hands, but rather reading his protocol at the same time. So, instead of pipette out of the bottle, he accidentally pipette in some buffer and contaminated the whole new bottle of beta-mercap (
unbelieavable mistake 2). When he realised that, he decided to discard the whole bottle, which is a good decision, rather than put back the whole new bottle in the carbinet and spoil the experiment of the second user. But unfortunately, he using the wrong method to discard it. Firstly, he never consult anyone in the lab about the disposal of such smelly reagent since this was the first time he perform it (
mistake 3, over confident). He poured the whole 50ml of beta-mercap into a normal waste collecting carboy near the sink (
stupid mistake 4). Just open its cap can immediately smell very strong of it, but he still making such horrible decision!!! Ridiculous. So, immediately the whole level 7 can smell its very strong odour!! And someone went to alert our safety officer and making the whole problem even bigger!!!
Finally the officer complaint the incidence to my boss. As expected again, my boss asked me in to understand the whole story (luckily he's not angry, maybe he's in happy mode today :) ). But after listen to my true story (no choice, got to tell him the truth, but i'm swear I didn't add any vinegar into it), he called the young boy in and lectured him for 1/2 hour.
Actually the incidence didn't really hurt anyone, but to let the young boy to know the right attitude to do research, to become more serious and careful in the lab, I had to lecture him as well. You must finish the project in limited time doesnt mean that you can do whatever you want to achieve it without considerate the other lab members right? Selfish is really a common practice of nowadays youngsters and yet a very horrible mistake too.
Just hope that boy really can learn from today's mistake!
Labels: life, work
