The sign was a little too complicated for the janitor to understand, so he flipped a switch. He simply wanted the annoying beep beep beep to stop. Just for a little while. He could have pushed a button to get some relief, the sign said. He didn’t do that. That sent 25 years of research right down the drain and cost at least $1 million. And liberals wonder why conservatives get upset with the failing math and reading scores for eighth graders.
Oops, wrong switch
The switch and the super-cold storage freezer it was connected to are both located at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute lab in Troy, New York. That’s one of those rare places where they do “pure science.”
In other words, things which won’t have commercial applications for a long, long time. For those on the staff who aren’t scientists, the work they do is all incomprehensible “magic.”
In the janitor’s defense, the sign which was posted didn’t say please don’t flip this switch. It was a malfunction alarm that was beeping and the problem it alerted couldn’t be fixed right away.
GIFT Link????. Couple of Albany Times-Union articles I can share. First is a doozy about an Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute lab that lost 25 years of research when the cleaning person turned off a deep freezer…https://t.co/lswsdYobz7
— mrs panstreppon (@mrspanstreppon) June 23, 2023
The lab technicians quickly realized that the constant beeping could get annoying, so posted a sign for when they weren’t around to babysit their fancy toys. The sign had detailed instructions on how to make it stop for a while, without hurting anything. The janitor didn’t follow the instructions.
Flipping the switch did make the beep noise stop. It also “shut off a storage freezer, destroying decades of scientific work.” The university sued the third-party cleaning service for $1 million in damages. “People’s behavior and negligence caused all this,” Michael Ginsberg, RPI’s attorney, relates.
“Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research.” The “cell cultures, samples and other elements required a really deep freeze, “minus-112 degrees Fahrenheit”
Center for Biotechnology
After what happened in Wuhan, it’s scary to think that the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI is working on cell cultures which are freaky enough to be injured by temperatures well below freezing.
According to the recently filed lawsuit, “when the worker from Daigle Cleaning Services shut off the circuit breaker Sept. 17, 2020, to silence a beeping alarm, the temperature leapt to a minus-25.6 degrees that damaged or destroyed the material.” Flipping a switch like that could end up wiping out humanity.
The beeping noise was produced by an alarm triggered by “a mechanical malfunction that stopped the unit from maintaining a constant temperature.” They had guys on the way with spare parts. They were told sometime between 8 and 3 on September 21. Unless they got a cancellation.
The techs didn’t like waiting but knew that beeping noise was going to drive someone nuts. They thoughtfully posted the solution. They just didn’t think like a janitor. Switch, button, what’s the difference?
“No cleaning required in this area,” the sign said. “You can can press the alarm/test mute button for 5-10 seconds if you would like to mute the sound.” In other words, press and hold the indicated button until it stops. It would have stayed off for a while.
The janitor flipped the breaker switch. That super-duper freezer doesn’t just kick right back on. “A majority of specimens were compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable demolishing more than 20 years of research.“