Cleaner Accidentally Ruins Decades of US College's Research By Turning Off Freezer (theguardian.com) 224
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A cleaner at a college in New York state accidentally destroyed decades of research by turning off a freezer in order to mute "annoying alarm" sounds. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, is suing the cleaner's employer, alleging improper training. According to a lawsuit filed in the New York supreme court in Rensselaer county earlier this month, the university is seeking more than $1m in damages, the Times Union newspaper reported. "People's behavior and negligence caused all this," Michael Ginsberg, an attorney for RPI, told the Times Union. "Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research."
The cleaner, who is not named in the lawsuit, was employed by Daigle Cleaning Systems and worked at RPI for several months in 2020, when the incident occurred. The lab freezer contained several cultures that were part of a research project on photosynthesis headed by the biology and chemistry professor KV Lakshmi, the BBC reported. The cultures were usually stored at -112F (-80C). On September 14, 2020, days before the freezer was unplugged, an alarm indicated that the freezer temperature was fluctuating, the lawsuit says, adding that the specimens in the freezer were still viable at that point. Covid restrictions at the time meant repairs could not be made for a week. Lab officials took precautions to preserve the cultures and explain the alarm, posting a sign explaining where the noise was coming from and how to mute it. Lakshmi also installed a lock box on the freezer's outlet and socket to stop anyone unplugging it.
But on September 17, the Daigle Cleaning Systems employee turned off the circuit breaker, causing the temperature of the freezer to rise. The next day, lab officials discovered the samples were unsalvageable. "[A] majority of specimens were compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable demolishing more than 20 years of research," the lawsuit says. In an interview with university officials, the cleaner said he thought he was turning the circuit breaker on after hearing the alarms. "At the end of the interview, he still did not appear to believe he had done anything wrong but was just trying to help," the lawsuit says, saying the cleaner made an "error" when reading the panel.
The cleaner, who is not named in the lawsuit, was employed by Daigle Cleaning Systems and worked at RPI for several months in 2020, when the incident occurred. The lab freezer contained several cultures that were part of a research project on photosynthesis headed by the biology and chemistry professor KV Lakshmi, the BBC reported. The cultures were usually stored at -112F (-80C). On September 14, 2020, days before the freezer was unplugged, an alarm indicated that the freezer temperature was fluctuating, the lawsuit says, adding that the specimens in the freezer were still viable at that point. Covid restrictions at the time meant repairs could not be made for a week. Lab officials took precautions to preserve the cultures and explain the alarm, posting a sign explaining where the noise was coming from and how to mute it. Lakshmi also installed a lock box on the freezer's outlet and socket to stop anyone unplugging it.
But on September 17, the Daigle Cleaning Systems employee turned off the circuit breaker, causing the temperature of the freezer to rise. The next day, lab officials discovered the samples were unsalvageable. "[A] majority of specimens were compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable demolishing more than 20 years of research," the lawsuit says. In an interview with university officials, the cleaner said he thought he was turning the circuit breaker on after hearing the alarms. "At the end of the interview, he still did not appear to believe he had done anything wrong but was just trying to help," the lawsuit says, saying the cleaner made an "error" when reading the panel.
"Accident?" (Score:5, Insightful)
A cleaner at a college in New York state accidentally destroyed decades of research by turning off a freezer in order to mute "annoying alarm" sounds.
This sounds pretty deliberate to me.
Lab officials took precautions to preserve the cultures and explain the alarm, posting a sign explaining where the noise was coming from and how to mute it. Lakshmi also installed a lock box on the freezer's outlet and socket to stop anyone unplugging it.
But on September 17, the Daigle Cleaning Systems employee turned off the circuit breaker,
WTF? This person should be charged with felony destruction of property and go to jail.
Re:"Accident?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not be an unfeeling ass. They did it from ignorance, just like how your ignorance wants that dude in jail. Had no idea of the true consequences.
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Do not be an unfeeling ass. They did it from ignorance
There is No argument for ignorance once they see the power plug is on a locking system, and in response break into power room control panels with no authorization from those in charge of the lab.
Re:"Accident?" (Score:5, Funny)
break into power room control panels with no authorization from those in charge of the lab.
That's not in the article. You should be jailed for felony hyperbolic commentary.
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There is No argument for ignorance once they see the power plug is on a locking system, and in response break into power room control panels with no authorization from those in charge of the lab.
Here's an argument: it was a mistake. People make mistakes all the time and they shouldn't have to go to jail for it. It's just bad luck
Re:"Accident?" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Here's an argument: it was a mistake. "
Yes, we run invaluable experiments, let's hire the cheapest cleaning crew to save money, who cares if they can't read the language of the warning messages the scientists write for each other.
Here's a note for them:
Caveat emptor.
Re:"Accident?" (Score:5, Informative)
They thought they were turning the breaker ON, as in protecting the samples from a power loss fault that the alarm was warning of.
You might not believe them for whatever reason, but for there to be a conviction you would need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were turning the freezer off.
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I've worked with some pretty dumb people, and am always amazed at how many will simply unplug something because the alarm is "annoying".
I once had a guy do this THREE times! He was told in each previous incident the steps to take when the alarm sounded, a printed sheet was placed next to the computer showing the exact steps to take on such an occasion, and our department issued radios for use when this occurred. E
Re:"Accident?" (Score:5, Funny)
dude, have you ever even seen a breaker? they too, are clearly labeled.
I have plentiful life experience in this matter, and I can tell you that your statement isn't even remotely true.
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No, they're not. I routinely have to replace breakers of all sizes, brands, and types in my line of work and it is quite easy to get confused as to whether a breaker is on or off. There's a reason that electricians carry either a detector or a multimeter to determine if the power is really on or off.
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A family member of mine was recently killed in a car crash. Idiot in the other car was driving on the wrong side of the road and hit my wife's mom's car head on. The passenger of her mom's car died on the way to the hospital.
The lady who hit them didn't have a license, apparently said to the police she was from china and was confused on the roads here.
SHE DIDN'T HAVE A LICENSE. Is she "just ignorant" at this point? She killed someone out of ignorance. She should go to jail for being ignorant and just d
Re:"Accident?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: "Accident?" (Score:2)
Never touch stuff you don't know anything about.
This was punishable stupidity.
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No such thing as an illegal alien.
People aren't illegal and the border is under control.
*giggle*
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The "cleaner" is an illegal alien. They are above the law.
The cleaner's name was Joseph Herrington. So, probably not.
https://news.sky.com/story/dec... [sky.com]
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"Upon information and belief, Joe Herrington is a person with special needs," the lawsuit said. "Despite such knowledge, Defendant failed to properly train Joe Herrington before, and while, Joe Herrington performed his duties as Defendant's employee."
But you assume they are an "illegal alien border crosser" who doesn't speak english, not because you are racist of course just an honest mistake any non-racist could make.
i am calling bullshit, cleaner (Score:5, Insightful)
how can anyone believe that setting a breaker to a position contrary to the rest of the breakers is somehow helping? no. dude wanted the noise to stop. full stop.
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Yea. You have to go out of your way to turn the sound off. Unless she called the company and asked them what to do, I just cannot see why a cleaner would touch anything in the breaker room. Then to trace down what breaker that switch goes to so you don't flip the wrong one etc. You might not be able to prove it was malicious but at the very least the cleaning company will have to pay for hiring such a person.
From the brief summary I'd say the university has their act together so the power switch was probably labelled with the DB and circuit breaker numbers.
The universe is winning (Score:2)
Re: The universe is winning (Score:2)
Re: The universe is winning (Score:2)
Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much a picture perfect definition of same. "I made a mistake"
The guy is lying too. He turned the breaker off. It stopped the alarms. Why would you expect alarms to stop when you restored power? The standard of care is understanding an on-off switch. His failure to do so implies gross negligence. Hope they triple the damages.
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Well the sign did say, "PLEASE DO NOT MOVE OR UNPLUG IT." It didn't say not to turn off the breaker. So he found a solution that did not break any of the rules written on the paper.
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That's not really an excuse, however. it's a research lab.. labs such as this have MANY essential circuits which should never be turned off.
You don't need a sign for "Don't turn off the breaker", because it's Unlawful entry the second a guest or vendor opens up a breaker panel gaining access not authorized to do so.
how often are cleaners plugging in and blowing the (Score:2)
how often are cleaners plugging in to any outlet and blowing the breakers?
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how often are cleaners plugging in to any outlet and blowing the breakers?
I've seen cleaners knock down a police district station three nights in a row doing this. Portable space heaters are a big problem in the winter too.
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Surprisingly often - unless your cleaners are equipped with vacuum cleaners that have a mile long extension cord, they're constantly plugging and unplugging them. And these are high powered vacuum cleaners that can easily trip a few breakers if plugged into a wrong outlet.
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Turning a breaker back on is one thing, but he shouldn't be turning any off ever.
Re:Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a research lab
Yes, it's a research lab. A lab that neglected repairs on the freezer for years; thus the beeping and taped up signs. Cleaning crew people turn over; you can't trust whatever you said to cleaning guy a is going to hold with cleaning guy b, or that he/she/it will be as tolerant of your incessantly beeping freezers. If your supposedly invaluable research is one illegal contractor neerdowell cleaning guy flipping a switch away from destruction don't be surprised when it gets destroyed.
Re:Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's a research lab. A lab that neglected repairs on the freezer for years
... and cut corners by putting all of their decades of research into a single freezer with (apparently) a single power source, etc., thus ensuring that a single point of failure (external power) can result in a complete loss. What's really amazing to me is that they managed to go twenty-five years before losing everything. That's about 20 years longer than I'd have expected.
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> with (apparently) a single power source
Many (most?) ULT biomedical freezers have dual redundant cooling. A likely cause for the alarms and being slightly warmer than the setpoint was the failure of one of the 2 cooling loops.
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Where do you find years of neglect? Even the summary says it was a recent not yet critical malfunction for which repair was already scheduled but not yet carried out. The delay was about a week and was due to COVID restrictions.
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Cleaners shouldn't be turning breakers OFF. They have no reason to. It isn't their job to solve the beeping. It isn't their job to turn breakers off. You can make an argument for turning them back on if they were to get tripped accidentally, but you cannot make an argument for why a CLEANER is just straight up flipping a breaker off. There is never a reason to do so, unless you were told specifically to do so or are a complete moron too stupid to even be a cleaner to begin with - which is what this person i
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have you ever operated anything remotely cryogenic? you can have them maintained to the best by the company on a constant basis, but at even -40c they randomly pop with no warning. This isn't a Kenmore you dumbshit
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> thus the beeping and taped up signs
The alarm had started ringing 3 days before; the manufacturer was due to provide service the next day (this took 4 days because it was 2020 in the middle of pandemic restrictions).
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Turning a breaker back on if he were to accidentally blow it is one thing, but he has absolutely no business ever turning a breaker off. That is not his job, nor was he instructed to do so. There was nothing to solve, nor is he a problem solver. What he is, however, is too stupid to even be a cleaner - which is quite rare.
Re:Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Informative)
My UPS's alarm stops when I restore power.
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Exactly. He probably heard beeping, went to the breaker, saw "chemistry lab", and flipped it - and the beeping stopped. He probably didn't even look at the signs, or notice them.
He may have not even heard it until he was in there and plugged something into the circuit. "Oh shit, I blew the circuit." Run to the fuse box, flip the fuse, go back and try a different wall plug...
Re:Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Interesting)
>"My UPS's alarm stops when I restore power."
Yeah, really.
This is SUCH an important freezer that it is not in a secure location, has no backup power, has no signs or restrictions on the breaker panel, is not being serviced properly, has alarms that draw attention by the wrong people, and apparently has NO remote-notifying alarm of complete failure.
Great job!!!!!!
Yes, the cleaner was an idiot. Guess what? YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR IDIOTS IN YOUR RISK ASSESSMENT. The people running this lab are idiots as well.
But besides this cleaner's action- how would this have been any different if, let's say, the breaker blew on its own? Or another circuit overloaded enough to trip the panel main? Or there was just a normal power failure for whatever reason? Or the compressor on the freezer died completely? Or any number of other factors that did not involve an idiot.
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Yes, the cleaner was an idiot. Guess what? YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR IDIOTS IN YOUR RISK ASSESSMENT.
Sadly, this is very, very true. An idiot can cause as much damage as a malicious person can if given access.
But...the college is also deeply at fault here too, because backup power should have been provided and the freezer should ABSOLUTELY have been in a properly-secured environment.
Risk assessments have to take into account nearly every conceivable situation, even the really, really far-fetched ones no matter how dumb they might sound.
Yes, the cleaner is absolutely at fault, but so is the college. This wa
Re:Umm, that's negligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, exactly. There are many reasons why the freezer might blow the breaker on its own accord - the compressor might simply be overloading and short out one fine random day.
Even better - now that the freezer alarms were going off, because they were put there to warn that the freezer was have temperature excursions that were larger than expected (you set the alarm to go off before they go too far) - you don't do anything in the meantime? I mean sure you call the freezer technician to come fix it, but don't you have a backup freezer to use? What if that freezer conks out?
The whole point of the alarm was telling you the temperature was starting to go out of bounds. It wasn't out of bounds yet, but it's starting to - it's why you put in the damn alarm in the first place! There should be a process to handle it other than "we called the tech - ignore it for now". Just because it's fine today, doesn't mean tomorrow it's going to fix itself - it might completely break down tomorrow.
I find the lab at fault - you installed an alarm on purpose. You chose to purposely ignore the alarm - calling the tech who cannot come for a week is not handling the alarm, just like ignoring the alarm is not handling the alarm. At this point why was the alarm installed? Just because it worked today doesn't mean it will still be working tomorrow so maybe go and move the samples to a backup freezer? The freezer was giving you warning signs, and the best action you had was "we'll just wait"?
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The only question in my mind is whether the researches had tried to get a better fridge protection system funded and were turned down - in which case the funding agency has the highest level of responsibility.
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The guy is lying too. He turned the breaker off. It stopped the alarms. Why would you expect alarms to stop when you restored power? The standard of care is understanding an on-off switch. His failure to do so implies gross negligence. Hope they triple the damages.
It's a good thing this was a lab freezer and not life support equipment attached to someone.
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The guy is lying too. He turned the breaker off. It stopped the alarms. Why would you expect alarms to stop when you restored power? The standard of care is understanding an on-off switch. His failure to do so implies gross negligence. Hope they triple the damages.
He is lying?? There are several things that will alarm on power loss. A UPS will. Most well-designed things that have multiple power inputs will alarm when a feed fails. Ever own a smoke detector?
Not just the company's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
The university is suing the company they hired the janitors from for damages, and I can understand why. That said, there's plenty of blame to go around here. I also work in a lab, and we don't assume the cleaning staff knows what they're doing when they get here. Training them on what they should and shouldn't touch is part of our job, both because cleaning labs is specialized work and because each lab has its own requirements on top of any general rules.
It's also the university's fault for subcontracting instead of hiring the cleaning staff themselves. They thought they were saving some money by going with the lowest bidder, but now it turns out it cost them. They should have their own cleaning staff who they can train to their own standards rather than trusting someone else. It might cost a bit more in direct costs, but it will save a lot in the long run.
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> Training them on what they should and shouldn't touch is part of our job,
I've worked in a semi-secure environment, and it was ridiculous (for their requirements) how segregated duties were.
Unless you were the electrician, no, you could not reset the breaker after an idiot overloaded the circuit by plugging in a personal heater. Unless you were the janitor, you didn't empty a waste bin. Hear a noise from the server room that seems odd? Keep on moving.
You stayed in your lane and the most you'd deviate
sounds like an extreme union place to have rules (Score:2)
sounds like an extreme union place to have rules like that.
Re:sounds like an extreme union place to have rule (Score:5, Interesting)
sounds like an extreme union place to have rules like that.
NO, this is SOP for any critical environment. I've done service work in secure environments and if a breaker flipped, we HAD TO contact the electrical services dept to reset it. Period, no exceptions.
We couldn't so much as replace a light bulb ourselves; as Baron_Yam stated above, the segregation of duties was ironclad, no deviations, no wiggle room. We couldn't empty our own wastebaskets, we couldn't refill the paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms, etc etc etc.
We were strongly encouraged to report *anything* that seemed "odd, loud, or unusual" but we were also explicitly ordered to take no actions whatsoever unless it fell directly within the defined scope of our duties.
Lets say we found one of the screws in the doorknob hardware was loose- we couldn't tighten it. We had to report it, because it might have been the result of an attempted unauthorized access.
If we had tightened it, however, no one else would ever know and the unauthorized access attempt might have gone unnoticed.
and if there is an fire do you need get the manual (Score:2)
and if there is an fire do you need get the manual out to see what your duty is?
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and if there is an fire do you need get the manual out to see what your duty is?
Nope. I know you were joking (at least I hope so) but they pre-train you in case of fires or toxic material releases, etc etc.
Every person entering the building has to take FST, Fire Safety Training. If you're an infrequent visitor you might have to take it every goddamn time you go to the facility, but regardless you have to retake it annually or yearly depending on the site.
They basically tell you NOT to fight the fire unless it's something very very very minor (there are extinguishers in every room, ofte
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Re:and if there is an fire do you need get the man (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. I know you were joking (at least I hope so) but they pre-train you in case of fires or toxic material releases, etc etc.
I'm not so sure, I think there's quite a lot of "the rules are stupid" people here with a side order of PeRsOnAl ReSpOnSiBiLitY.
The rules feel stupid, but I've come to the conclusion that they work. I remember when music CDs (i.e. non writable) were not allowed in classified areas because they were an unauthorised data storage device. Felt stupid at the time. But otherwise you have to train people on the difference between the different sorts, something that was changing rapidly (remember those darker silvery ones?).
It's like "stupid" safety rules which feel mechanical and excessive.
Kind of the point: the rules are there to work all the time every time without exception and without fail. That's only possible with simple rules with no clauses and get out terms, because people fuck up. Not often, but we all have rare brain farts or come in after getting no sleep, or personal life distractions AND no sleep etc etc.
Simple rules have a lot of false positives (i.e. excluding sensible seeming efficient things), but they have very very low false negatives. When normal, fallible people are involved and you're in a critical environment, fallibility must be accounted for.
It all sounds like common sense but you'd be surprised at how many people will hear the alarm sound and then putter around waiting to see if anything is really happening. No shit.
It's astonishing. I was in the work canteen when the alarm went off. Half the people just started looking around like startled rabbits, and one or two kept studiously eating. I said very loudly "it's the fire alarm. That means leave. NOW." and people started to move. Except one guy who kept eating. I actually had to grab his lunch out of his hand after a short argument because he would not stop eating. What the actual fuck. Was a university engineering building, that was a false alarm, but there were a handful of real ones during my time there.
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Since he mentioned a "semi-secure" environment, it was more likely government... probably defense... contracting. And the government can be just as bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous about such things as any union. I had one job at a government contractor in my career; early on, before I knew better. And the year and a half I lasted were more than enough to make me never want to work in anything even government-contractor-adjacent ever again.
My experience was very much like GP's...
"Stay in yo
and when the boss sees 1 hour each day of time tra (Score:2)
and when the boss sees 1 hour each day of time tracking?
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hah you never EVER put your time in as "time tracking". Even if it takes you say, 30 minutes to put it in every day. I know one of the sites I worked said we were only allowed two slots (10 minutes for me) to be used for "administrative work"
I personally hated the "sub" billing codes they introduced. It really stressed to everyone never to work overtime at the place..
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The cleaning staff should be trained to NOT fuck with anything an a lab. They have no idea what is going on there, and those "annoying" beeps may be an expected and necessary part of an experiment.
This should be an OBVIOUS part of training.
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It's also the university's fault for subcontracting instead of hiring the cleaning staff themselves.
Well it's not the University's fault "for subcontracting" -- Subcontracting is perfectly fine and fairly standard. The subcontractor failed destructively and should be fully liable. If they were not up for the training, then the sub always had the opportunity of not offering a contract to take on the work.
Of course the university could have done more. Clearly they have a physical security issue at th
Don't rent generic for fragile setting (Score:2)
Generic janitors shouldn't be expected to deal with finicky equipment. A specialized lab should have in-house and in-house trained cleaning crews. The campus went cheap and owns at least part of the problem.
I bet future contracts from the cleaning agency will say they are NOT responsible for accidents to fragile or specialized equipment.
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Add to that... if it was such crucial research that losing samples in a single freezer cost them $1M in damages, they should have taken precautions to not have all their samples in one freezer, and should have had battery backup or some such thing for said freezer. They should have had more than a local sensor in those freezers - WeatherStations are cheap, and can be remotely monitored.
This is just negligence of the scientists, and not of a janitor. If you've ever known people who do night cleaning, you kno
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I think reading the summary should be mandatory (even if most of us realistically don't read the linked post):
They did take precautions. They did not realize someone would go the "extra way" to turn it off.
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im wondering why some person too stupid to mop floors was allowed access to a breaker box, every place I have ever worked at has them locked with only specific personnel allowed into them
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Re:Not just the company's fault (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they paid handsomely.
Oh, they did.
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*golf clap*
Good luck counting on 25 years of uptime (Score:4, Insightful)
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probably should have had samples in at least 2 independent sites.
Could've, should've, would've.
They could have been placed in dedicated long-term biosample vaults instead of in a cooler within a university research lab. Their setup is suboptimal. Their precautions insufficient... Install a freezer that has redundant power from 2 different circuits next time, mount breaker locks on the switches for those two circuits so someone can't just step in and flip them off; padlock the electrical panels with
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Lock the box (Score:4, Insightful)
They make breaker boxes with locks on them.
A box controlling a multi-million dollar, 20 year plus investment should definitely have a lock on it.
Re:Lock the box (Score:5, Insightful)
... and remote monitoring of temperatures and power.
If it was that important, they should have had more precautions in place before the freezer was in "failure" mode to proactively monitor the state of things.
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They also make $5 breaker locks - which are standard for certain critical circuits such as those feeding fire alarms, security panels, E lights, and night lights.
These mount on top of breakers that nobody should be turning off and lock the switch into position, so nobody can just step in and switch it off.
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And I can bet they had locks on them - have you ever seen a commercial building breaker box without a lock on it? Granted, the panels all had locks, but we never locked them - generally speaking the breaker panels are unlocked because we were always flipping breakers. Sometimes it's because someone overloaded the circuit (happens surprisingly often in an office) so instead of calling building maintenance you just find the panel and flip it back.
Of course, the annoy
Similar but sillier (Score:2)
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a small child who liked to play with shiny things
See Molly-guard [techopedia.com].
It's the Illuminati what done it (Score:2)
Obviously this lab was researching something which THEY didn't want discovered... ;)
Need better procedures at the institute (Score:2)
At my place they made the -80C an access control room and cleaners are only allowed supervised. A -80C freezer is often not in a normal room but in a cool store, and it's not a place you send janitors in very often (but they perhaps did not have the money to build it this way, or they only added the -80C much after the lab was established). Also a -80C obviously needs power monitoring and an electrician being messaged automatically in case anything goes wrong. I know it's easy to criticize after the fact bu
That's why you LOCK critical stuff (Score:2)
In my companies, the cleaners have instructions where to sweep and where not to sweep. But sometimes they forget and go into rooms they shouldn't. They're well-meaning but they can't pay attention to stuff they don't understand - not to mention, it's not their job to pay attention.
We have this room full of optical test equipment on shelves. The devices being tested, alignment jigs, attenuators and optical switches are all connected by long fiber optic patch cables that tend to sag on the floor in front of t
Don't give that guy a job at the hospital! (Score:2)
the cleaners are blowing breakers all the time? (Score:2)
the cleaners are blowing breakers all the time?
Are the circuits overloaded?
they just use any outlet they can and when it overloads they just flip switches till they get the power on the one outlet they are useing?
how do you NOT have an alarm for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our campus health services has two coolers with fridges in them. They're both monitored with alarms because if the temp rises say, over the weekend, then comes back down before Monday, the vaccines are ruined despite appearing to be cold. So the nurses get notifications on their phones if the temps start to rise.
There's absolutely no excuse for not having these coolers monitored with notification alarms. It doesn't take a derp of a janitor, it could be a seized compressor or any number of other things to cause the temps to go up. Anything important with any single points of failure demands it. VERY important things with even single-redundancy points of failure also demand it. These should have had dual redundant and fully independent (different manufacturer and notification server) alarms, sending alerts to at least two people. Blaming the janitor (or his company) is just scapegoating to cover an incompetent manager somewhere.
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It is even worse, the freezer had an alarm, it was sounding, for 3 days before it was unplugged. It was already broken, if there have been vaccines in there, I definitely wouldn't want them injected in me. If they had remote alerts, they probably shut them down to avoid receiving notifications every 10 minutes.
And they considered it perfectly fine to wait for 1 week for repairs to arrive while the alarm was sounding. Ok, it was during lockdown, but I mean, it it really was worth more than a million, couldn'
Remote alarm (Score:2)
RPI has shared responsibility (Score:2)
Instead of blaming the low wage moroon (Score:2)
Maybe institute a policy where low wage moroons aren't allowed bear sensitive stuff
Also, a freezer with 25 years of research should be better protected against power failures
My Alma Mater (Score:5, Funny)
It's always nice to see my alma mater in the national news again, and bonus points for the news item NOT involving the administration!
Last time it was for being one of the worst colleges [thefire.org] for free speech, and the time before that it was for having the highest paid president [nytimes.com].
Progress!
Good (Score:2)
Maybe that teaches them to actually hire their own staff that they can screen and audit for quality instead of outsourcing it to the cheapest company they could find.
technical solutions (Score:2)
If they weren't so foolish as to be using woke AI, this could have been prevented from happening by putting the samples on the blockchain.
The server would crash & restart ~1:30am night (Score:3)
Technology is magic to morons (Score:2)
We use non-techies as a servant class but forget they are not like us. If you doubt this read Facebook or Youtube comments until you feel proper contempt. They don't care to think and there is nothing to be done about that
Bottom feeders are used as a servant class which is fine. They perform at their level and are compensated. Just make sure to lock them the fuck out of anything they can easily break.
TDWTF: Keepin' It Cool (Score:2)
https://thedailywtf.com/articl... [thedailywtf.com]
Re: (Score:2)
hard to sue one worker even more so an subcontract (Score:2)
hard to sue one worker even more so an subcontracted one.
also you get more $$$ from the top level contractor.
Re: (Score:2)
because nobody wants to sue the janitor, Maybe they actually have empathy
The Janitor doesn't have a million dollars, nor enough money to be worth suing, And they didn't benefit personally from their actions: It was all done for their employer, so they're judgement proof and not worth suing - it would be bad PR for the school.
Re: (Score:2)
The cleaning company will definitely sue the janitor if it can get something from it.
But the lab doesn't care who did the mess, they didn't chose the janitor. That's the point of subcontracting, you don't deal with the subcontractors directly, you deal with the company who employs them.
If you go to a restaurant and someone shits in your dish, you may sue the restaurant, but usually not the employee who did that to your dish, the restaurant may, in return, sue the employee.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I agree that part is stupid too. But two stupids is double stupid last I checked, they don't cancel out they add or multiply or exponentiate.