University sues after janitor allegedly destroyed decades of research by turning off beeping freezer – IOTW Report

University sues after janitor allegedly destroyed decades of research by turning off beeping freezer

Tuesday, 27 June 2023, 9:00 MJA Uncategorized 47

JTN: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute filed a lawsuit after a janitor allegedly turned off a super-cold freezer that was beeping in a laboratory, destroying decades of research and costing the New York research university at least $1 million in damages. 

The janitor with Daigle Cleaning Services, a third-party company that the Troy-based school contracted during the fall 2020 semester, was annoyed by a constant beep in the laboratory he was cleaning and allegedly shut off a circuit breaker that supplied power to the research freezer, according to the lawsuit filed this month.

The freezer had contained cell cultures that needed to be kept at minus-112 degrees Fahrenheit. Even a six-degree temperature fluctuation could cause “catastrophic damage” to the research, so the appliance’s alarm would sound when the temperature changed slightly. read more

47 Comments on University sues after janitor allegedly destroyed decades of research by turning off beeping freezer

  2. Speaking as one who spent a career doing scientific research, you never trust that a device will not fail. If the failure of the freezer would cause so much damage, you instrument the bejeezus out of the thing with alarms (on a separate circuit, with battery backup) so that it automatically reports a fault condition via the internet and/or by automatically making phone calls. I think the researchers are at least partially to blame.

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  4. Renssalaer deserves what they got for contracting with a firm which employs sub-cretins and illegal aliens.

    That’s just a WAG on my part, but you know I’m probably right.

    And that freezer design sounds ridiculous. I’m surprised the lab-coats hadn’t already taken a sledgehammer to it.

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  6. …first, not uncommon for Sanitation people to do this. They tend to be low skilled, low trained, low paid, not particularly invested in their job, and usually with not great English skills. You can’t be surprised when one does something like this.

    Second, this is why you work to eliminate nuisance alarms. An alarm that goes off ALL THE TIME serves no purpose. Even highly trained people learn to ignore them. This means when something SERIOUS happens, that gets ignored TOO. It must not be THAT important if you can leave the freezer in alarm all night and NO ONE RESPONDS TO IT.

    Third, if you’re such Soientists!, why can’t you tune your damn PID loop better? IT’S AN ENCLOSED FREEZER! If you can’t tune your FREEZER controls to tighter than a SIX DEGREE hysteresis, either you have a MAJOR problem with thermal leakage, people are leaving the door open, or you SUCK at designing and implementing controls. High temperature ramping heating is harder to stabilize than steady state enclosed freezing, and I steam THOUSANDS of pounds of varied stuff up HUNDREDS of times a day on a non-temperature controlled floor, and I HAVE to stay in TWO degrees, and I’M NOT EVEN A SOIENTIST!

    Fourth, but perhaps MOST important, I have regular ass refrigerator rooms and freezer rooms that are CONSTANTLY monitored by chart recorders that report to not only on-site alarms but also to an offsite monitoring company. If there’s an excursion for time then the alarm company calls a guy on his cell. If the alarm continues they call a BUNCH of guys on their cells. This goes all the way to VP Operations to make SURE someone responds.

    Obviously these people didn’t HAVE that, or some white-coated grifter would have been kicked out of bed to, IDK, PLUG THE FUCKING FREEZER IN.

    And if your alarm is disabled by and doesn’t report a power failure, you’re a fucking idiot for THAT as well.

    …so yeah, janitor shouldn’t unplug shit he doesn’t understand for his own personal comfort. THERE’S a conversation you’ll never stop having.

    But its on YOU to be smarter than the JANITOR, and if you can’t protect your supposedly vital millions of dollars and years of research bullshit grift box any better than THAT, its on YOU that YOU suck at YOUR job which SHOULD include ALL CAUSES possible freezer failure.

    Bunch of twatting college kids.

    Not surprised, Millenials NEVER consider consequences and possibilites or worst-case scenarios, they just blue sky EVERYTHING and look for someone to sue when THEIR failure becomes manifest.

    And the reasons they’re suing the JANITOR are to shift blame and to get to his company’s deeper pockets. They can’t sell their soiencey grift now or accept any part of the responsibility for its failure, so they want to get PAID for failure and be able to smother that failure in a lather of legalese self-justification.

    Assholes.

    No, guy shouldn’t have unplugged your useless shit.

    But its on YOU that you actually thought a freezer would NEVER FAIL FOR ANY REASON, took provisions for alerting project personnel if it DOES, and for NOT BEING ABLE TO TUNE A PID LOOP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

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  7. I Luv Bacon
    AT 9:25 AM
    “Probably saved humanity from a mad scientists’ hideous creation.”

    Valid point. Maybe the Lord Himself inspired this guy to pull the plug to spare mankind Fauchi Flu Version 2.

    Everything they invent in labs is harmful now.

    ON PURPOSE.

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  12. …for a masterful description of dark humor, this guy has the best one I’ve ever heard.

    WARNING: I suspect the guy who does this channel is a 50 yo Navy guy, so he IS a sailor and uses some VERY bad words when he describes Stockton Rush. The dark humor description comes FIRST though, so shut down immediately after if you don’t want to get into NSFW territory ..

    https://youtu.be/eqIvzvB–0s

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  14. There may be something to be said about attitude:
    “Contratractors Consmactors… We can do this. We’re a University”
    Redundancy, redundancy is the name of the game when it comes to critical systems.

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  15. The value is clearly overstated, as pointed out above, if the thing is that critical a proper alarming system, system redundancy, even a full time human monitor is warranted.

    So sad the plaguecicles died

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  16. TRF
    AT 10:23 AM

    “Contratractors Consmactors… We can do this. We’re a University”

    …I’ve been in the food biz for a long time. There’s always some university Big Idea that works GREAT in the lab, but falls flat on its face with tons of lost money, product, and time when you try to do it in the real world.

    Theory doesn’t always translate well to practice.

    The kids who come up with this crap have ZERO real world experience, and that’s why it ALWAYS fails.

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  19. Back in the day when I worked for a living…I had all of our temperature critical systems (Evidence Refers/Freezers, Computer room AC systems and others) integrated into our Siemens Building Automation system and programed to page me in the event of any abnormal events. That was back in the day of pagers and flip phones, and dial up modems.

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  21. how long was the freezer un-energized?
    as a RN, I always checked and appropriately logged the refrigerator temp in the meds room when I walked the floor at the start of my shift. Often, others didn’t do the same.
    as poopey pants biden says: “well… anyway…”
    I have some stuff in the back of my refrigerator that might have been there for a decade or so, and they can have it, if that would help them out.
    Or they should check with pelosi- her freezer might have some room in it

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  23. I worked for a company back in the 1980s (pre-internet days) that had locations across the midwest connected to the central computer via synchronous modems. One location always lost connection every night, and it would require several minutes each morning to get them back online. The comnpany finally dispatched me to the location to troubleshoot the problem. I got to the location shortly after normal business hours. While I was working on the computer equipment, the power to it was suddenly shut off, and all of the lights except for emergency lighting went off. It turns out that the cleaning people were too lazy to go around and turn off each light switch individually, so they just turned off all of the breakers before leaving for the night.

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  24. Just one person’s opinion…To begin with,

    A “Third Party Cleaning Service” (Daigle Cleaning Services) does not necessarily indicate nor suggest a licensed and/or accredited professional laboratory-cleaning and decontamination service, which would be a more reasonable approach prior to hiring an outside contractor knowledgeable and/or skilled in the cleaning of a laboratory dealing with a variety of known, unknown and potentially toxic or dangerous solid and/or liquid chemical substances.

    Additionally, it would be somewhat unusual to refer to one or more of their lab-cleaning/decon technicians as “janitor(s)”. But, whoever had been hired, the more obvious mishaps/accidents can occur in either case. In this instance, a “Janitor” allegedly set off an alarm system, which resulted in a costly lawsuit.

    To consider who was actually involved in the cause, the actual incident and its other contributing cause(s) should be taken into account as to who was primarily at fault and/or contributing, for example (although a very remote possibility, 1a):

    1a) The lab personnel SET the incorrect internal freezer temperature to the recommended coldness (for example) of 2 to 8-degrees-Celcius (equivalent to 36 to 46-degrees-F) using a Fahrenheit thermometer or vice-versa — In other words, setting the recommended coldness of 36 to 46-degrees-Fahrenheit using a Centigrade thermometer. So either:

    2a) The “janitor” confessed to (or was proven to) have actually shut the alarm system off due to it being a “nuisance” as well as,

    2b) the alarm system(s) description(s) and recommended proper response(s) in case of an “alarm” incident was emphasized/demonstrated by he First Party during the Walk-Through of the Work Area and/or included in writing inside the contractual Scope of Work (SOW) prior to hiring the contractor; or,

    3a) one, or more, of the lab personnel confessed to being responsible for #2a (above) or some other incident (for example, not performing #2b, above).

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  25. I was out working off a ladder in a freaking rainstorm for hours one night because a section of lead sheath aerial cable got wet. All because the freezer alarm at the commissary wasn’t working. No fucks to give.

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  27. When I had kids at home, my garage freezer had the plug duck-taped to the outlet and a post-it note that said “freezer-do not unplug”. But then, I’m not a “scientist”.

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  28. they identified a problem. Apparently a serious problem. So much so, that they taped a notice to it. Then they walked away, as the beeper faded in the distance. And then, they didn’t return to monitor the problem.
    Why was the alarm sounding in the first place? If I was the janitor’s lawyer, that would be a question I’d ask.
    The unit could have been in total failure and they wouldn’t have known.
    They’re lucky the faulty unit didn’t trip the breaker itself or even catch fire and burn down the whole place before the janitor got involved.
    “well… anyway…”

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  30. maybe, as long as they could hear the beeper, they thought it was still running? If everything had a beeper on it to let it be known it is running, the world would be a far better place. They would have to be electric beepers, no CO₂ beepers. And we’ll need plenty of paper for notices- everything will need a notice. And don’t forget the tape.
    trust the science- I can agree with that pretty much
    trust the scientist- not automatically. not lately, at least.

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  35. If those mad scientists were trying a Long Term Evolution Experiment (like LTEE at Michigan State) in an attempt to provide proof of Darwinism, that Janitor saved everyone a lot of time and grant money by pulling the plug.

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  36. 1) Guess how many of these IDIOTS also work in Hospitals…

    2) IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT.
    Alarms mean something, even in a Shit-Hole-Country!

    3) Don’t Fucking Touch what you DO NOT UNDERSTAND or DO NOT OWN.

    4) IDIOTA

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  40. Good for the janitor. He doesn’t have to take any shit from some stupid alarm.

    Also, cleaners unions are strong. Hell, George Lucas wanted the Death Star to look lived in…..but every night the floor polishers union would come in and buff the floors to a mirror shine.

    Finally, the Manhattan project people were pretty red faced in the Pentagon when they found out all their wartime security boiled down to a semi literate janitor emptying wastepaper baskets into a furnace.

    Chain, meet weakest link.

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  44. Ahh, I am reminded of my short stint as a university student janitor. At my first assignment, I was told to bypass keypad locks with static electricity and my passkey. I was shown a shortcut through a locked hallway containing laboratory equipment. There were signs all over saying “do not enter”, “experiment in progress”. I learned later that they were trying to prove cold fusion and it was critical that there be no other temperature sources…like a janitor walking through. I have sometimes wondered if the researchers ever wondered why there was a daily pattern of temperature spikes in their readings…or they cried, “Eureka!”, and rushed to publish.

    Janitors live in their own little universe. Researchers should learn to clean up after themselves.

    My passkey almost got me arrested once. I was just doing my janitor thing, going from room to room, sweeping and emptying trash. I went into a large very dusty room that was full of tables overflowing with native American artifacts and walls covered in displays of arrowheads and spear points. I thought it was pretty messy but I got busy with my task. A few minutes into it, I was confronted with a very serious security officer with his gun drawn. Apparently, my supervisor had neglected to tell me to skip that particular room. The collection was worth multiple millions and I was not supposed to be there. I had set off a silent motion sensor alarm. The security officer could see that I was just a student janitor, so he let me go after a short lecture. I didn’t get into any trouble but I was transferred to another building.

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  45. ACParker
    AT 7:40 PM
    “I learned later that they were trying to prove cold fusion and it was critical that there be no other temperature sources…like a janitor walking through. ”

    …and that’s another thing. If your experiment can’t survive a passing janitor or has to spend years at -112 degrees, that dog just ain’t gonna hunt in the REAL world.

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