Jess Battison
An angry janitor allegedly turned off a lab’s super-cold freezer and absolutely destroyed decades of scientific work.
The laboratory at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, Michigan, endured one hell of a nightmare recently thanks to the janitor, resulting in the university taking a lawsuit out against the cleaning service company.
If we’re honest, it would sound like a pretty funny story if so much important work hadn’t been completely lost.
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The nightmare began back in September 2020 when the janitor in question was getting annoyed by a constant beeping noise while they were doing their work. And that’s quite relatable really.
So to get some relief, the cleaner reportedly flipped a switch to free themselves of the jarring noise - but without realising, they also turned off an entire storage freezer containing decades of work.
The Times Union reported that the turned-off freezer had stored cell cultures, samples and other elements at a freezing minus-112 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The lab had been doing the research focusing on photosynethesis, with the hopes to use the findings to further the development of solar panels.
When the third-party cleaner switched off the circuit breaker in the hope of some peace and quiet, the temperature rocketed up to minus-25.6 degrees. Still cold, of course, but not cold enough for the samples.
This alleged act has cost the lab at the university at least $1million in damages, according to a lawsuit they’ve filed against Daigle Cleaning Services.
The reason the alarm was going off in the first place is because of a mechanical function stopping the storage unit from maintaining a constant temperature. So repairs were already scheduled for a few days later.
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There was also a sign explaining this on the freezer door, reading: “No cleaning required in this area. You can press the alarm/test mute button for 5-10 seconds if you would like to mute the sound.”
RPI’s attorney Michael Ginsberg told the Times Union: “People’s behaviour and negligence caused all this. Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research.”
The public safety staff reported afterward that the cleaner actually thought they were flipping the breaker on, not off.
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Ginsberg said it would cost an estimated $1 million to replicate the lost work.
The lawsuit said: "A majority of specimens were compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable demolishing more than 20 years of research."
Daigel Cleaning Services had a $1.4 million contract to clean the RPI facilities in the 2020 fall semester when this science tragedy occurred.