most stupid thing you've ever done!

[lmh]

Does anybody sell a tool-rack that you can mount in your GC oven?

[MikeD]

In 1967 I was working in a UK brewery research lab. My boss eyed a row of old reagent bottles and cans for disposal and picked out a can of 200 grams of potassium sticks in oil. "Mike" he said "we don't need this any more."
My chemistry was sufficient to know that a pea-sized piece of Na would buzz about on water happily, while a similar sized piece of K would go bang, so I was apprehensive when I followed my boss outside to a water filled pit 10 feet across. The pit was covered with wood planks. We lifted one, threw the potassium in, quickly replaced the plank and ran back 20 yards. There was a deep rumbling for a few seconds followed by a enormous bang, wherupon all the planks lifted up and fell back.

Lucky the planks were there and were close fitting, otherwise I think the result would have been a shower of burning potassium fragments.

[carl.nott]

The HP (Agilent) 5970 MS has a manual valve that you open to introduce PFTBA into the system for tuning. I'm sure everyone who has operated one has accidentally left the valve open at some point.

My dumbest thing... well, there was coming in and noticing that a purge-and-trap concentrator was stuck in the middle of an overnight run on 'Desorb Preheat', getting annoyed, and then manually cycling it to Desorb before realizing (as I watched water cruise through the column in the GC, heading for the MS) that the reason the concentrator was stuck was because I'd forgotten to manually remove a test sample off of the front of the concentrator and when the autosampler loaded another sample after I set it to run it overflowed the sparge vessel and filled the trap with water. I did manage break off the column at the MS interface so as to not inject 5mL of water into the source though.

Honorable mention to coming in and noticing that one of my two PaT GC/MSs had shut down during analysis of a sample, diluting the sample and loading it on the second GC/MS while I got the first one running again, wondering why the dilution was clean, and then running the sample straight the next night so that it foamed into my 2nd GC/MS and took it out too.

[chemwipe]

I was looking for a screwdriver and I found this, courtesy of the GC operator before me:





Still good to know other people leave things in the GCs!

John

[WK]

Hi - not the dumbest thing I did - perhaps the worst instrument failure I've had. We had an old ion trap with a long transfer line (like an elephant trunk). The thermostat controlling its heating failed and heating cut out - but not before the polyimide coating had leached into the trap and the column fractured into thousands of fragments! Argghh!
WK

[DanCooper]

OK this isn't something I've done, but the guy in question never lived it down...

While I was working in a synthetic lab doing my PhD there was a guy there conducting highly moisture and oxygen sensitive work on transition metals. Using was using Schlenck lines and glove boxes etc...

A year into his PhD and he was having a really bad time of it, nothing seemed to be working. After months of checking for leaks, improving the vacuum line and getting more and more frustrated with fickle inorganic chemistry his supervisor pointed out that his argon and air lines the wrong way round. Every time he purged his Schlenck line to start an experiment, he was filling it with air! No wonder every reaction he tried went off!

[Inst Tech]

The stupidest thnigs.... hmmm.... Which to pick??

I have set a few sequences going on Agilent 1100 systems (overnight) and come in to find a baseline with no peaks that drifts up or down...

Only to find out that I hadn't shut the purge valve!!

Or

Stood in the lab wondering why a climatic cabinet couldn't achieve a 23°C, 55%rH environment only to find out it wasn't switched on!!

[PhotonicGuy]

Well, this was not in the lab, but a few weeks ago I parked my car and about 15 minutes after that I wanted to get out of the parking lot in reverse. I don’t know why but I assumed all the cars were in the same position as they were when I parked, so being in a hurry I didn’t look in the right mirror . I just looked on the left. And I smashed into other car and the rest you can imagine. The guy was kind of amused though, because it looked really stupid how I managed to smash his car with so much space. But there wasn’t too much harm done, that at least was the good side.

[chemwipe]

When I went to change my liner this morning there wasn't one in the injection port. I ran about 30 samples without a liner the previous day.

All of my CCVs passed within 20%, though!

John

[JTM]

maybe this is a curse in my lab, but it seems like EVERYONE i train on our GC-MS ALWAYS breaks the glasswear on the our purge and trap system...

the glassware is very thin + is on the outside/on the front of the purge and trap system.

it's happened 5 times now... on the last couple i explicitly said "i've had people break this 3 times now... be very, very, very careful --" CRACK.

i didn't even get through the warning before they broke it... they just bump right into it and snap it off. I keep 2 spares now.

[pkurtmiller]

The most stupid thing I've done in life is giving up on my dreams. I've been dreaming to become a doctor but dropped it for my dad's sake. He wanted me to finished management and that's what I did. Look at me now, I am terribly unhappy with my profession.

[AICMM]

pkurtmiller,

Change your profession. I was 6 years in a career type job getting paid better than I ever had before with two young kids and I was miserable. The road has been long and hard (there is a sticky note about November 2007 to always remind me and make me thankful) but I have never, never regretted leaving the previous job. Most of my ex co-workers are making more money than I am (or probably ever will) and still miserable at work and I absolutely love doing what I do and coming to work in the mornings.

Life is too short and work is too much a part of it to be miserable.

Best regards,

AICMM

[THNDRacket]

I might as well jump in here, just to make all of you feel better.

Back in college Qualitative Analysis lab, we were dissolving iron in acid on hotplates in the hood. We'd put them in there, then go work on something else. After a while the professor asks, "Whose flasks are these in the hood? They have almost evaporated." I looked around, and thought "Wow, someone is really stupid to leave their flasks in the hood." Some time after that I decide to work up my iron samples, but couldn't find them. Yes, they were the ones left in the hood.

In the late 80s I started doing SPE. The SPE chamber was made out of stainless steel. I was pretty much through with the elution of a sample set when I look just to my right and see the sample recepticles sitting there. I had to ask my supervisor if he wanted all those samples composited.

[syx]

I installed 2 new plunger seals to our pump and then run a normal phase LC method, using hexane and other organic solvent as mobile phase. In a few stroke, leakage was occurred, the mobile phase run fluently from the hole behind the seal. The trial was stopped and I should change both seal.
After I discussed with the vendor, I knew that the seal material was incompatible with non polar organic solvent...

[WillyOne]

My wife is also my chief at the lab. I work even at bed