Making a Better Idiot

I had a friend in college (that’s Uni for you non-Americans) that used to say that if you make something idiot proof, the world will make a better idiot. He was weird. Most of what he said made me laugh at him.
Things have been pretty slow at work. It tends to get kind of boring. It’s hard to look busy when you have nothing to do. That of course doesn’t matter most days because my boss leaves by like 300, on the days that he comes that is. But on the days that he’s there I try to look like I’m doing something. If that fails I’ll usually pretend to be reading a Science magazine or even a neuroscience textbook. Well on Friday I had nothing to do. I had no reason to go to work, except that it was payday. I figured I’d make some buffers and solutions that I didn’t need but it made me feel like there was a reason for me having come to work. I figured at least when I don’t have anything expected of me then I can’t not live up to expectations. I couldn’t screw things up, right. So during my buffer making I went to the freezer room, can’t remember why. So as I was putting back whatever it was that I had taken out, I knocked out a slide box. It wasn’t full but it mostly was. There were lots of slides on the floor, more than a few of them broken. I put as many as I could back in the box and the broken ones that looked like they could still be used I piled in the box and put it back in the freezer. I went and told our student, the owner of the box, what I had done. She was so nice. “Oh, that’s no problem. It’s no big deal.” So she goes to the box and because I had it out of the freezer too long most of the slides had frozen in their new slots. So she can’t reorder the box without thawing it again and she can’t thaw it again without hurting the tissue on the slide. So she can’t reorder them to know which slides she has and which ones I broke. So when I don’t have my own science to make not work, I go looking for other people’s to screw up. At least Leslie can’t fire me.