Leaving the door unlocked, leaving a light on, forgetting to empty a bucket or something — all normal janitor issues.

Scuttling two decades' worth of research? Not-normal janitor issue.

A university janitor who turned off a freezer after hearing multiple "annoying alarms," ruined more than 20 years of research, according to a lawsuit filed against his employer by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York.

The janitor, who is not being sued in the lawsuit, was a contractor with Daigle Cleaning Systems Inc., who worked for several months in 2020 at the private research university in Troy, New York.

I think we can all safely assume he's not working there anymore.

In fairness, this fellow should have probably been aware of what he was doing. The freezer in question was experiencing some technical issues and was indeed emitting a series of "annoying alarms," but it also had a number of large, clear, unambiguous warnings on it, to the effect of:

THIS FREEZER IS BEEPING AS IT IS UNDER REPAIR. PLEASE DO NOT MOVE OR UNPLUG IT. 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.

Can't really mistake that kind of sign.

The freezer unit was full of "cell cultures and samples" from 20 years' worth of research. Can't easily replace that sort of thing, even with a million bucks!