Carelessness

Our lab assistant, Kak Lim came in lab in the afternoon while I was half way doin my extraction.

'Ma, kamu ada kunci pintu belakang lab kelmarin sebelum kamu balikkah?'

'Ya, ada.'

'Pak guard report pintu tak kunci.'

'Huh? Tak mungkin leh, saya ada check pintu sebelum balik. Saya ada tolak pintu tak buka baru saya balik.'

'Ini gambar pak guard ambil. Memang lab kita.'

I looked at the evidence photo, yes, the door was opened. Meaning to say the door was not locked last night after I left. But I remembered myself holding down the door knob and tried to push the door open but couldn't. I don't think I imagined the scene or that I hallucinated.

The only one reason that I could think of is that the door lock was in a position that looked like it was locked, and when I couldn't push the door open, I assumed that it was locked, without double checking the lock. It was my negligence.

And for that, I need to write a letter explaining and confessing my careless act to the dean and a few others. And I have to pray hard that nothing was lost during that period of time, if not, I'll be the one solely responsible for it.

I really feel like finding a hole and buried my head in when I knew about this. Spoilt my reputation and record... I mean I've been working in lab for so many years, and such thing never happen. The most is that I left my Taq polymerase or RNA on bench in room temp for overnight. This lesson taught me well that being careful is just not enough, you need to be extra careful. And it's not okay to just assume, we have to be sure over certain things especially those small little stuffs. It is always such little things that we tend to overlook that costs us a fortune.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. ~Albert Einstein