Silly signs in the lab - (Jul/02/2008 )
Has anyone else come across ridiculous or amusing signs around the lab/building?
Some in mine -
"Please do not wash your feet in the sinks. There are showers provided on this campus"
"To save on carpet wear, please remove shoes before walking down this corridor"
"Please clean this sink after use, or the big cat which lives down the drain will come up and eat you. And it would serve you right"
"People who cannot correctly identify objects are not ready to do a degree in science - in order to save on time, and money, please ensure the samples you remove from this incubator are your own" - directed at one MSc student who destroyed someones samples which they had spent three weeks making
"please clean up after yourself, or the puppy gets it"
stuck in a pcr clean room with a cute pic of a little puppy
There are no silly signs in my labs..........and only because there is a regulation against putting them up. If not, I will put them up all over the place, like the ones below:
1. If you do not know your A-B-C, you are not fit to work in a place of higher learning. Please re-enrol yourself in nursery school.
(This will be stuck on the chemical shelves and freezer doors, in which chemicals and restriction enzymes are arranged in alphabetical order)
2. There is a reason why the air to the tissue culture room is HEPA-filtered. Please DO NOT open the windows under any circumstances, even if you farted.
3. Please do not use the centrifuge rotors as a battering ram
4. There is a meaning for the OFF label on a switch
And many more which I can't think of right now
you sound more angry than silly
On top of the balance:
"I pity tha fool who doesn't clean this after use"
You are right. Those signs are not silly but meant to make the culprits feel stupid. The best deterrent is shame.
Here's one funny sign I've actually seen in the lab. When a colleague next door gets really busy, like when she was doing 100 RNA preps, she would paste a Post-it on her forehead saying "Do not disturb. Single neuron at work". When she was pregnant, I told her she should put one on her belly as well.
Many time, we ask our graduate student what went wrong for his work?
Very often he has no clue, and he just point at the sign on his bench it says:
" SHIT HAPPENS "
This is the sign I inherit from previous person at my bench.
" Please do not inquire as the apparent inefficiency of my current work.
The nature of it requires such a high degree of secrecy that I am NOT permitted to know what I am doing "
I just modify into "... WTF I am doing" and renew that post 
my lab has a large sign over the most expensive piece of equipment that has a picture of a large book and says:
RTFM!!!!
(read the f*ck*ng manual)
The old lab: "Warning! Smoking in the lab may cause poisoning and infertility."
Afterwards, finding used cigarettes (!) in the sink stopped.