We have handy little timers in my lab in order to keep track of silly little things such as incubation. So I wasn’t confused the first time I heard it at 2:57 AM.
“Bleepity beep, Bleepity beep, Bleepity beep”
Oh, a timer, but it wasn’t mine, so my head went back down.
The second time I heard it I noted that this particular “bleepity bleep” wasn’t coming from one of my coworkers benches. Oh, someone must have left a timer on by accident, it will soon go away, and did.
The third time I heard it my brain finally put it together, it’s the same timer at the same time every night. Someone had set a timer to alarm at this hour (probably accidentally) and has left it in a place where no one will use it again (again, probably accidental).
So last night I heard that little fucker again, I look at my watch…
2:57 AM.
I tried to get up in time to hunt the thing out, but it didn’t beep long enough for me to find it. But I’m onto you, you chirping bastard. I know when you’re going to beep and I will be ready tonight.
I hate people who set timers and never turn them off. I used to work in a lab with 20+ people, each with their own timers (some used them more than others), and there were a few people that would turn them on for anything and everything and then walk away/leave the lab! So the alarm would ring…and ring… and ring… until someone else turned it off. Most people would just call out the name on the timer, but I never bothered. If they weren’t there when it went off, they obviously didn’t give a damn about the precision of whatever they were doing!
There is also a quiet but persistent beep in a classroom I have a course in this term. It’s the same room I was in last term, and I first noticed this beeping back in September! One day I will hunt it down and destroy whatever the hell is emitting it!
Unfortunately I was actually in the middle of doing something really important. Expect victory for me late Tuesday/early Wednesday. I’m off until then.
This reminds me of a prank played by some coworkers I had years ago.
Bob was, um, disorganized, with piles of papers on his desk, beside his desk, around his desk, and in the knee hole of his desk. Steve managed to install one of those air fresheners on a timer in the top back corner of the knee hole, so while Bob was working, there’d be a random “pssssst” followed by a lemony-fresh mist. We’d all about bust a gut when in the middle of working, Bob would yell out “What the f%&# was that?!?” It took him about 3 weeks to track it down.
I don’t think it turned him into a serial killer - in fact, he eventually moved into management. So it may work out good for you, beebs!
Interestingly, 2:57 is the average kilometer time that Haile Gebrselassie kept up for over 42 kilometers to beat the marathon world record in Berlin last year.
Once I was working in an office, in a large cubicle area where someone had turned on some sort of screensaver or background theme that made jungle noises every so often. We were wandering all over the place trying to identify the computer, just because it was so annoying. And then there are those people who leave their cell phones on or in their desks when they go to the bathroom or a meeting. It’s always the ones with the most annoying ringtones.
I’m going to guess someone set it to remind them that their shift was over at 15:00, but the whole am/pm thing confused them. When I worked in a clinical lab, I seem to recall one of my second shift partners in crime set several timers to go off sequentially all over the lab one night. In a case of karma, my son has done that to me when he has visited my research lab.
Its the least destructive fun you can have in the office. We tried setting them to go off all at once, our victim helped by having his hands in the drawer just as the teacher came back into the room.
