Much noise, little signal

Sometimes I think I shouldn't be allowed in a lab because of my tendency to blur out, drop things, and do procedures backwards in fits of absent-mindedness. Then I find out that there are other people out there who really shouldn't be allowed in a lab. My intern/tech position has been occupied by several other people over the years, and there was one whom we shall refer to as NG:

-- During the first week I was at work, one of the microbiologists, J, was walking me through some simple procedure (I think it was making up agarose gels or something) and we had to - ahem - calculate how large a volume we needed for the number of gels we wanted. So J asked me, "What's twenty-five times three?"
Me: "Seventy-five."
J: "Excellent!"
Me: *glare suspiciously*
J: "NG couldn't do that."

-- The thingies you run DNA gels in are plastic boxes with an electrode at each end. You put the gel in the middle, fill the box with buffer, and pipette the DNA samples into little holes at one end of the gel. Then you plug it in and turn it on. If you put in the plugs with the wrong polarity, you're screwed because the samples are all going to run the wrong way and go off the end of the gel - DNA being attracted to the positive electrode. So they're colour-coded black and red, same like car jumper cables. So naturally I was baffled when the black and red electrodes were labeled with pieces of tape with the names of the colours written out.
Me: "J, how come these are labeled 'BLACK' and 'RED'?"
J: "That was for NG. Sad, huh?"

-- I'm not totally sure, but I think NG was also the person mentioned to be responsible for this paper. The existence of the paper, I mean, not the writing of it. My boss: "The person was recapping a needle and she got a needle stick. You're not supposed to do that."