I just had a very annoying experience that I thought I'd share if you - like me - need to produce loads of agar plates each week. I've already made it quite clear that I think making agar plates is THE most boring routine job in a lab, however I also have amazingly bad luck when making them.
This time I used the type of sterile bench that comes with a glass front you can slide up and down, and that also has an extremely powerful fan. The medium was made, autoclaved and poured without any problems. After the plates had solidified I put the lids on them and left them in the bench until the next morning. I usually do this to get rid of some of the moisture so they won't be too wet when I plant the seeds.
When I got there the next morning to collect the them, the extreme fan in the bench had completely dried out half of the agar plates - even though the lids were on. The agar was so dry that it had shrunk and didn't even cover the bottom of pertidishes!
Oh, I got so mad, and sad, and annoyed and... felt completely tired. I guess that's what I get for complaining about a little routine task that everyone does. As my supervisor told me: forget about it and just make some new plates.
Right... so I'm going to stop complaining about agar plates - AND I'm going to stop using the crazy-super-extreme sterile bench!
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