Life of a Lab Rat

One of my spies in a department^[1] elsewhere at the University wants some help.

Turns out that a certain person in that department had a certain machine booked for 4pm. Penfold writes,

at 4:01 he removed the tubes of our most sweet and harmless student, whose run had ten minutes remaining. This crashed the program and lost the data.

This is not a trivial matter. These machines take a few hours for a single run, and the setting up of the experiment is reasonably complex. You have to take a great deal of care, and it's easy to be ten minutes late (especially if you've forgotten to take a tube out of the freezer and need to wait for it to thaw). So, ten minutes. It's no big deal. Especially seeing as at this time of day people are looking to leave runs on overnight.

Penfold continues,

And now [impatient guy] is all angry with our lab for "misusing equipment", despite the fact he just cost us about a hundred bucks in reagents and a day of a PhD student's time.

I think we should go and set fire to his office, but everyone is too wussy. Where's an angry mob when you need one?

Penfold is a sweet and gentle soul, and can not organize a lynch mob by himself. He says

We have one big scary RA, but he's too mellow. Maybe I should go and poke him with a stick to get him all riled up?

So, who's up for it?

1. The 'Urinating Baby Institute'.

It's a long story.