I didn't quit my job over this. Actually, the amusement I garnered from it tided me over until the day when I did decide to quit.

My friend and I were working on a science product for a client so anal about student safety that every single lab had to include cautionary notes about wearing safety goggles and washing your hands thoroughly after touching materials...even labs where the students were doing nothing but sticking two magnets together. There was one page in particular that warned students at three different points not to look directly at the sun. After the first two warnings, I would be looking at the sun intentionally just to avoid reading the warning again.

As we reviewed each lab we had to make sure that every possible cautionary note had been included. We were also careful about proofreading the cautionary notes, which was good, because it turned out one lab contained the cautionary note: Handle hot glass only with tongues. As an added precaution, we traded pages and cold-read each other's work to make sure that nothing could have possibly slipped by.

So I was reading one of her labs, in which students were supposed to burn peanuts to measure how many calories of heat energy a peanut has, or something. I put a sticky-note on the page saying "Ha ha, we will kill millions of children with peanut allergies" and gave the pages back to her. An hour later I was like, "Hey, wait, that actually could kill a lot of people."

She had come to the same conclusion, so she gingerly called up the client editor to express our concerns. Gingerly because hella tons of our chapters had been rewritten over and over again, and once a page had been accepted, we were loathe to do anything to rock the boat and cause it to have to be revised yet again. But, you know, death was on the line and all.

Client editor's response: (heaves a huge put-upon sigh) Well, I suppose some students could die...(big pause)...but it's a pretty standard demo.

As my friend put it when she was retelling the conversation to me, sure some students might be killed, but at least the rest of them would have witnessed an awesome demonstration of the power of the peanut.

(And yes, we fixed the problem by adding a note reminding the teacher to check for allergies and suggesting an almond be used instead. We did not, however, include a note about not sticking the nuts up your nose, so I am sure there are many students out there at this very moment with blocked nasal passages. But at least their retinas are safe and their hands are well-scrubbed.)