That's just bad management / just put it on high vacuum

Yes. The whole thing is satirizing the "Safety -> Against" bit. Each piece, though exaggerated for effect, has a basis in something I've seen over the years.

Regarding NMR tubes though, the answer in my old group was precious metal complexes, which have a tendency to mirror out once they've done their bit. Or just existed for too long; a lot of them were touchy. The mirror tends to resist solvents and scrubbing. Nitric acid alone sometimes was enough to remove it depending on the metal, but often not. At some point the cost, effort, and danger are all supposed to outweigh just binning the lot and buying new tubes, but my PI was allergic to buying new things.