iFixit display adhesive did not stick

I am a 7 year veteran of the Apple Store, recently left to be a system engineer at a local company. I had a friend approach me needing a hard drive replacement in their 2013 27” iMac. This is a repair that I have done 100s of times at this point.

I purchased everything I needed from iFixit, the tool kit, the foam wedge, and the display adhesive. I followed the steps for the display adhesive EXACTLY including cleaning the residue and putting the device horizontal and putting weight on the edges of the display to allow it to bond. Yet, less than 2 weeks later, the display fell off my friend’s computer and about 5 feet down to the floor shattering it.

I look like a fool because the repair I did “caused” this issue, but the issue was definitely with the adhesive strips. It’s almost as if some areas of the adhesive lost their tack (especially at the top of the display) during transport or storage before I received them.

iFixit takes no responsibility for this, and Apple doesn’t even carry the part for this computer anymore.

I’m curious if anyone else ran into this issue with the iFixit iMac display adhesive strips.