To all persons who work in labs:
It is never ever OK to mess with other people's stuff. While you may have the best intentions re: organizing and consolidating and effeiciencizing things, and you may be the most organized and fastidious person on the planet and your lab mates may drive you crazy when they are not, it is still NOT OK to "reorganize" other people's shit.
Especially other people's experiments in progress.
You see, what looks disorganized to you actually is not. It is meticulously organized. It's just that you don't see it because you don't have the secret decoder ring. So when you fuck with other people's organizational systems, you bork the code. Data points will be lost and those other people are gonna come down hard on your ass.
I repeat: your good intentions to do other people a favor and "reorganize" their shit, or conversely your obsessive need to maintain everything in neat little symmetrical rows, are irrelevant. DO NOT FUCK WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S SHIT. Even if you are the PI.
About Me
- Ambivalent Academic
- Ambivalence - a state of having emotions of both positive and negative valence or of having thoughts or actions in contradiction with each other, when they are related to the same object, idea or person (for example, feeling both love and hatred for someone or something [i.e., grad school, or academia]).
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- Better Half - My sweet and charming significant other, also a very talented scientist.
- DangerDog - My contribution to our fur family. He is adorable and hyper-excitable and would probably be easier to live with if Ritalin were approved for dogs.
- GrAdvisor - My well-meaning PI/graduate advisor. We have our differences, but I can chalk most of them up to disparate communication styles, which makes it easier to live with the fall-out of our communication-fails.
- New PI - So far an awesome mentor. Needs a moniker. Will take suggestions.
- Thing 1 & Thing 2 - BH's cats. Actually, I'm not sure if they really are cats or some alien life forms bent on world domination.
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...and the science gets done...and we get cake!!
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14 comments:
ohhhh noooooooooooo!!!! Who has to be told that?!?
srsly >:/
True of workspaces in general.
ESPECIALLY if you are the PI
Cause no one will tell you how much of their life you just wasted, they will just go home and cry in their soup. Not that this has ever happened to me...
Oh Becca, I just did. I kinda had to - we'd just met to talk about this experiment, and how it was a bummer that we didn't get higher yield from it, and that we could still get something useful out of it by taking this last timepoint...and so I left the meeting and went to go take that timepoint, and...BORKED!!!
I quickly ruled out anyone else in the lab, then shot off an email to the likely culprit.
I'm irritated about the 5 days down the drain, but more irritated about the violation of my experiment by meddling hands. Scolding the person who really wanted those data is an exercise in righteous indignation, and who doesn't love that?
I don't work in a lab, but I can say with some certainty that this rule applies to all workplaces. My desk included!
I made "please do not touch" signs. I pretend they are for new undergrads, but really they any one tempted to mess. Also I am still a tad bit paranoid from the days when I had a postdoc intentionally sabotaging my work.
You need a "Rrrrr nobody touches my (potential) data...." sign. With teeth and all :-)
Oh it gets better - before I left yesterday I found several items belonging to my personal kit, purchased with my personal fellowship $$$ and brought with me to this new lab, strewn about the benches. Someone else had been using them without my permission and then didn't even have the decency the clean them up and put them away. What kills me is that they are clearly labeled with my initials, stored in a small box with my name on it, which also lives in a drawer with my name on it.
While I has several "TOUCH THIS AND I KILL YOU!!!" signs in full effect in grad lab, I have been hesitant to do so here because everyone is so NICE all the time.
I am no longer hesitant. Some of the items in that box are utterly useless once contaminated and cost upwards of $300 per item to replace.
I am reasonably certain that this was a new UG who's previous experience is in teaching labs, where EVERYTHING is communal equipment. But really, if it has someone's name on it, and that name is not your name, is it such a leap to the conclusion that it is not yours to use?
AA has issued much smackdown over the last 18h.
That SUCKS. One of my top ten pet peeves of all time.
Say what you will about having siblings, or whatever, but I grew up with a sister and my parents smacked us down if we didn't ask permission first, share properly, and return each other's stuff intact.
I'm always amazed that most people apparently weren't raised this way.
Who knew joining a lab would be like joining a pack of wolves?
Oh and can I just say, the "open lab" layout makes it 10x worse. Fuck those open lab layouts. It does NOT foster collaboration, or whatever the bullshit reason is supposed to be. Just makes it easier for people to steal shit that isn't theirs.
Ms PhD - I hear you - having siblings really drives this point home.
Both my current and former labs were open lab formats, and I actually really like it. But then, the majority of the people I shared space with were people that worked well together (with a few notable exceptions). Because there were so MANY people in my former lab, no one was shy about leaving death threats attached to their personal property...and things were generally respected.
I think that the problem here is that we've recently had another lab clear out, and people have been encouraged to scavenge any remaining stuff (including things that had people's names on them). We also have a high proportion of undergrads who are really used to teaching labs - in those circumstances *everything* is communal. I don't think anyone was being deliberately nasty, just not grokking the idea that not everything in the lab is everyone's to use. I put the fear of god in a few likely culprits and now have my customary death threats plastered all over my stuff again and I doubt it will be a problem again. But yeah, still pretty annoying.
Hells YES to this comment:
Oh and can I just say, the "open lab" layout makes it 10x worse. Fuck those open lab layouts. It does NOT foster collaboration, or whatever the bullshit reason is supposed to be. Just makes it easier for people to steal shit that isn't theirs.
I couldn't agree more.
I actually keep my fine surgical tools locked in a drawer with my purse these days since people fuck up their own and feel like they should be able to use my nice ones.. I am not sure why, maybe just because they "deserve it." *Snort*
Arg! That drives me totally crazy! I usually put my pipettes in a certain order, so I just grab them, and when people reorganize in the middle of experiment, it frustrates the crap out of me!
When I first started in graduate school lab a post-doc there was adamant that I was setting my bench space up incorrectly rearranged it. This person then spent time lecturing me on why they rearranged my shit and how the new arrangement was far superior. After allowing them to strut and crow, I simply informed them that I was left handed and didn't think I would enjoy burning my arm in my bunsen burner every time I reached for a pipette and would they mind putting in back, which was pretty much a mirror image of what they had done.
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