The boss from the hell - To stay or to leave? (Sep/04/2010 )

casandra on Thu Sep 9 12:59:03 2010 said:

Hi casandra, will PM you regarding my location.

Hi,

and thank you for your replies and stories... it looks like I'm not the only one in the crap place

casandra: who knows why this professor hired me (I'm hired, my university is flexible and allows me to finish my thesis when I want and I wanted to finish the project I started). I think he likes the status I'm bringing to the lab. We are all from different countries. When he started giving me these lectures I was the only one defending myself and saying back at him. It got old really fast (I don't argue with idiots) and it almost look like he is trying to get my arguing spirit back.

My boss has been away this week. Cloning has been going totally crap for the past month now. I saw shortly him today while he asked what are the results... when I said null, he went to lecture how I should have produced something in one week. I felt like sticking my fingers to my ears and start signing The best part. I have working with this cloning for nothing too.

We are getting the protein in an expression vector from someone in the next week. Excellent.

And this is madness.

It's almost like he really loves this. He gives me a modified vector with a wrong insert. My job is put another insert in. He tells me to sequence the vector as he has no clue will it work out, but only in one way. I do it in two ways. I can't get cloning working. He yells at me how people have use the same vector for decades and how it should have taken me three days to make the construct. Also if I would be a good molecular biologist I wouldn't lose DNA while purifying it from the agarose gel. The sequence results are ok form one way, sequencing it from the other way gives some totally nonesense results. The boss says it's a contamination. I still get the same results back. I should use cDNA library for PCR. After one week I have wasted the most precious DNA ever and how can I have been that stupid and idiotic. I work and work and work and produce some totally nonesense. He lectures me. I'm not a good molecular biologist and even it's not anything personal, I have a lousy university education. Then by the way, you don't have to do the cloning. I already have the vector, BUT now tell me about the details of your future experiments with the staining... and ooh, you always should think ahead and not just sit still. In one week you managed to produce nothing...

I have totally zero motivation
But I suppose I'm not that upset anymore. I just don't seem to care that much
This week I also read four novels, went running, watched couple of movies, met friends...
No scientific results? Too bad and not my problem.

You don't need an academic education to clean the floors

Your mention of lecturing about being good molecular biologist reminded me one of my professors - she was constantly claiming that we're not real molecular biologists because... we haven't completed molecular biology course she was teaching! Yes, her definition of molecular biology was "only the things that only I am teaching on my very own special course"... It was quite pathetic because her pet students were actually quite poor in lab. I mean - they did things like pulling the plug out of the socket to turn off the centrifuge, instead using "off" button and waiting for it to stop like civilized people do.

Hi Julia,

This is moral harassment and unfortunately it happens a lot. I read a few books about it when my PhD boss started making my life hell. The book explained that these people do like making people feel bad. They can't stand people who are happy and need to destroy that. So my guess is that talking to him would be useless. Slaming the door would be a big waste.

I doubt there is much you can do except take legal action. However, one, you will need to have proofs that he hassles you. Make sure you keep all his emails.
Two, try to finish your thesis before doing anything. Hang on thinking he is a sick man and feel sorry for him. People like that are not happy, believe me. They live in hate, jealousy and paranoia.
Once you're done, it will be your choice to make a complain. Most people are afraid to do so because they know they will be labeled as trouble makers in the future and will have a hard time finding another job. Luckily, a few have balls ;-P
It's rare though. At the moment the best thing you can do is pretend this doesn't affect you at all. Don't get mad, don't show your frustation. This will drive HIM crazy.
It's hard mentally but it's doiable for a few months. Just understand that you are not guilty here. You just met the wrong boss. Don't let him make you doubt in your abilities. Actually, these kind of people usually attack the good students not the bad ones.
When my boss was insulting me, I had this image of my wearing a raincoat and her words were like the rain..slidding on me without touching me. This will be a battle of nerves but I feel you can handle it succesfully.
Good luck.
Maddie

Hi Julia,

I can sympathise--your words are painfully familiar to me. The others are right--this happens all the time, even to people with long work histories. I spent a lot of time fighting back, but got sick of it. I changed directions and am loving where I am now. Do what works best for you.

regards,

lab rat

Juliasarmoire on Sat Sep 11 18:17:59 2010 said:

Hi Julia,

I do understand how you feel. I used to be in almost same situation like you (oh...again...LOL).

My lab used to purchase a bacteria strain around 10 years ago (I call it bacteria b.c). It had been distributed for so many generations of postgraduate (for so many different labs as well) before it comes to my hand. I use this bacteria as my reference controlled strains for my pcr, and I had designed few pairs of primers based on the deposited genomic of "bacteria b.c" but none of it seems to work even after numerous troubleshooting. Initially I thought was my design error, and of course I wasn't satisfied. I do feel that this is not "bacteria b.c" and I had told my boss about it. Without thinking, my boss directly saying I'm wasting time and being not productive, and was saying all the labs around using this strain and couldn't be wrong, and if anything wrong then should be either my design or my technique. My boss was then get all the strains back from the labs she used to give to and asked me to work with those. My boss even claimed that I actually had contaminated my stock due to my poor techniques. My primers also doesn't even worked on those strains either. I almost gave up, and I told myself to do my last try by using nearly 20 of the archive clinical strains of "bacteria b.c". Amazingly, my primers work in 18 out of 20 of the archive strains! (and I even found that the morphology of the so-called-reference-strain was different with all the archive slinical strains)

In order to further convince my boss, I do 16sRNA sequencing for bacteria identity confirmation of all the not working "bacteria B.c". apparently, all the "not working" ones are actually not "bacteria b.c" and was something else. I tell my boss with evidence that this is not "bacteria b.c" and is something else, and the senior postgraduate approximate 10 years ago had made a mistake by subculture it wrongly and distribute the strains to others. For all these years no work was done by anyone to re-confirm the strains identity. Everybody was assuming it was the correct "bacteria b.c" and use it in their research, until I found out it wasn't "bacteria b.c" they use all these while. Now, is up to my boss to inform everyone, but I don't seems that this had been done.

As you already known, a whistle-blower will rarely have a good ending. Is true that I was graduated from a university which had less accreditation from the present one. I was questioned for my credibility to run project by saying "you are not credible enough to do things on our own yet" without take count of my exposure of working in 3 labs prior joining this. people had advice me to leave after heard my situation. Is always my dream to get a postgraduate degree, even just a master in science, although I got no scholarship due to low CGPA, and this is the only boss who willing to stipend me (although lower amount than scholarships). and that's the reason I stay.

As lab rat said: Do what works best for you. I strongly agree with that.

I wish all the best to you. You are not alone, we all hear you, and we do support you. you can always share anything with us (in bioforum).

Adrian

You are at a university. You are paying to go there. You are paying his salary. This is harassment pure and simple. If your school has a law department I would seek out students there to help you. Find ANYONE in the lab who will support these observations and document, document, document everthing! Record the time of day, words spoken, etc etc. You may also wish to record what is said in some fashion also video what this person is doing to you.

Then take all of this to higher authorities. This guy is a loose cannon and not fit to be employed by that university. What will this person do next?

Let us know what happens...

Hi Julia, I understand what you are going through. I myself had the same type of boss, except i didnt know he would be this way until i moved my whole family to the other side of the country for him! Needless to say I got out as soon as i could. Long story short, my friend and I formed a small website specifically to help others to avoid such an occurrence. The site is called: www.pickapi.com Its still in its Beta version so the list of PIs is light, but its easy to add a PI's basic information yourself. Another site you might want to check out is eBosswatch.com. I am not affiliated with this site but fully support it's principles.

Best of Luck,

Dieter

checked out your pickapi site. very nice. If possible incorporate those individuals that become 'black listed' by the FDA. I also noticed that US institutions were listed. the bosses from hell and all the abuse mentioned above is horrible. Please consider having an attorney provide some donated legal advice....

Dieter on Mon Sep 27 23:42:30 2010 said:

I wonder how you and the other website deal with privacy protection and personal rights of the individuals who are listed, rated or even discredited. Do the individuals agree with that? And how do you want to prevent that these websites become kind of virtual pillories, where people are insulted or their reputation is ruined?
I'm not from US and don't know the regulations there and how the websites deal with it (have to read further), but until know don't like the idea behind these websites. IMO there are better measures than public and anonymous exposures.