unprepared labmates - (Jul/14/2009 )

so these people are round worlwide

we have one that is not able to fill a protocol sheet (like date, starting time of exp., duration of exp., fungi used....) we designed to avoid him thinking what might be important or not....he did five times now and one of the info is missing all the time ("For sure I remember which fungi I used, it was something with Tri....." the problem here is we have three different genera with "tri..." in the exp.)

they seem to be all over the place! Sorry to hear about the people in your labs, and it's not possible that it is my labmate in australia because he's still around, although he hasn't got to the point where he wants to use the new shiny rt-pcr machine and I'm sure we won't see him in during a weekend.

I have never seen any of them on weekends (besides at the bar, cinema, parties...). Luckily they do not have a very long shelf life......most of them vanish after two months, come up again app. half a year later because they want to finish their thesis, disappear for another year, come back and tell you they have worked so long (and hard) now for their thesis and start writing now......some are really a pest and come back again one or two more times.....

So the only way to deal with them is a big beer after work (of course without them )

the guy didn't really bother me too much until my wrack went missing. we have a stack of new ones in the cubboard... why take the one with my name on it? is it too much to walk to the end of a bench and open up a door? really, is it that hard?

anyway, i've just had to describe my work to a newbie in the lab. he started yawning. my work is not boring, it is very interesting. don't people know anything anymore?

to everyone who has people like this in their lab... you have my sympathy.

i think the beer is the best option. pity i don't drink. never too late to start.

V

Hey V,
This lab member would happen to be a medico trying to do a lab PhD?

the yawner or the wrack pincher?
neither are medicos... though, i'm beginning to suspect that wrack pincher should have been doing a MD rather than a PhD... he has the social skills for it.

i need a holiday.

V

vetticus3 on Sep 29 2009, 07:05 AM said:

one more to the list: in the lab we're sharing computers, so each lab member has got a personal account. this guy NEVER signs out after he's done. I'm really tempted to do something nasty, particularly because he leaves even his email account open....

If I had my way, these type of people (lazy, incompetent &^%%*) would become human lab rats (i.e. we inject and study them).

I know every lab has one, at least every now and again, but why do we tolerate them? They have no concept of safety or show no respect to their fellow colleagues. Precious lab resources (like money) just gets wasted and bosses/lab managers just go ... "oh well". And after 20 years in science, I can vouch that not everyone like this leaves science ... they just find labs that leave them be.

I like the idea of emailing them about the issues while cc'ing the boss. Then if nothing changes, you can send a copy of the emails to the next person in the hierarchy etc. until the message gets across.

I also want to ask ... is this really an "MD" and/or "Chinese" thing? I agree that it is but is it really that universal?

Keep sharing Toejam

AussieUSA.

toejam on Oct 6 2009, 12:09 AM said:

one more to the list: in the lab we're sharing computers, so each lab member has got a personal account. this guy NEVER signs out after he's done. I'm really tempted to do something nasty, particularly because he leaves even his email account open....