Reason #7...OMG!

Crazy Man just came in from his previous meeting to have lab meeting.  We've (allllllll of us) have been drinking margaritas.  None of us are toasted.  I don't really even have a buzz.  We had a very limited supply of alcohol.  

Crazy Man flips out.  He says he doesn't even want to have lab meeting if we're not going to be serious about it.  WTF?  We joke around sometimes, but we're always serious about data.  We've been really good for a really long time.  There have been lab meetings where we would make faces at each other and crack each other up.  But we have always been critical of data and think critically and make good suggestions.

Which begs the question: What the hell is wrong with him???

Reasons 4-6 my PI is making me crazy

#4: He comes into the lab (5 minutes after our grant discussion meeting was supposed to start) with Jackass Professor.  They’re kind of chatting with us, and Crazy Man says to other FGS and me, “I told him what you guys said!”  (We explained to Crazy Man months ago that Jackass Professor was not going to be on our committees because, well, he’s a jackass!)  How out of line is that???  I work in a very small subfield that I intend to stay in.  It’s entirely possible that Jackass Prof will be on a hiring committee or reviewing my grants or whatever somewhere down the line. 

#5: We’re resubmitting a manuscript originally written by and full of data generated by Former Tech Dude.  It was rejected when it was originally submitted maybe 8-10 years ago.  Crazy Man believes it was a mostly political issue at the time (and I believe he’s right).  So maybe a year ago, Crazy Man asked if I would rewrite some of it, insert new references and generally freshen it up so we could resubmit it.  I agreed, and am now a very internal author (which is fine for the amount of work I’ve done).  We got back the reviews, which were generally positive (except for one reviewer that clearly just didn’t like the model and made up crap alternative explanations) at the end of August.  I did a few quick experiments to address some comments and wrote the rebuttal letter.  All of which I sent to Crazy Man on December 7.  He got around to reading it yesterday.  That’s right, yesterday.

When I got into lab this morning, I had two emails from him.  The gist was that he wanted me to go ahead and resubmit the paper.  Except that he had been the one to originally upload all the stuff, and I don’t have his login.  Upon tell him this, I get, “Are you sure?  I uploaded it?  Why did I upload it?  Golden child and Post-doc friend uploaded their own papers.  Why did I do it? Golden child and Post-doc friend did their own.  Why did I do Former Tech dude’s? Golden child and Post-doc friend did theirs.”

Seriously.  He’s so hyper and that’s how he responds to things.  So I inspected all the figures and put all the figures, the revised manuscript and the rebuttal letter in a folder on the lab flash drive for him.  If it takes him more than 10 minutes to deal with it, then karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?

#6: Crazy Man has been giving other FGS helllllll!  And it’s making me crazy.  She’s planning this paper where she’s comparing the behavior of cells from 3 different transgenic strains.  One of these strains we recently acquired from another lab on campus.  However, these mice are around 8 months old.  Which is super old for the types of studies we do.  There’s also some evidence these mice are infected with something, which is obviously bad.

So other FGS setup breeders with the ones we have, and contacted other people that have this strain to see if she could get some younger mice.  She’s getting cells from these other mice next week.  And she can get them from two other labs, so it’s very unlikely that she won’t get the cells. 

Crazy Man had a fit when she told him this!  He couldn’t believe she was going to wait a whole week.  He absolutely freaked out on her, and it really ticked me off.  We’re talking about a week here!  She may seriously hurt him before she finishes up.  Seriously.

And that, boys and girls, is why I’m on margarita #3 before lab meeting starts.  

Reasons my PI is making me crazy #s 3-5

Crazy man emailed me at like 7:30 this morning wanting to know if I had done this experiment last week.  Somehow this week I was supposed to go from one phosphatase activity assay that looked promising (that's right, not glorious, promising) to mass specing these two different time points to look for modifications.  Might I just take this moment to say, yeah right?

So I had this promising phosphatase assay.  That needs to be repeated.  It's probably the most variable, touchy, spastic assay I've ever (and hopefully will ever) do.  I seriously think it changes based on the weather, who's in lab, whether or not I talk to my cells...  Yeah, one of those.  Not only that, I also needed to do a western to look at at least 3 different known modifications.  Which I haven't done yet.  Which will also need to be repeated.  And at least one of those antibodies is also touchy at best.  Of course, it's been months since I've done any westerns, so I may have lost my blotting mojo.  

So he's asking me if have prepped the samples to send to mass spec.  Would you believe that's a resounding no?  Why haven't I done it?  Mostly because I was pissed that he spent half the week on vacation without telling anybody.  I have the cells.  I have the reagents.  I had plenty of time early in the week.  But I didn't do it.  Is that spiteful?

However, I did do lots of other stuff, not that I really have much to show for it.  The question now becomes how do I tell him that I haven't done this experiment he's been dreaming about?  What do I tell him when he asks why I haven't done it?  Each repeat is basically one day worth of work.  I could conceivably have my mass spec sample ready by the end of the week.  If I wanted to.  And that's assuming my first prep is clean enough to actually yield anything.  Which is doubtful at best.  Grrrrr!!!

And to top it all off, he seems cranky that I didn't meet with him yesterday.  I would like to know when exactly I was supposed to do that.  He came in a little after 10.  By 10:30, he was talking to the golden child, which lasted at least 2 hours.  Then he ate lunch.  After that, he talked to post-doc dude for an hour.  After that he talked to other female grad student for an hour.  Then he went to a seminar.  Then there were refreshments.  Then he wanted to sit in the lab and be buddy buddy with us.  Then (at 5:30) he starts talking to female post-doc.  I had been in lab since 8:30.  So when the hell did he want me to talk to him???

Annnnnnd he's reviewing grants for a society that we are funded by.  He's making each of us read one of the grants and share our thoughts on it with the lab.  WTF???  Why?  He made us do this last grant cycle, and it was dumb then and it's still dumb now.  I'm sure in his crazy little head, there's a reason, but he hasn't decided to share that with us.  GRRRRRRR!!!

He is not supposed to be able to piss me off this much first thing on Saturday morning.  I could go into the lab and do at least one repeat of the stuff I need to do.  But I won't.  That would be letting him win.  He will not control my life like that.  I'll skim the grant at some point.  Hopefully it will suck as much as the one I read last time did.  That one was easy to pick apart.  I am going to go ahead with the plans I already made and do some hardcore spring cleaning.  So THERE!  You will not win, crazy man.  You will not!

In which I explain reasons 1 and 2 my PI is crazy (and is making me that way)

I understand that many of us scientific types have our quirks.  I personally try not to intentionally do things that I know annoy other people.  Or in this case, really, really, REALLY tick people off.

My PI is crazy.  I told him that and he disagreed.  (I know, GASP!)  He tried to argue that he was clearly not as crazy and definitely not crazier than other faculty in our program.  I told him that they all have their eccentricities.  He refused to concede that point.  We (his lab) continue to call him crazy man.

Anyway, one of the many things he does that really, really, REALLY ticks me off (me and the rest of the lab) is that he doesn’t tell us when he isn’t going to be here.  He sneaks around and doesn’t tell us when he’s going on vacation or to a meeting or on a field trip with one of his kids.  No “I’m not going to be here next week, but I’ll be checking my email.”  No “I’m not coming in until late tomorrow afternoon, give me a call if you need anything.”  No “I’m going to be in Hawaii for a week so don’t even bother.”  NOTHING! 

I suppose he believes that if he’s not here lording over us that there will be no science done.  I’ve tried on many occasions to explain to him that we actually tend to get more done when he’s not around. 

Digression:

He’s the type of person that gets bored sitting in his office, so he comes into the lab and wants to chat about last night’s baseball game or whatever useless thing he found on the internet.  He will try to have these conversations while I’m doing cell culture, which is annoying as crap because it’s hard to hear him over the blower and I’M TRYING TO DO AN EXPERIMENT!!!  Apparently this is unclear, even though I have asked him several times to please not talk to me when I’m in the hood.  In case it was unclear, this is yet another pet peeve.  He actually tried to have a conversation with me while I was sitting at the microscope counting cells!!!  Not like, “I wanted to tell you John called” kind of conversation.  A full-fledged argument about an important aspect of my project.  WHILE I WAS COUNTING CELLS!

Apparently on Friday, he mumbled something to his pet post-doc about not being here part of the week.  Didn’t say anything to any of the rest of us.  Because we’re clearly just not going to show up for work on Monday because he’s not here.  Son of a….  Deep breath! 

It just makes me really angry because he’s treating us like children.  He actually asked the PI whose lab is next door to check on us the last time he was gone.  I mean really! 

Of course, I have been here for 2 hours now and haven’t gotten out of my chair yet.  But I have things planned for today.  I have tissues to pull and lengthy experiments to set up.  Things that aren’t going to wait for tomorrow or Wednesday or next week (whenever it is he’s coming back).  My big experiment for the day will be running overnight, which is why I’m waiting to set it up.  I don’t want it to run too long.  So my sitting here is partially justified.  But crazy man, if you’re reading this, I’m doing more work today without you here than I would if you were standing here breathing down my neck.  So THERE!!!

A message for my PI

Bored! (a.k.a. no motivation)

Today has been a slow day.  Well, I guess it’s just been a slow afternoon.  I was working like crazy this morning, the fruit of which was a fabulous repeat of Glorious Result #2.  One more repeat of that (assuming the dumb mice ever breed), and my longsuffering manuscript from my work as an undergrad will be completed and submittable.  Once I find it and freshen it up and add references that aren’t 5 years out of date.  I think the end is finally in sight for that project.

And now here I sit, not wanting to do anything.  I tried to talk TM into letting me go home early today since crazy PI is “working from home”, but that’s a separate rant.  I need to get up and do something worthwhile.  I wanted to go home and get some writing done, and I’m supposed to be reviewing a paper that Golden Post-doc wants to submit by the end of the week.  All good stuff to do at home.  But nooooo…TM insists that there is grand science to be done.  Maybe I’ll get up and do a little something.  Motivation is definitely lacking.