Thanks all for your helpful tips on hand steadiness. I showed Tech the dissection today and later this week will watch him do one, with the benefit of the various ideas you gave me.
However, Tech just keeps on losing points in my book. Here's today's episode:
Jekyll: The dissection we'll be doing can seem a little gruesome, but I want to assure you that the mice are deeply anesthetized.
Tech: Oh, well, whatever. They're just rodents.
Jekyll: Well, it's still extremely important that we make sure that the animals are not experiencing any pain.
Tech: Sure, because the animal rights people would complain.
Jekyll: [pause] Well, of course we comply with IACUC regulations, but these animals are in our care and only exist because we breed them, and so there's a strong moral ground for treating them as well as possible.
Tech: Don't worry, I'm not going to go all Jeffrey Dahmer on them.
?????????
This is only a loose transcript, duh, and Tech's apparent disinterest in animal welfare is hard to get across. His tone of disregard when he said "just rodents" was a shock.
Before now, I've exclusively trained labbies who were if anything terrified of causing discomfort to mice. That was a great starting position, because it let them work backwards to a position of comfort as they learned proper handling techniques etc.
I have never had to train someone with this sort of attitude. I am at a loss.
I asked some friends for help on this (thanks, friends!) and they gave two primary suggestions:
(1) Ask my Advisor to sit down with Tech and reinforce that animal treatment is of paramount importance, and that disrespect for animals will not be tolerated.
(2) Make Tech read the whole damn IACUC protocol to get a sense of exactly how much thought and care goes into animal treatment, and make it plain that he has to get on board.
Dr Hyde also thought that I should emphasize that if I ever see him mistreating an animal, his ass will be fired pronto.
I think these are all good suggestions. My issue now is implementation.
I've been lucky up til now that basically all of the people whom I helped to train were already awesome. The downside is that I have little to no experience telling people to shape the fuck up. To be honest I am a bit afraid of it. I do not think I have natural managerial talent. My bad tendency is to fume privately (or bloggily!) that a trainee is screwing up, rather than have the nerve to address it head-on.
I am irked that Tech has arrived with such minimal baseline skills. I am dubious about his shaky hands. However, these are presumably tractable problems. I don't know whether respect for animal life is a tractable problem.
But as Dr Hyde points out, no one is going to teach him but me. If I shy away from teaching him, or if I just ask Advisor to fire him (which has certainly crossed my mind....), then perhaps his next mentor won't lick him into shape either.
Apparently I shouldn't have been asking you-all for suggestions about shaky hands, I should have been asking what to do if he doesn't care about the tail-pinch response. Sigh.
How do I pull together the demeanor for the appropriate mix of teaching him, educating him, and scaring the poop out of him?
15 years ago
18 comments:
Sheesh. Another one of *those* people.
Yeah, throw the animal care manual at him.... BUT TEST HIM ON IT! Make up an essay test and give it to him. If he doesn't take it seriously, then you gotta fire his ass. If he sucks/flunks, then bring in reinforcements.
argh! does he not realize that the animals can and do feel pain?
you could threaten to anesthetize him and perform the dissection on him without checking for a toe pinch response...that might take care of the scaring him part...although it's probably not the most professional way to go about it.
I think you need to seriously consider whether this is a PETA mole.
How do I pull together the demeanor for the appropriate mix of teaching him, educating him, and scaring the poop out of him?
The appropriate managerial demeanor is nothing more nor less than telling the truth, and making it clear that you are telling the truth.
"This is what is expected of you to successfully perform the duties of your position. I am here to help you successfully perform those duties, but sharing whatever knowledge and experience I have with you. If you fail within a reasonable time frame to achieve such success, you will have to find other employment."
Does your university require official lab animal training? Do they have optional lab animal safety training? When I did Responsible Conduct of Research, the class threw every horrid example in the book at us to convince us of what needed to be done.
Another modality is that you could consider making him do a surgical vet shadow. That's how I was exposed to real life animal care issues.
Tech will definitely be attending our mandatory animal-care training classes. But if he goes in not caring, I'm not sure if he'll take it seriously or not.
1) Weep for his idiocy.
2) Think of how mad you'd be if someone who cared nothing for your pain stuck a scalpel in you.
3) Think of McCain's budget for science research. That should inspire rage.
Hi I'm a lurker and I've been reading your blog with much amusement for some time. I have to say that I have encountered people with attitudes like Tech in my own lab...which was awkward since these people were more senior grad students than myself, so it was kind of hard for me to confront them about it at the time (I don't usually have trouble confronting people).
However, the incident incensed me so much that I spent a lot of time and emotional energy coming up with a way to deal with this when I am in a position of authority and it is such:
Every now member of my lab will be treated to a one-on-one discussion in my office about the importance of treating our animal subjects with the respect due to any living creature (i.e., that we are ultimately responsible for the animals' well-being and that using animals as research subjects is privilege, not a right). I will then make it clear that my lab has a zero-tolerance policy toward inhumane treatment of animals and anyone found to be doing so will not be employed by me or anyone I know in the future. That being said, many techniques involving animals are difficult and require practice so new hires will be encouraged to seek help with new techniques and mistakes while learning are forgivable.
I've tried this one out on students working under me, and while I don't know what their initial attitude toward animal subjects was, I found that all of them have EXTREMELY conscientious. The nice thing is that I rolled out the bad cop routine at the very beginning (what a hard-ass) and then got to be all nurturing and encouraging once we went on to the hands-on stuff which I much prefer. Good luck with Tech - if he doesn't shape up quick I would express concerns to Advisor and if he backs up your opinion the threat of firing is totally acceptable.
I had never considered the possibility of an animal rights operative but after all the crazy in California recently it may be worth considering.
I doubt he's a secret PETA member. The kid doesn't look smart enough to lie.
I'm planning on making things every bit that explicit as you suggest, anon, the next time we handle animals together. I've also told one of his colony care buddies, so she knows to watch for any bad behavior, and will tell Advisor at first opportunity. Let's hope some edumacation will take care of this.
Definitely try to scare the living daylights out of him; but you could simultaneously try to explain why animals not being in pain makes it easier for him to do the experiments. It's not the best reason, but from his perspective maybe it will help?
In my inept days, I occasionally had an animal partially wake up during or just before I started a procedure. It was terrifying to me, but it also made it impossible to do the procedure until they were safely (and painlessly) asleep.
Who hired this guy?
I ALWAYS tell people when I hire them that I will fire their ass if they aren't doing the job and listening to me. In a nice way, of course.
Two things, first i would stress that the "comfort of the animals is crucial since otherwise the data from the experiment will be scewered by the hormones/stress from the animals". It is not a lie, but it might address the whole "work issue" easier than "care about the animals". (I think he sounds like a tool though.)
Second, on how to make him respect you/be scared of you. Well, I would make sure not to small talk aobut anything apart from work and then I would pull rank.... that is, I would do, as you have done so far as I see it, tell him "this is how it's done" and then if he doesn't adhere to it, go again 'this is how it's done' and if the second time doesnt work - go to your advisor and tell him that tech isnt doing his job.
Good luck!!
Dr. J, I hate to say it, but a loose attitude here might be tough to fix. You can teach someone the rules, but you can't really teach them this kind of respect.
It's not about the rules, it's about attitude. And while he might obey the rules while you're watching, he might play fast and loose once he's on his own...
I dunno if this is really an animal issue. I think it might be a young person's inexperience, naivete, and arrogance issue.
Mostly how we learn the hard knocks (if we have to, and yes I did) is by being fired, or, having a fire lit under our asses. I think this is because people are so unwilling to have a frank conversation to make the difference that needs to be made. "Hi, you're acting like an arrogant kid with no respect for our animal subjects, and that is a serious cause for concern with me. Shape up, or you'll be shipping out."
Though it's not easy, I think you'd be best served by practicing how to have a conversation like that. Passive aggressiveness does not a good mentor make. IMHO and all of that. :)
Well, here's what I think.
I am a natural manager and have no trouble telling people to shape the fuck up or ship out. So I don't really have a lot of sympathy for your being shy about this. You write like you have plenty of spine- USE IT.
However, there is one lesson I have learned from being a spineful female: if you are given a tech and they suck and you tell your advisor they should be fired, you might not ever get another one.
At least, that was my experience. The attitude after that became "Well, she thinks nobody is good enough." Even though subsequent techs were actually much better and would have been fine by my standards.
Oh yeah, and your peers who don't have a tech, even a sucky one? Kind of have to hate you, even while feeling your pain at trying to train someone who seems scary-hopeless. I try hard not to think about how much more I could have gotten done as a postdoc if I had a technician working with me the whole time, even just as a pair of hands.
A couple of questions, because I am reading your blog backwards from the most recent post- did you get to help hire this guy? Did you actually pick him? Or was he handed to you? What would you do differently if you get to hire someone yourself next time?
No, he's not even mine. He's supposed to be running some histology experiments that Advisor wants done (and that don't pertain to projects anyone else is doing). However, I am the most experienced histologist in the lab, so training him up fell to me.
When Advisor first interviewed him, I didn't really cotton to him, and if I'd had a chance would have told Advisor not to hire him. But Advisor didn't ask me and I didn't really care, because I thought all I'd be doing was at most showing him how to mount a few slides with tissue.
I am quite spineful, you're right, which makes it even stranger that I often have difficulty telling underlings they're fucking up. I have no problem telling my peers this. No problem (too little problem, perhaps) telling superiors this. But the people I'm in charge of--somehow I hesitate.
I am hoping that I will take this opportunity to grow out of that trait.
Aha, I get it.
I think you do fine when you're leading the rebellion (standing up to authority figures) or arguing with your peers, but being the authority figure is a bit different.
It is definitely a transition when you first realize, "Hey, I actually know some stuff that other people don't know" and the responsibility that comes with either teaching that, or deciding who is or is not worth teaching it to.
I'm not going to claim that I'm the expert on that, but I think you have to go with your gut (and your blogging). In this case, it's just the cost/benefit ratio of how much time it takes to train someone who isn't even helping you with your project and cut your losses if possible.
Here's hoping your advisor understands that you may have underestimated how much time it would take to train this person, and given what this particular technician will be needed to do, you should be involved in choosing them if you have to train them.
Hopefully your advisor is reasonable and will understand this if you can be diplomatic about saying this guy is not a good fit, and not come across sounding whiny (I'm speaking from my own hard-learned lessons here).
But move fast- at least at my university, the unions are strong, and there's a short probation period after which it's very hard to get rid of people, no matter how much they suck.
I think you nailed it, Ms PhD.
Advisor had a chance to talk one-on-one with the tech this week (since I was out of town) and he's happy enough with him. Fortunately, now that I have taught the tech this histology, I can more or less wash my hands of him--I hope. We will see what happens to this week's results where he was on his own.
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