Mostly I enjoy the way that labs are not standard workplaces and therefore we can wear sweatpants to work, turn on music from time to time, play stupid bouncy-ball tricks in the hallway, etc. But when friction arises due to non-standard activities, it becomes much harder to resolve because there's no equivalent of a company manual for our free-wheeling activities.
This may be because we express our freedom in personal fashion. E.g., we may be free to play music in lab, but musical tastes are highly personal, and therefore lab disputes over music can be difficult or impossible to resolve.
Lately in my lab we have run into precisely this sort of problem, where I find someone else's expression of freedom to be disruptive. Let's pretend that the disruption is a cell phone, although it is only a useful analogy.
Although many people bring their cell phones into lab, most everyone puts them on vibrate or quiet rings. One person, however, has a piercingly loud cell phone set to the most annoying ring you can name and receives five or six calls a day.
Requests to turn down the ringer, or perhaps not even bring the cell phone to lab, have been largely ignored. The person occasionally quiets the cell phone for stretches, but then somehow it eventually ends up back on Loud. After enough complaints, the ringer is only on its second-loudest level, but by now I have been conditioned to hate the ringtone, so this is cold comfort.
When I have a low tolerance for irritation, and am trying to concentrate on technically difficult experiments, the cell phone rings again and again. I go berserk, the person who owns the cell phone gets defensive, and things go downhill. Obviously the situation had escaped control and it was necessary to bring in Advisor to reconcile the problem.
It's been interesting to see how what first appeared as a benefit of labs (freedom! no company manual!) has now wasted everyone's time as we worked to resolve a problem that would not have been tolerated in any standard workplace. I'm no corporate shill, but I do occasionally wonder what we might learn from their basic management practices.
However, then I recall Office Space and decide that a few cell-phone arguments might be a small price to pay for not having to wear a minimum number of pieces of flair.
And in any case, I have the sneaking suspicion that people's interactions never will run smoothly, no matter how thick the company manual. Although if I were to write one, there would certainly be a rule about cell phone ringers.
15 years ago
11 comments:
This kind of problem must be the norm in populated labs. I have the same problem: a labmate whose cell phone ring is so loud, when it goes off, I think there's a bomb scare and duck under my desk for cover. But when he answers, it only gets worse. He screams in a foreign language to the caller for 10-20 minutes at a time.
Dare I say I've adapted?
My solution: 1) Earplugs. 2) Higher doses of my anti-anxiety meds. 3) Working from home if I need to do heavy writing/reading.
It can happen in small labs too...my lab currently consists of me & one other person who has a nasty loud cell phone habit/loud visitors in her rig room for hours at a time (daily); asking her to stop hasn't done anything (it has continued even after the PI has repeatedly told her to stop )...it's just inconsiderate. I'm not looking forward to going back into lab after a nice stretch of working from home for the past few weeks, unfortunately I can't run experiments from home. I've tried noise canceling headphones, but then I can't hear my rig (I find it important to be able to hear changes in suction, etc. in case something is going wrong) and I can still hear the high-pitched giggling/squealing that goes on in there...
I have never had any complaints from anyone in my own lab, and I get the impression that everyone likes one another and gets along quite well. I pretend that this is because I am such a good judge of character when I choose who to allow to join the lab, but it is probably just luck.
But when I was a grad student, we had some lab toxicity like you describe.
I got noise-canceling headphones. They are GREAT.
I also have the person with the annoying cell-phone ring. We're also having other problems with first-year grad students who continuously text message while in lab. When I am giving up my time to show you something, and you are bent over your phone...grrr...I finally said "looks like you're busy, why don't we do this another time?", when they protested, I insisted. I haven't seen the phone since.
You could try getting a ring that is JUST as horrible to them and having it ring loudly several times a day...
Vibrete people...VIBRATE
This is very funny--having worked in labs with poor cell phone reception, I've never actually dealt with cell phone problems per se (it was just a nice analogy to the actual problem). But the story has clearly tapped a vein of cell phone issues!
For what it's worth, when approaching these problems, I would try to focus on the idea of professionalism in the workplace. Too often people end up treating the lab as their dorm room, rather than as the professional space it is. CE, you're very funny, but if the situation has actually reached the point where you are increasing your meds to deal--it is time to make a polite but formal complaint.
My ultimate solution involved emailing the offending cell-phone user and cc'ing the PI with a brief, polite, but firm complaint. Though there was some resistance, the PI agreed with me about the basic need for the workplace to be moderately quiet and fortunately he was willing to lay down the law with the other person. If your PI won't back you up, things do get much harder, but it should always be your first approach when speaking with the person doesn't help.
NeuroPostdoc, since your PI is on your side but not able to enforce--I'd send an email or talk with the PI to make it clear how this is affecting your desire to be in lab. Most PIs do NOT want their people to find lab unpleasant! Maybe the enforcement will finally occur? (sigh....)
For 2 years, a male grad student thought the lab phone was his personal phone, to the extent that he used it for DATING services. We fixed his wagon though. Every chick that called (yes, the clueless chicks called the moron "at the office") was immediately informed of his body odor and 150 lbs more that he weighs now compared to the picture posted from his high school prom.
The person in charge of the lab (PI, lab manager) should set basic rules regarding cell phone use, etc.
I don't know what type of lab you work in, but most do not allow food and drink. Depending on what types of chemicals, biological agents, etc. that are used, stopping to pull out a cell phone in the lab, leaving the phone on the bench, etc. may be asking for trouble in terms of contamination.
Also, as a PI I would not be happy with any lab worker disrupting other's work by carrying on annoying habits. I would also be having a talk with the habitual cell phone user, asking why they are taking personal calls throughout the day instead of focusing on their work.
If I were to explain what the "cell phone" really is, your collective jaw would hit the floor. That's about all I can say with significantly compromising anonymity, alas. But rest assured, the problem transcends that of cell phones, which do at least have some level of function in people's lives.
Is it someone who sings loudly while in the lab?
I'm annoyed by other people's cell phones ringing, too.
I'm also annoyed by timers going off (TAKE IT WITH YOU!!) and by people who talk loudly ALL DAY LONG.
And with people who bring their toddlers to work and set them up with a DVD player to watch tv shows all day at their desk. The kid doesn't wear headphones, but the implication is that if I want to work in my place of work, I would have to.
When I was a grad student, I sat next to a postdoc who was always either
a) on the phone next to me
b) being call on the phone next to me when she wasn't there
c) talking to people right next to me, when they could have walked outside to talk instead. This was in a small lab.
Personally I HATE HATE HATE the large, connected-lab format. I think this is a major factor in why everyone is either iPodded up and not talking to anyone all day, or not reading/thinking about anything and just blindly doing experiments nonstop.
You need peace and quiet to think, read, and be creative. Large labs rarely have any of that.
But I was basically an only child growing up, my mother always says that's why I have a low tolerance for other people!
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