Monday, September 28, 2009

Vanishing act

Some basic etiquette when a colleague goes on maternity leave: She is not dead.

If, for example, lab renovations are going to cause her lab space to be completely torn up and covered in plastic sheeting for two weeks, she would probably prefer to learn this news via email, rather than discovering it for herself when she manages to leave the baby in someone else's care so that she can go into work for a few hours.

That is all.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

good grief! this will be the first of many experiences where you are invisible as a mommy. suxx.
jc

Professor in Training said...

Shit like this happens with you're a newbie PI too ... nothing like going to use a piece of equipment in the common-use area to find that a more senior PI has either claimed it as their own, moved it to another building or sold it.

Anonymous said...

*Two thumbs down* on whomever is responsible for that. Poor form. Seriously.

Science Bear said...

We've actually had a problem of "over sharing" equipment lately. Our lab has grown to more than 10 students (+4 staff) and another newer lab (5 students) has been sharing our equipment. The problem is they use it so frequently we haven't had access!

Another problem, someone came in on the weekend and left the door unlocked (big no-no), and ran out several of our reagents and didn't tell anyone!!

*ugh!!*

Anonymous said...

I'll advise that it's a good idea to tell people that you want to be kept in the loop. Sometimes, people think they're doing you a favor, because, you're officially not working, of not bothering you with all the tedium of daily lab life.

I for example, could have done without the weekly reminders that we can't use hoods when the airflow isn't working while I was out on leave. But, then, I wasn't planning on coming in (and, frankly, never use hoods, anyway, so that information is always useless).

Ms.PhD said...

dear god, I would have had a major conniption.

PiT, that is a nightmare about equipment disappearing without notice.