And something completely random - PD has this grin on his face every time he talks. No matter what he says. It annoys me. Don't smile when you're telling me you're going to be late. Don't smile when you're telling me you think something didn't work. It's kinda creepy.
Anyway, PD asked me if I would go through the blood processing with him again. He watched me once, but he wanted me to do what I did with the rotation student, a hands-on go through. We decided to work side-by-side in the 6ft hood so we could work together for awhile, then when the procedure called for the joining of our samples, I would watch him. We planned to start at 8:30 in the morning so I would have time to work in the afternoon and meet with Kiwi at 1:30pm. The day before the scheduled work he looks at me and says he's going out the animal facility with Kiwi and won't be back until sometime after 10am (all with a smile on his face). Great. There goes my entire day. I told Kiwi we needed to reschedule our meeting because PD and I would never be done in time. I made sure Kiwi knew he was messing up my schedule.
The next day they finally showed up around 10:30am. Kiwi came to me and said they were back, PD had to do one thing then he could work with me. It was obvious I was impatient. PD couldn't seem to grasp that as soon as he showed up I wanted to start right away. He was late, which was Kiwi's fault, but I had to track him down twice to tell him it was time to get started. I'm taking an entire day to show him something, he needs to be courteous. He could have waited until we had the procedure started to start his computer and check his email.
I have optimized my procedure for speed because I have other stuff to do. I realize sometimes it's hard for me to slow down because I want to get it done so I told him to let me know if I go too fast. Well, I went extremely slow and he still managed to screw up. Here is a summary of the day:
- I made him throw away four pipettes before I was confident that he was removing them from the wrapper without contaminating the ends.
- It took him 1/2 hour to make a buffer that should take, at the most, 10 minutes to make. He was so dirty that FD tossed the reagents PD used because we weren't confident he didn't contaminate them.
- When he tried to collect the white blood cells from the ficoll gradient with the pipette, he was only sucking up 1 ml at a time. I finally realized he had been trying to pipette with the pipetter turn off.
- Once it was turned on, he proceeded to suck plasma up and through the filter. He didn't clean it properly when I told him exactly what he needed to do. FD graciously cleaned it while PD used my pipetter (okay, actually LB's pipetter; we 'borrowed' it from his bench, it's not like he uses it anyway.)
- He consistently dripped whatever he was pipetting (buffer, plasma, white blood cells, PBS)
- Every time I had to pick up his conical there was fluid on the outside. I couldn't figure out when he touched it so I had no idea if the cells were contaminated.
I understand that it can make people nervous when someone is watching their every move. So I didn't get upset with most of those things, not too upset, and I was patient. However, he has done very similar procedures to this before. He worked with the same cell type we do, just from a different species. Things are very similar. But if I someone asked my opinion I'd say he never worked in a TC hood before. When I started to lose my patience was when I would ask him what the next step was and he couldn't tell me. He says a few things and it would be wrong. He couldn't even tell me what step we were on in the protocol. I had given him a step-by-step written protocol that was right in front of him. He's had it for a few weeks. I was thinking - Don't waste my time, which I'm using to teach you how to process blood, when you can't even follow the protocol.
That's when I lost my patience. He's a postdoc for goodness sakes!! He should know how to follow a protocol which is called "Human Blood Processing for Dummies" (no kidding, I wrote it several years ago.) He should be able to use a pipette
That's is the only and last time I will ever waste a day teaching him anything. I understand there is always an adjustment period when starting in a new place but he should at least have a clue as to what he's doing. This is the person that Kiwi hired when he stopped my funding and said he didn't have enough money to pay for me.
The following Monday morning he looked at me and asked what markers we stain for on the cell type we work with. Here was the conversation:
PD: What markers do you stain for on your cells?
Me: Huh? What do you mean?
PD: I'm comparing immature cells vs mature cells. What do you look at?
Me: (looking a bit incredulous) I'm not telling you.
PD: (smiling, always smiling, looking confused)
Me: We don't give the rotation students answers so I'm not going to give you the answer. Look up what you think you should stain for and why, then I'll tell you if you're right.
PD: (still smiling, still looking confused)
Me: Okay, what do you think you should stain for?
PD: (He lists markers)
Me: Right, that's fine.
Do you know how easy that information is to look up? It's even in a previous paper that came out of our lab. It's basic biology. If he doesn't know, look it up. Show some initiative, he has PhD and should be able to answer his own questions like that. Look things up. I'm not giving him the answer. I have my own stuff to work on, he should look it up, if he can't find it, then come see me. I am not the first stop.
I'm starting to wonder if I'm expecting too much of people. I just want people to do the work they've been hired to do, show some initiative, and don't waste my time if you aren't going to listen to what I tell you when you ask.
I feel this way about some faculty. "You are dumb as a post, clearly it was easier to get a PhD back in the day."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this one got his degree last month.
ReplyDeleteYeah, postdocs are difficult! When we first start in a new lab there is a fine balance between just doing, and trying to learn how a lab does things. There is a big advantage in being courteous and asking to be shown things, IF(!) you respect peoples time and learn once.
ReplyDeleteBut, aside from the constant smirk, he might not have done a PhD in this precise area so it might be new. Or,he might be a total muppet that should never have gotten a PhD. I've seen them both. Either way,he sounds like a bit of an idiot, and I really feel for you that you have to do it. Some people can't seem to use the brains they were born with. Good luck!
ARGGGGHHH! I had almost exactly the same experience in my thesis lab. I actually think yours sounds worse though.
ReplyDeleteThe part about stopping your funding to pay for this guy is the ultimate, though. I can't write the profanities I'm using right now, it just makes me so mad when this kind of crap goes on all the time, and nobody does anything to the PIs that propagate it!!