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it's time for... work griping!
Jan. 21st, 2003 07:27 pmFirst of all, god*damn* it is cold out there.
New building madness continues: no ice machine. Hel*lo*. Am getting the impression no one was actually in charge of arranging for basic equipment for the floor. Did we think it was just going to magically be there?
Think I managed to earn myself "bad attitude" points arguing with my boss over shelving some catalogs (logues?)... he wanted them on the top three shelves of this bookcase, where the top shelf was over *my* head. A bunch of people use these catalogs and I felt it was totally inconsiderate of my (about 6'2") boss to look at these shelves and say "oh, it'll be fine", especially when he was filling the next lower shelf with lab notebooks that he's the *only one* who looks at. Of course, I didn't say "'inconsiderate", I said something like "I think this could be a potential accessibility issue"; he said something like "what, you can't reach up there", and I said "I think it would be inconvenient for people shorter than I am", and he told me that "there's stepstools", and that was how we were going to do it. Arrrrrgh.
I'm a big believer in the philosophy that if you're setting something up that people are going to use, you ought to be smart and set it up as practically, that is, as conveniently, as possible. I'm *5'9"*; 5' is an entirely reasonable size for a scientist (I mean, hello, judging by the frequency of small Asian women in my own grad program alone, 5' isn't even a hard lower limit), and to say "oh well, anyone shorter can use a stepstool" (which is a huge pain to have to go find, if there's even one in the new lab at *all*) is just dumb. So I think I was probably showing my opinion of this decision in my tone, and maybe making a few faces.
I think it was probably okay, really, in that he came back while I was sorting catalogues and made some joke about my trying to avoid the "politically incorrect" shelf. And in fact I did manage to squeeze them all onto the lower two shelves of the three, by pulling duplicates, old editions, and, in a stroke of genius, anything more than five years old (because, really, accurate source of availability and pricing information? I don't think so.). But, like, I don't think it's "political correctness" to be concerned about whether a shared resource is actually in a place that's going to work for everyone who might be sharing it. *Maybe* I've just been sensitized by having a bunch of really short friends, but it just seems like basic smartness to me to not make things hard for people. Or, perhaps, basic courtesy.
In other boss fun, our co-lab isn't even trying to resume experimental work until next week... of course *we* had to start a few things this afternoon, leading (inevitably) to a classic "standing there realizing the piece of equipment you need *now* isn't up and running" moment. I'm really not very good at improvising in such situations, especially when I don't have a good sense whether (for example) temperature or aeration is more critical to newly-transformed E. coli. Think it worked out okay though. I did manage to convince him to give me another day to get stuff sorted out before getting back into the gels&blots business though.
New building madness continues: no ice machine. Hel*lo*. Am getting the impression no one was actually in charge of arranging for basic equipment for the floor. Did we think it was just going to magically be there?
Think I managed to earn myself "bad attitude" points arguing with my boss over shelving some catalogs (logues?)... he wanted them on the top three shelves of this bookcase, where the top shelf was over *my* head. A bunch of people use these catalogs and I felt it was totally inconsiderate of my (about 6'2") boss to look at these shelves and say "oh, it'll be fine", especially when he was filling the next lower shelf with lab notebooks that he's the *only one* who looks at. Of course, I didn't say "'inconsiderate", I said something like "I think this could be a potential accessibility issue"; he said something like "what, you can't reach up there", and I said "I think it would be inconvenient for people shorter than I am", and he told me that "there's stepstools", and that was how we were going to do it. Arrrrrgh.
I'm a big believer in the philosophy that if you're setting something up that people are going to use, you ought to be smart and set it up as practically, that is, as conveniently, as possible. I'm *5'9"*; 5' is an entirely reasonable size for a scientist (I mean, hello, judging by the frequency of small Asian women in my own grad program alone, 5' isn't even a hard lower limit), and to say "oh well, anyone shorter can use a stepstool" (which is a huge pain to have to go find, if there's even one in the new lab at *all*) is just dumb. So I think I was probably showing my opinion of this decision in my tone, and maybe making a few faces.
I think it was probably okay, really, in that he came back while I was sorting catalogues and made some joke about my trying to avoid the "politically incorrect" shelf. And in fact I did manage to squeeze them all onto the lower two shelves of the three, by pulling duplicates, old editions, and, in a stroke of genius, anything more than five years old (because, really, accurate source of availability and pricing information? I don't think so.). But, like, I don't think it's "political correctness" to be concerned about whether a shared resource is actually in a place that's going to work for everyone who might be sharing it. *Maybe* I've just been sensitized by having a bunch of really short friends, but it just seems like basic smartness to me to not make things hard for people. Or, perhaps, basic courtesy.
In other boss fun, our co-lab isn't even trying to resume experimental work until next week... of course *we* had to start a few things this afternoon, leading (inevitably) to a classic "standing there realizing the piece of equipment you need *now* isn't up and running" moment. I'm really not very good at improvising in such situations, especially when I don't have a good sense whether (for example) temperature or aeration is more critical to newly-transformed E. coli. Think it worked out okay though. I did manage to convince him to give me another day to get stuff sorted out before getting back into the gels&blots business though.
