OH MY GOD.

[jaina]

'Scuse me, I just have to scream for a minute. So I'm working part-time in my old lab this summer, helping out on a couple of different projects. One of them is rather complex and needs to be monitored around the clock for about two and a half days. I'm working with a brand-new grad student on this; he's a chemical engineer and hardly knows anything about biology. Grreeeeaaaat. Now he's in charge, so he's the one who's been here all the time, watching it, and we decided that I would come in to cover for him for a couple hours each day so he could go leave and do whatever (eat, sleep, etc).

First, I came in on Saturday night at 8. He's just taken a sample, I need to take another in an hour. He's going to go to dinner. Okay, all fine and good. I go to the conference room, playtest some LOTR decks with Rogue, check the reactor every 15 minutes or so. I go back at 9 to take a sample-- he's already back and taken the sample! And he tells me I can go home. So effectively, I did nothing.

Then I come in Sunday morning at 10 am. He went home at 6 am to sleep, so the reactor has been unattended for four hours. I bring the pH back up, take a sample, make sure nothing is going to go catastrophically wrong. At 11 am the phone rings. It's him, asking how things are going, how's the DO, how's the pH, did I take a sample, etc etc etc. I reassure him that I am, in fact, *not* a moron, everything is fine, and if something goes wrong, I have his cell number and I will call him.

*Then* I come in today at 8:30 am, check the reactor, take a sample, blah blah. Everything's still fine. At 9 am the phone rings. Guess who? Yup, you guessed it. Demands, again, to know the particulars of the last sample I took, did I make it 10 mL like he said in last night's email, and oh by the way he'll be in around 10 am. Well if you're going to be here at 10, then why did I bother coming in a whole 90 minutes earlier, especially since it no longer needs to be sampled every hour!?

AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! I have *never* felt so useless on a project as I do right now! I am here, babysitting this reactor, so that he *doesn't* have to check up on it, so that he can get some FREAKING SLEEP, and it's basically all for nothing! I threw away a perfectly good Saturday night, then dragged my sorry butt out of bed yesterday and today, apparently for no reason at all! Look, buddy, I am actually *more* competent than you, having been through several of these runs before. Just let me do my job, and GO GET SOME SLEEP!!!!

RRRRRRrrrrrgh. And to top it all off, I'm typing this at his computer, and the keyboard SUCKS. >:(

Comments

[writingpathways.livejournal.com]

Ack. That boy is a CONTROL FREAK. Geesh. Here you are there to help him and he can't let go of the power. No wonder you are pissed off.


((HUGS))