Its scary how much funny funding goes on! :eek: I never really knew because before now, I just placed orders for supplies and equipment. The more I learn, the more I hate it.
Right now, we have no “juice.” Historically, we’re the Organ Transplant Immunology Department. Another faction of the med school wants to start a similar program. Since we have lost our two “headline” researchers, we’re lame ducks. Some of the junior researchers and post-docs have been fighting to keep us afloat, under the pretext that the U already has an established transplant program. This existing program did the world’s first liver transplant, why gut it and start over?
As a research assistant/lab manager, I am very low on the totem pole. The worst thing that can happen is that my reputation is ruined and I’ll never work in research again. As much as this “creative financing” infuriates me, its common and excepted. I know that my co-workers and I can be scapegoated and canned while the SOB’s with the phd’s move on. Even documenting what has happened won’t protect me, it may just prove that I’m disloyal and can’t be trusted with the dirty laundry.
When the shit started to hit the fan in large amounts, I hoped to lay low, take my maternity leave and then quit once it was over. My biggest fear is that if I walk away now, I won’t qualify for unemployment, and I can’t get another job since I’m roughly 5 months pregnant.
If we’re careful, we can live off of Mouse_Spouse’s salary. I have attached a lot of my self-worth to my job. When life really, really sucked, work was always there. What else am I going to do? That scares me worse than what’s going on in the lab.
Talk to your local employment insurance people. Tell them that there are all kinds of illegal things going on at your company, and you’re afraid for your future employment if you continue there. Ask them what kind of unemployment benefits you can get for quitting a job over illegal actions.
Talked to one of the junior researchers this morning. According to him, our Department Head was suppposed to turn in a revised tranplantation department organization plan to the dean before he left the U. The DH didn’t do this. The junoir researcher is taking a draft copy he has and turn that into the dean.
Seems like none of the higher ups give a shit, even the one that was working with us.
I have been feeling really bad for our post-docs, the politics hits them harder than it does me. (Post-doc strikes me a precarious position. There is a limited amount of time for them to establish themselves or they are just stuck.) Much to my surprize, they feel sorry for me! I joined this lab to learn mouse surgery, got shoved into an administrative role and now my job is on the line and my boss doesn’t seem to care.
I’ve been reading up on unemployment benefits. According to the Colorado Department of Labor
I’m not sure where my situation fits. Tomorrow I’m meeting with a friend who works for a labor lawyer, hopefully she can point me in the right direction.
Anyway. I’m gonna stop pissing on the Dope and go home. I’m the only one in the lab today and apathy has set in.
On the one hand, we have a highly talented woman with access to every dissection tool for small rodents ever designed; someone who not only has the skill to slowly castrate her boss, but who could (if she wanted to) carve expert Jack-O-Lantern faces through the sack of his balls while installing bulbs, wire, and batteries for a truly scary lantern show.
On the other, we have a thieving ivory-tower ego-maniac, who probably couldn’t run fast enough to get away from her even if he was given a 10-minute head start.
I don’t see a happy future for that Department Head…
Yes!!! You could do a “Saw 4” with your boss waking up to discover he has had a clockwork testicle-carving groin attachment on a spring timer locked onto him, with the key at the end of a giant maze!!!
Recorded Mouse_Maven voice : “I’d like to play a game…”
I wish, I wish! After observing a cadaver dissection, I thought That’s sooo much easier than what I do. All the vasculature is much easier to see and the organs are nice and big. If only I could find a dissection pad large enough!!!
On the other hand, I am trained how to do tatoos on the tails of mice and rats. If I wanted to avoid massive amounts of prision time, I could get the SB soused and tatoo something on his forehead! Maybe “Dickless” or “Complete Asshole.”
No luck. Their office hours are on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I’ll talk to them then.
We reviewed the grant that lost the money. Turns out that the money was not stolen by the Spineless Bastard. Several month’s worth of charges for internal services were sent to this account. The SB’s secretary entered the charges in for the service provider.
We are out of money. The majority of these funds were to pay for our animal charges, which are higher than normal because we are shipping mice to the former Department Head. The old DH hasn’t been answering our emails or phone calls; he may find himself SOL on some mouse strains. (My new definition of Hell: shipping mice to another country. It hard to get someone to understand that while an 8 week quarantine is fine for most animals, its not good for mice. If shipped at 3 weeks old, a two month wait dramatically reduces their fertility. They’re rodents - they don’t live long!)
I ran a report on a junior researcher’s grant. He looks at it and says, “This can’t be right. There is only enough here for my salary.”
:mad: :mad: :mad: I am not a goddamned accountant! I have only a little training on the finance system. I don’t fucking know why the internal service guy decided to charge for services rendered NOW instead of after they were done months ago. I don’t know where the grant money goes because there is a cubic shit ton of little charges from the U takes out and doesn’t tell us.
I wish the Spinless, Dickless Bastard had taken the money. It would have been easier to cope with than this.
Any word on getting you, or your dept., any support? Even granted that Spineless, Dickless Bastard isn’t involved, this time, it’s pretty clear that you’re doing the accountancy equivalent of holding off a company of tanks with yourself and a broom.
Things are very cloudy on this end. I was cc’d onto an email the junior researcher sent to the old Department Head. Before leaving for his new job, the DH was going to submit a re-organization plan for this department to the Dean
The old DH didn’t submmit the plan before leaving. Without an organization plan, we can’t get funding. Without funding, we can’t do research. Without research, we can’t apply for grants to get funds. BMalion is right, its death by a thousand cuts.
Yanno that one Bugs Bunny cartoon? The one where he’s stuck in an airplane with a Gremlin. And they’re fighting all over the place, and the plane is being torn to pieces. Finally, when the plane goes into a terminal dive, Bugs and the Gremlin awake to the seriousness of their situation. In a desperation move, they activate the Automatic Pilot. It takes a moment to assess the situation - the grabs the sole parachute onboard the plane, and bails out, leaving Bugs and the Gremlin to face an ignominious death.
Take the fucking parachute, Mouse_Maven!
(Any use of profanity in this post is meant only to emphasize honest concern and admiration for Mouse_Maven, and not to be taken as any kind of attack on that worthy.)
That would be great, but I have now become obviously pregnant. Even before I was with child, funding is so tight that no labs are hiring. (IMHO, the U has serious funding issues. 54% of a grant goes to the U, the rest is for the researcher to use. That’s a lot of money from your working going down the fucking drain. What does that 54% get us? Shit. Employees pay for parking, labs pay for internet and phone service, pay for IT, pay for animal care. The U is building this “nice” new campus, with tainted water and broken doors, and it will drive all of the researchers away.)
Mouse_Maven, I don’t mistake a metaphorical parachute for being a good thing. Real parachutes are really only a way to keep people from turning into street pizza when they fall from heights. AIUI military uses of parachutes in large groups expect something like a 1-2% injury rate for people using them, who are doing it under ideal conditions.
What I’m trying to say is that when you use a metaphorical parachute, it’s not supposed to be a good thing. It’s just better than riding a job, relationship, or what-have-you into the ground. Loyalty is a very important thing. But in order for it to be deserved it has to be reciprocated. None of your recent stories about work have contained anything that would justify, in my mind, the loyalty that you’ve been displaying.
If you think your actions can turn things around, in the time you have before you have to take maternity leave, that’s great, and I’d be thrilled the see/hear it.
At this point, however, I don’t think that’s going to happen. You may have a self-imposed obligation to those who are left in the lab. It certainly speaks well of you that you aren’t simply worried about your own prospects, but those of people around you. But, there comes a point where selfishness becomes a virtue. If you’re committing to a situation that’s entailing huge stress for you, little prospect for a positive outcome, and the real potential for being scapegoated - it’s time to consider some practical selfishness.
You’ve already said that your family can survive on what Mouse_Spouse makes. So, you’re no longer risking your health, reputation and the health of your baby for living expenses, but for luxuries. I think you should invest in the luxury of being away from what sounds like a major shipwreck in the making.
Disclaimer: This advice is easier for me to offer than for you to take. Like all internet advice it’s worth is directly proportional to how much you paid for it. That said advice is offered in good faith doesn’t mean that it is actually good coin. Caveat emptor.
I have an - partially - irrational fear that if I leave my job, my husband will lose his.
Another aspect of all of this is that I’m a bit of a work addict. Not working is very frightening to me.
Also, I want to see my co-workers pull though. As much as I complain, I can walk away and do something else. (My experience as a lab manager may translate into some sort of medical admin job fairly well.) The post-docs, grad students and junior researcher I work with have spent many, many years working on their experiments. I’m the only support personal left. Abadoning them seems like an awful thing to do.
Heh. I couldn’t tell you for certain either, but suffice it to say you are not alone here. Sometimes billers wait until they have all account numbers and other info in order before billing the whole thing. Others (like me) who understand the timeliness factor with grants, will bill out everything I can and then follow up with the slackers and not be too concerned with them screwing themselves over.
Bless you for that! One would think that a vendor within the Unversity would have similar outlook. (I know the vendor and I really want to stomp a new mudhole in his ass. Why did he wait so long? Because it’s such a pain to enter charges in. Lazy fuck.)
