You fucking ball-less THIEF!!!

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Mouse_Maven

You made very many valid points.

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.

I have a rule with friends and family; if you’re not willing to do anything about the problems in your life, I reserve the right to stop listening to you complain about them after a certain point. You’ve reached that point with me. For what that opinion from a stranger on a message board is worth.

[Ferret_Herder]

@Mouse_Maven

You made very many valid points.

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.

You have a baby on the way. You have a husband to think about. At some point you will need to stop struggling with the metaphorical controls and take the metaphorical parachute, lest the metaphorical ground smack you in the face and hurt them as well. Concern for your coworkers is good and noble - hell, I’ve stayed in my current job much longer than I wanted for similar reasons, though my department is in comparison to yours all hearts and flowers, and it’s certainly not in financial trouble - but you and your family have to come first.

[E-Sabbath]

So, if you stick it out and go on maternity leave, do you keep insurance and (possibly reduced) salary?

[Mouse_Maven]

@featherlou

I have a rule with friends and family; if you’re not willing to do anything about the problems in your life, I reserve the right to stop listening to you complain about them after a certain point. You’ve reached that point with me. For what that opinion from a stranger on a message board is worth.

I don’t blame you. I’m pretty disgusted with myself right now.

We had a meeting about the funding situation this morning, and I was very blunt. “Most of the funds we lost was to be used to ship mice to our former department head. This man hasn’t answered our emails or phone calls for weeks. I propose we give the mice strains to labs that want them, let the DH talk to them about shipping, and we move on. If some lines are lost, its the DH’s fault, not ours. He left us for greener pastures, and now he expects us to continue working for him. We must stop putting ourselves out for this man.”

sigh That was tough. Good news: our remaining tech got accept to grad school, so he has a place to go this August. I’m going to talk with the last remaining post-doc and see what her plans are. Hopefully, she was been looking at other options. (Since she has been taking the finance system training with me, this post-doc is in a good position to become a research associate somewhere.)

Now I need to get up the nerve to have the Big Financial Discussion with Mouse_Spouse.

[Caricci]

I don’t mean to be snarky,Mouse_Maven , but, given the number of threads on the subject, I can’t help but follow your work saga to some extent. I think you should ask yourself if some of the motivation towards keeping this job is the drama. If you find that this is so, would that make it easier to quit? Because you really should, considering you’re pregnant, don’t need the job to survive and your on a sinking ship anyway.