The arrogance just amazes me (longish vent)
biomaj5
member
I work in a lupus/sjogren's syndrome genetics lab. My bosses moved here from MN in 2007, and one of them brought her grad student with her. He has always been an egotistical, condescending, micromanaging jerk (believe it or not, I'm sugarcoating that a bit). It is practically unheard of to do a post-doc in the same place you do your grad work, and almost no one stays in the same place for a job (although it is acceptable to do grad work in place A, do post-doc in place B, and go back for a job in place A).
Anyway, he finished his PhD and now he's a post-doc here. We recently moved to a brand new building, and we got to design the floor plan. He picked his office. He shares an office with 2 other post-docs, and it's built for 4 people, so it's sizeable. He has now decided that he needs his own office, and now our lab manager has to give up her office just so he can have his own. Option B was to move our RNA processing station from a corner of the lab out into the middle (RNA is very unstable, and needs to be kept away from the rest of the lab. Moving the RNA station pretty much ensures that the RNA quality would suck from there on out). He throws fits about things (like he was initially mad that the RNA station was in a corner of the lab, rather than in its own room). But now that he needs something, suddenly it is acceptable to just move stuff wherever to accomodate him. He's decided that the lab manager really doesn't need an office, and so Kiely has to sacrifice her office rather than risk the RNA being crap.
Every time he has ever decided that he needs something, it's just given to him regardless of the impact on other people. My boss needs to grow a spine and tell him no. She depends on him way too much.
/vent
Re: The arrogance just amazes me (longish vent)
I forgot to mention that we have 6 other post-docs between our 2 PIs (it's a combo lab), none of whom have their own offices and all of them actually do bench work. This one can't do benchwork-he expects us to drop whatever we are doing and do stuff for him. My boss lets him get away with it. I think the reason he won't leave is because he'd fail anywhere else. Yet he thinks he is the best thing ever. At this point, I wouldn't mind if they gave him his own lab, as long as he's out of here. I doubt he'll ever leave though. Our dept head made up some special title for him so that he's somehow both a PI and a post-doc.
It's not fair how the douches always win. His wife is equally douchy. She used to be our secretary, and I made the mistake of confiding in her about our IF struggles. One day when I was sick, she texted me and told me that she knew I was KU and that I needed to tell everyone so that they could stop tiptoeing around me. We had just passed the year mark and I pretty much lost it at that point. I haven't spoken to her since and she had the nerve to tell someone that she couldn't understand why I didn't like her any more.
It seems like everyone else can see the insanity except for the post-doc, the PI, and the dept head. The dept head actually made up a new title for him! It just astounds me. The few times that he has done benchwork are laughable. He can't find anything in the lab, and every.single.time, his experiments have either failed or taken way longer than needed because of poor planning. Yet he (seriously) thinks that he is very good at stuff like that. He had another post-doc and grad student doing a bunch of tissue culture work for him-he just bossed them around. Their work failed at least once because they didn't plan everything out correctly.
My boss is actually very nice and great to work for. She just relies on this egomaniac too much and is afraid to let him go.