You're Not the Boss of Me

On Monday morning while Hub and I were walking along to work, it occurred to me, and I made the observation, “I am not the boss.”

For those of you who don’t know me, this might seem like an innocuous enough statement, since most of us actually aren’t the boss. There’s usually a higher-up who’s going to turn around and tell you what to do and when it’s due and how they want it done.

My last nine years of work, I told me what to do and when it was due and how I wanted it done. And I told other people the same thing, a lot. I was the boss. I made the decisions. I ran the place to my liking, and I made the standards. I hired, and I fired, albeit the latter happened only once.

Well, now I’m not the boss, and that’s half okay. On the half where I don’t know as much as everyone else, it’s fine not to be the boss because I don’t want to make any wacky decisions that will send people’s research into a massive unforgiving tailspin. I have a lot to learn, a lot of training to do, and so not running the place is great with me. I spend a lot of time around big expensive superconducting magnets, and the software to run these things has changed since I last did any of this work. One of the magnets is older and isn’t shielded as well as the others, so the stray magnetic field is strong and it extends out further. (If you know anything about magnetism, when I’m underneath the thing I’m getting hundreds of gauss, according to Hub.) It’s enough to magnetize a quarter so that it will attract another quarter. It’s also enough to knock out my hearing aids, which is kind of funny unless you’re me and you have to keep replacing the batteries every time you get out from under the magnet. It is the scene of much amusement…..reaching underneath to adjust the shims on the magnet, suddenly my hearing is gone. Look up to check the computer screen to see if I’m getting close to the shims, hearing good. Hearing gone, hearing good, hearing….gone…because batteries can’t take that too often. So I spent the rest of the morning asking people to repeat themselves and making up my own jokes out of what I thought they’d said because I couldn’t hear anything. Tres amusent.

That lab, I don’t mind not bossing. In the other lab, I mind it very much. I used to run a lab very similar to that one, and I made the rules…but the person who runs this lab lets other people come in and dictate his time, and thus, they think that they’ll also dictate mine. The lab has to run completely differently because it’s an X-ray crystallography lab, and most people don’t know very much about crystallography except that they want the structures of their molecules and they want them now, because now is when they’re used to getting their data. Sadly, things do not work this way, even if the boss has made it seem as though this might happen. People have been fooled, or they’ve been coddled into thinking that they can make demands on our time.

For example, when it is time to eat lunch, it is time to eat lunch. It is not any other time, because if it were another time, it would not be time to eat lunch. Lunch is a very important time of the day, and there is really nothing that should stand in the way of lunch. Lunch should not be delayed by profs who want their four year-old data, no matter how much you like said profs and no matter if they are friendly and funny. They are neither of those things when they are standing in the way of lunch, and unless they are offering to buy lunch and are talking to you on the way to the place that provides lunch, they are in the way, and that is bad. It is bad enough that after five minutes of assuring them that you will dig up their data and re-solve it and get it into a publishable form before the end of the week, you have had enough of their friendliness and either want them gone from your sight or would like to see them carving up an arm or something for you to snack on while the conversation continues. And continue it will, until you finally just tell them that they have to leave because all the boys have gone for lunch and now I am late and at lunch you have to tell one or both of your new bosses that they cannot allow this any more and that when it is time to eat, it is time to eat and it is not time for consultation or talking on the phone or reading email or answering email or anything else.

Lunch, or eating time in general, is one issue. My other issue is with students. I do remember being a student, and I remember the supervisor who wants the data yesterday, when you’re so hung over that you don’t even know what yesterday was made of, never mind where the data is, and could you please please stop talking to me all the time? I also remember being panicked because I didn’t have new data that week because nothing had worked and I’d spent the week regenerating solvent stills and cleaning out a glove box and a fridge and a fume hood, so data wasn’t forthcoming from the cleaning but might be next week, COULD YOU PLEASE STOP BUGGING ME….but that was me as a student. There are other students who do their work one piece at a time, and so when there’s a slowdown in the data, there’s nothing to do except wait, impatiently, for the data to come. So this week, when Student A and I were setting up an experiment and we did it wrongly because neither of us knows the software very well and we screwed up Student B’s data integration, “Oh Well,” is what I thought, because B must have something else to do while A collects his data….the computer can’t be rebooted during A’s data collection, which is what needed to happen. This did not deter the mighty B, who was in the lab for most of the day, wanting his data. The re-integration didn’t work because the thing hung up right at the spot where A and I jumped in with the wrong command. So there’s nothing you can do, you have to wait until A’s data collection is finished. I said, “B, this is not happening today,” whereupon he replied, “Okay then. Tomorrow,” and walked out of the lab.

Two things: 1) B left before I could reply, but no, Tomorrow is not when A’s data collection will be finished. Day after tomorrow, too bad so sad. 2) I didn’t work on the “tomorrow” that B meant, so I couldn’t tell him to get lost.

See, if I were the boss, people would not be allowed to bug me like this. If I were the boss, I’d not spend my time in that lab, and I’d hide in my office. If I were the boss, I’d tell people that when I’m meeting with someone to work on some interesting experiments we’re performing, you do not get to join us and bug me about your data, because your data is not my concern when I’m meeting with someone else, and your rudenss is overwhelming me.

Sigh. I am not the boss.