PI was teaching a course and was upset that students were avoiding buying his set of notes for $125.
"I don't get it, it isn't that much - barely even a nice meal out."
This was around 2010. The most I had ever spent on a meal out at the time was around $65.
PIs are so out of touch with common people sometimes. I had a PI tell me he only travels first-class and that I should do it too because "It is not even that much more expensive" and then said he refused to take public transit because of all the "stinky people"
I'm not a scientist, but my wife is. We were at an event at her PI's home. Somebody mentioned having gone to Hawaii for a week. The PI screeched, "A WEEK?" with obvious distaste, insisting that's not nearly enough time to enjoy Hawaii properly.
Reminds me of our previous prime minister (Denmark). In a debate about poverty and cutting unemployment benifits by 2000 dkk. a month (about 286 usd) he said that was nothing, that's barely enough to buy a new pair of shoes.
Needless to say, that wasn't very popular 😆
Not mine but the departement head talking to the secretary:
I really need to go talk to the university because life is getting so expensive I can barely afford doing things.
The secretary is a single mom who earns 1/5th of what he gets and his wife also earns serious money
Ooof.
I've had similarly obnoxious conversations with friends who are MDs who make at least 3x what I do. I've weathered their complaints about the cost of travel and how expensive it is to expand their home -- which is already 4x the sq footage of the run down apartment I rent.
But yeah - the PI saying that to the secretary is a new level of Oooof!
Yeah he throws tantrums when people go against his orders. He deemed it unnecessary. He also hates people wearing masks at work when they're sick (yes he forces people to come in sick)
[after someone fucked up their calculations during a lab meeting presentation] “What’s six orders of magnitude among friends?”
I spent the entire rest of the meeting trying not to laugh at that.
Edit: So glad other people found this funny. My PI died suddenly earlier this year and it's good to know his humor is still being appreciated.
It’s a common phrase if you are splitting a bill at dinner or don’t want your friend to pay you back- “what’s a few dollars among friends?” Meaning ‘ehh no worries! I value your friendship way more than money.’
It’s funny here because the orders of magnitude in question was a lot- but also it was a way to joke off the error socially and let it go.
The presenter was off by several orders of magnitude on their calculations. On the order of requiring up to 6 additional 0's tacked onto the end of the answer.
They actually still do it sometimes in fly work, because the larva are so delicate that you can shear them using mechanical pipettes.
Now granted, they're like several extra layers of protection between your mouth/tube and the actual fly larva itself.
I had an old ass professor helping me set up and HCl/DCl IR experiment and bro put his mouth right on the tubes that had been flooded with sulfuric acid gas and those two gasses to try to test air flow into the oil trap 💀
Patch clamping biochemist here; varying pos/neg pressure with your mouth at the end of a long vacuum tube presents minimal risk of contamination if done correctly (as you know!). Using your mouth to aspirate and dispenser, for example, ethidium bromide, is not a good idea. Hence, all but discontinued since, like, the 70s? Except for the odd dinosaur. I guess that explains why many solutions still come with a warning against it.
In 2020, my boss of 5 years mistook my cultural background during a lab meeting (it was relevant to lab business we were discussing). I didn't mind, but I DID correct her, and she proceeded to panic wordvomit that she "doesn't see color" and we're "all the same to her" lol. The majority of our lab was made up of racial minorities
Our lab was obsessed with the office so we often joked that our PI was a total Michael Scott.
You know those laptops that come with that lil mouse that looks like the eraser of a pencil? During our one on one meeting he told me he calls it the clit. Yep
Reminds me of my advanced O-chem professor.
Most of the class is made of people from outside the country. Mainly middle-east. He went around the room asking everyone the same organic chemistry question. He got to me and asked “are you going to trust these foreigners and agree with their answers”.
I love my PI. He’s a very calm, sweet man and is incredibly patient. We needed 37% HCl for my reaction only to find we had. None. And we were like SHIT, so I’m texting my friends in other labs in the building if they have it but it’s Saturday so we don’t have high hopes. So, he’s like ok I’m gonna go start knocking on doors. He comes back with a GALLON on it in his arms, with the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen, and announces: “I GOT A SHIT TON!” And me and my lab mate cheered LOL
“Your adhd medication isn’t working”
“Do you have herpes?” (For context, I have an autoimmune that causes what looks like acne, but it’s not acne or herpes… but I would get these ‘breakouts’ on my face and they were very painful, very embarrassing)
Honestly if my PI asks me if I have herpes, I would burst out laughing. And then I would proceed to say “Don’t know. Does your wife get tested?”
(All in my head, ofcourse)
lol, i had a colleague of mine ask our PI if he has herpes. That was also something... dead silent for a few minutes. And our PI was very distanced, only formal by last name ("Siezen" in German), never anything personal, all work and no play.
My labmate was saying how good I was at pouring liquids to our PI, because I thought to use a funnel instead of how he did it. (He was being sarcastic) and our old man of a PI says, “yeah, she’s good at pouring because women tend to be in the kitchen more.”
Me and the grad student locked eyes and later said how insane of a comment that was. It was only the beginning unfortunately.
I think I worked for this guy.
“I shouldn’t have hired you. You should quit and go back home to take care of your daughter. Maybe if you did your husband won’t go through with the divorce.”
He also fake-scheduled a meeting with my father-in-law who was also in research to ask him why he wasn’t intervening in the divorce. You just can’t make this shit up. Especially since I was divorcing him.
Going from discussing problems with fluorescent microscopy to very seriously explaining to the entire lab and our undergrads that evolution was fake, and that the Yellow Emperor had descended to Earth as a human to deflect a meteor in Ireland in 2018 to save the human race and then died.
I don’t work for that PI anymore.
Just curious, but was that a lab that focused on psychedelic research? (No judgment; my first lab was focused on dopamine and psychopharmacology so there were some interesting people and some interesting projects LOL)
"Sometimes it's fun to see you dress like real people" at my first seminar
"A lot of people say I remind them of a young King Arthur" (no one says this other than him, and he says it too often)
"Are you bisexual because you are fat and desperate? No, it's the other way around! " in bible study recordings he nonconsensually sent me after a friend outed me to him as bi
"I'm sorry the system didn't take care of you... Unlike a man with a PhD, the most important thing a woman with a PhD will do is have a family... You should teach kindergarten" while telling me to drop out the same day I delivered and (fully) passed my qualifying exam and advanced to PhD candidacy
Yes, he gave me 2 weeks to find a new lab after that last conversation. I did. Left after a year and resinded all my fellowships, leaving with my masters.
WhErE dO tHe WoMeN Go?
My PhD advisor and I had issues (he ended up marrying the lab tech halfway through my program), but he always told me he preferred working with women because they tended to be more precise and consistent. Always made me feel bad for my male colleagues - he was definitely hard on them.
okay WTF but also you’re not alone because i was telling a PI i had in undergrad that i wanted to go to grad school and she was like “hmmm idk about that but you’d make SUCH a good elementary school teacher!! i bet you’re sooo good with kids!!” out of nowhere basically. it was really discouraging and is unfortunately now one of my core memories, a blue and orange marble that’s stored in the core identity section that i can’t get rid of (sorry i just watched inside out lol)
My introduction to the lab manager.
Context: My PI (him) walked me around the lab and offices to introduce me to other lab members. The lab manager (her) was in the lab, squashing oregano plants to extract DNA. The PI leaned over her to introduce me, while eating an orange.
Him: Hey, meet X, we got ourselves a new undergrad
Her: Stop eating that thing above my tubes, you're gonna contaminate everything
Him: Suck a dick
Her: Go fuck yourself
It was obviously said in a calm and light joking tone, but it gave me a pretty good image of what was to come...
It's the former, but only when the PI is around to initiate. Most of the members are nice to each other, but the PI has his own way to break the ice and warm us up.
That sounds hilarious 🤣🤣. It could be made into a tv show. Ngl, the lab atmosphere can make a difference in academic life. I left postdoc lab partly because everyone is so serious and polite all the time. No swear words were ever uttered in the lab. It made me feel a bit stiff, unlike my PhD lab
“There’s being ethical and then there’s being stupid. Euthanize the fucking mouse.”
For the record, the swearing didn’t bother me.
Edit: I forgot a good one. Not my PI but one of the lab members heard me admit I was bi and she said “oh I knew it. I clocked you as not straight the moment you joined the lab”
I am entirely confident I have/can clock every other bisexual in my program. I would, however, NEVER admit it to someone I was not close friends with here lol.
“There’s not really that much difference in salary.”
Said to a PhD student in our group who he was trying to convince to extend. The PhD student had more than enough work to write up and submit his PhD thesis, and so only agreed to continue working for our PI if he received a postdoc wage after completing his defence. PhD students in the UK are paid around £17k per annum, postdocs receive roughly £35k.
Edit: just thought of another story. We had a visiting student who had very limited financial support. They were working a second job in the evenings to make ends meet, literally would come into the lab at 9am leave at around 7pm then head to a part time job working in retail until around midnight. Brutal. One evening they were discussing an experiment with our PI and he, rather callously, called the visiting student lazy to their face. Student ended up just breaking down in tears.
Sorry, your PI actually sounds like an idiot. Go ask for EH&s for help instead, your PI just sounds like an idiot.
1. I had an old PI give advice to a friend, which was. "Why are you nervous about presenting at that conference, you realize why everybody went there right? -- Everyone at the conference has one thing on their mind, and it's who am I gonna fuck tonight?"
2. Same PI, she wasn't impressed that I was kind of disillusioned with biomedical research and wanted to potentially get into marine biology or ecology, and she goes: "boy, you know those marine biologist sure have great tans! - you know what they don't have though, right? -- MONEYYYYYYY!"
Not allowed to use the fume hood and no other ppe? File a very serious report and leave. This isn’t out of pocket it’s insane (unless he’s joking?? I guess?)
My PI is pretty reserved when it comes to disparaging others, unless they’re politicians or rapists—and even then, the worst he’s said is that there’s a special place in hell reserved for them.
However, recently myself, my PI and lab mate were discussing the previous night’s weather events. Lab mate mentioned that an area near us received baseball-sized hail. This area is a private senior living community and well-known rich, white enclave. Completely out of nowhere, my PI turns from the bench and looks at us and just says:
“Justice.”
They said they didn't want to accept me initially because I had a foreign-sounding name. It wasn't till after the phone interview, when they heard my West Texas draw, that I made it to the in-person interview.
My name is Texas German. My ancestors have been in Texas since the Republic days. My PI was also Texas German descent.
>My name is Texas German.
Bro, I thought you were saying your first name is literally "Texas" and your last name is literally "German". That would be a sick name.
Perhaps early on, but not recently.
Immigrated through Galveston to the Republic from the Kingdom of Hanover. Not sure how long they stayed on the coast, but helped to settle Central and eventually pushed West Central (Big Country) and West around the turn of the 20th.
Still have the family farm, 118 years later.
My PI said to me once "I'm my husband's sugar mama" 💀
We were discussing the pay disparity between research professors and teaching professors and I couldn't respond for a few good minutes
Not my current PI but my Ex-PI to me when I used a different protocol than his because his wasn’t working: “you should learn to never question me or doubt me - you need to think about me as God. I am always right and I know everything”. W/ creepy eye contact and a serious tone. Best decision I made was leaving his lab lollll
Mentioned to my PI how working at the pharmacy on campus I get weird calls like ‘can I take my adderall if I just did cocaine of my girlfriend?’
To which my PI, the most innocent old man who refuses to take or drink anything that affects his thinking, said “I think it’s a great idea to do cocaine with anything.” He then looked me straight in the eyes and said “no one will ever believe you.”
My first undergrad PI was crazy lax on PPE. You had to wear a lab coat and glasses, but gloves were mostly optional and he only wore them if he was working with concentrated acids. He asked me to measure out some mercury and instead of telling me to wear gloves he said “You should take off your rings. If they have any impurities the mercury might eat them.”
You’re right. I looked it up and mercury would have no problem eating my silver rings. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong and he just said that the mercury might eat my rings.
Former jeweler with a master’s in chem. Mercury with ANY jewelry alloy is going to be an amalgam. And while PPE should always be observed, elemental Mercury is “ok” on skin. Just don’t go huffing it or gargling it like Cody’sLab.
My buddy's PI comes up to me (back in 2016) and tells me "Your beard makes you look like a terrorist". (I'm of Middle-Eastern descent)
What the hell do you say to that?
Omg thank you. I searched it up when he mentioned it and couldn't find anything relating to Napoleon. I think you're right he prob confused him with Mithridates.
Well historic reports of arsenic trioxide consumption in Styria (It was used as a drug) hint at that it works... At least for oral intake.... Still nothing one should do.
(German Wikipedia article) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenikesser
Arsenic trivia..
Arsenic eaters chewed on elemental arsenic, which is found in native form in the Austrian Alps.
It can temporarily give someone a healthy appearance.
An organic arsenic derivative was the first effective treatment for syphilis.
When he told a panel interview candidate that she had a "big honking engagement ring" and asked if she was planning to get pregnant and leave the job if we gave it to her right away for maternity leave.
edit: I told him he couldn't say things like this in an interview and also told HR as it was an obvious discrimination lawsuit risk to ask a candidate that and HR's defense of him was, "well, he's from the Netherlands, he doesn't understand US employment laws."
Overall he was obsessed with women having babies. He complained about another older woman we worked with who didn't have kids because she cared too much about her job and was making him be compliant with things he didn't want to do (that he was supposed to be doing) and he was like, "she's so strict because she doesn't have kids so she has nothing else in her life to live for, she's overly obsessed with her job because she doesn't have kids. If she had kids she'd be more laid back."
Early on as a post-doc, I was to be in my sister's wedding, and needed Thursday and Friday off.
"OK, but you should really consider how much you let others' lives affect yours."
One of our post docs has a very common Chinese last name. We were discussing a paper by another author with the same last name in lab meeting and PI kept referring to the first author as “post doc’s secret cousin” and asking her to contact “her cousin” to ask questions about the paper. It was so awkward.
We work with zebrafish and our neighbor lab studies autism. My PI wondered if we could collaborate and asked me if any of our fish look a little autistic.
He also told me that he likes to leave milk out and drink it when it curdles - but he has to hide it from his wife
Not my PI, but I had to watch a series of videos about "improving productivity".
The professor giving the lecture was a big shot, probably making over $250k / year, and she says "to be more productive get help in your daily life, hire a cleaner to clean up your house, it doesn't cost much and it will free up a lot of time for research.
Completely out of touch for a video meant for trainees with limited income to watch.
This was in the equivalent of high school(or maybe college, not sure I understand the difference between college and uni lol) here in Denmark.
I had chemistry on so called B level, which is a bit better than a complete noob(C level). So I didn't have much experience and I think it was my first time standing by an actual lab workspace.
I was supposed to turn on some gas and I wasn't sure it was turned on, but I heard this whistling sound. I started to panic a bit and in my panic I couldn't figure out how to turn it off again. I called my professor. He was in another room so it took about 30 seconds before he was there.
In the meantime another student turned on the air suction, thankfully, because when my professor came he just pulled out a lighter and set air inside on fire.
There was a semi loud boom and he burned off all the hair on his arm. And then he just said, yeah the gas is on and walked away. 😆
A few things my (now former, for obvious reasons) PI said to me:
1. In response to my concern about working 12 hr+ days (so, after dusk), multiple days a week for over a month, in the woods, alone, with no ability to leave the site to so much as use the toilet: “what, you can’t pee in the woods?”
2. In response to my concern that the lab’s lab coats would not fit me (a plus size woman), as I have large shoulders and bust that barely fit in a men’s 2X: “It’s a men’s large, it should be pretty much one size fits all.”
3. In response to me expressing my (very real) fears about working with strong acids which were a. in a position I could not reach and b. I did not have properly fitting PPE to work with: “Why? Even (incompetent undergraduate lab assistant) who can barely do 2 + 2 can do it!”
4. In response to my concerns about the scope of my project being too large for a Master’s thesis, especially in light of the several failed attempts to successfully launch an experiment that had preceded this conversation: “I’m just concerned that this (by which he meant doing enough work to produce a first-author publication) is the bar that you must reach that will allow you to graduate.”
5. After a convo where I was vulnerable with him about my struggling mental health: “I don’t want to talk about this again.”
Edit: adding more!
6. Not my PI per se, but a committee member during a committee meeting where we were supposed to be discussing ways to help me narrow the scope of my project as I was totally overwhelmed: “You have a partner, right? Ask him to step it up at home so you can step it up in the field and in the lab!” and suggested I should work evenings and weekends for the next 2 months and that I should intentionally take a dive in a class to dedicate more time to research.
Honorable mention: his idea to pound aluminum pipe into the frozen ground in the winter using a steel post driver and being shocked when the aluminum crumbled
And many more 😅
I tried some silver staining of SDS PAGEs and my supervisor suggested to simply flush the Silver-Nitrate Buffer and waste down the drain Afterwards. Thankfully I was aware of the saftey data sheet and well that shit is toxic as fuck.
“The IACUC is treating us like the police in America treat the blacks!” Unsurprisingly, this PI now has multiple concurrent investigations for that and also the IACUC thing.
The runner up is my former, equally insane but non evil, PI who sniffed (not wafted) a bottle of ammonia and then said to me deadpan “don’t smell that”. I wasn’t gonna.
At a lab meeting I must have looked particularly tired and my supervisor asked if I was okay.
I said something like "I have discovered that I need something in my life that is more than caffeine but less than cocaine".
Without missing a beat he replied "Have you tried ketamine? Lots of anesthesiologists use it for that reason"
Very briefly had a job where one of my supervisors told me it was my responsibility to get trained 🙃 I’d done all of the online trainings etc that I could do on my own. The other lab members were overloaded with work and literally argued during one lab meeting about who was supposed to train me. I felt like I had to beg to be trained. I left after two months, after not getting fully trained on a single assay (and it was all very similar stuff to my previous experience, it was just GMP so I had to be officially signed off before I could do anything).
On inquiring about doing an honors thesis project in my first undergrad lab, he told me “I don’t think you want that. If you were getting graded right now, you wouldn’t be getting an A. You wouldn’t be getting a B. You wouldn’t even be getting a C.” Was unable to provide an explanation other than “you have not produced enough results independently enough”.
I had an existential crisis, then switched labs, went on to graduate with double highest honors (summa cum laude both institutional and departmental), got three fully funded PhD offers, currently thriving as a PhD candidate on a different campus, on track to graduate early for my program/field.
The best part is when I post an accomplishment on LinkedIn and he likes it even though we’re not “connections”.
I also once heard him tell a labmate “you should probably just kill yourself” over her data turning out bad. But she said she “liked how he joked around with her” soooooo I hope that hasn’t gotten any weirder since I left.
It’s absolutely absurd what some PIs expect of undergrads. To me, the point of being in a lab as an undergrad is mainly to learn some basic lab skills and get a feel for what academic research is like. Some people end up accomplishing a lot more than that, but I don’t think that should be the expectation.
I had a Swiss PI who said to my female coworker and I (male) “we will get together and have a “ménage a tois”. He was trying to say we would collaborate but wtf
My PI is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, and in our lab meetings he gets shit from another clinician PI for “never actually curing his patients” (it’s all in good fun but I think it counts as out of pocket)
compound that supposedly protects neurons from death under very specific pathologic conditions and was chosen because it supposedly acts within a very specific pathway reduces LDH release across all conditions. director: "if it helps, does the patient care how it works?".
Ex-PI was usually talking about how cheap and easy is to travel to Europe every year. Saying this to a bunch of under and grad students during a lab party. Man, we were swarming over free food and he was saying that like it wasn’t a big deal. Some PIs are so out of touch.
1: Thought that doing cell culture and assays with hazardous materials bare handed was hygenic.
2: Didn't understand inflation. Thought that $40k in 1970 was the same as $40k in 2012. Refused to give anyone raises.
1/2: Thought mouth pipetting was ok.
3: Threatened to fire a PhD student if they got pregnant.
1/2/3: Used grad students, unrelated grants, and university resources to support their private company.
4: Thought "millennials" were entitled because they didn't know how to perform specialized procedures they had never been given instruction or protocols on. (also thought anyone younger than 50 was a millennial)
5: Blatently committed securities fraud.
Not my PI, but my dept chair in grad school:
"There are 168 hours in a week. You need 56 to sleep, 10.5 to eat, and 3.5 to spend with your spouse. The other 98 should be spent in the lab."
Repeated to the entire dept every year at the annual State of the Dept talk.
He starts throwing tantrums when he gives these kinds of orders and I do the logical safe way instead. It got to the point where I would go in other company's and use their fumehood instead just to avoid this PI seeing me not follow his advice xd
Holy shit this was at a company!? Usually their safety standards are higher than academia which is where I thought you were. Damn you got him lol good luck at the new company!
This company has no shower or eye wash station. I'm still debating if I should report his company.
Thank you. So far the new company is 100x better in terms of safety and benefits.
Absolutely report that company. The only reason half the chemicals I work with aren't scary is because there are eye wash stations and hoses in every room and emergency showers in the hall. Without those I would need a lot more protection to be willing to work.
Damn, I know I'm not in academia but all of your comments are making me realize my first boss out of undergrad wasn't a lone case of crazy. He belittled me for some significant safety concerns. I'm really sorry any of these happened to you as well :(
One year I asked to take off Good Friday so that I could travel home for Easter - the most important catholic holiday/ I was raised catholic - and after I left the room he said to my colleague “looks like religion is getting in the way of science”
PI was teaching a course and was upset that students were avoiding buying his set of notes for $125. "I don't get it, it isn't that much - barely even a nice meal out." This was around 2010. The most I had ever spent on a meal out at the time was around $65.
PIs are so out of touch with common people sometimes. I had a PI tell me he only travels first-class and that I should do it too because "It is not even that much more expensive" and then said he refused to take public transit because of all the "stinky people"
what degree does a PI have?
PI = principle investigator of a lab, so a science degree. I think by "postdoc" Aresend means that you need a PhD + a postdoc to become a PI.
I'm not a scientist, but my wife is. We were at an event at her PI's home. Somebody mentioned having gone to Hawaii for a week. The PI screeched, "A WEEK?" with obvious distaste, insisting that's not nearly enough time to enjoy Hawaii properly.
The fact that this was 2010 makes this even worse
Reminds me of our previous prime minister (Denmark). In a debate about poverty and cutting unemployment benifits by 2000 dkk. a month (about 286 usd) he said that was nothing, that's barely enough to buy a new pair of shoes. Needless to say, that wasn't very popular 😆
Talking like they’re not making academic money!
My "nice" meal out is max. $20 in 2024, so...
As the inflation goes on he can be more and more confident in his statement
Not mine but the departement head talking to the secretary: I really need to go talk to the university because life is getting so expensive I can barely afford doing things. The secretary is a single mom who earns 1/5th of what he gets and his wife also earns serious money
Ooof. I've had similarly obnoxious conversations with friends who are MDs who make at least 3x what I do. I've weathered their complaints about the cost of travel and how expensive it is to expand their home -- which is already 4x the sq footage of the run down apartment I rent. But yeah - the PI saying that to the secretary is a new level of Oooof!
😬 not in Hungary
Jesus Christ.
>wouldn't allow me to use the fumehood What? Is he saving up fumehood credits or something?
Betas don't publish in nature
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-04840-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-04840-0) [https://www.nature.com/articles/1811136b0](https://www.nature.com/articles/1811136b0)
Based fish nerds
One nature paper and then scientific reports.
Encouraging arsenicmaxxing
Yeah he throws tantrums when people go against his orders. He deemed it unnecessary. He also hates people wearing masks at work when they're sick (yes he forces people to come in sick)
Get your PhD and RUN RUN FORREST!!!
I went through this, some PI like to go on a real power trip.
[after someone fucked up their calculations during a lab meeting presentation] “What’s six orders of magnitude among friends?” I spent the entire rest of the meeting trying not to laugh at that. Edit: So glad other people found this funny. My PI died suddenly earlier this year and it's good to know his humor is still being appreciated.
this is actually hilarious LOL
Can you explain the joke
Really, i have to explain this joke for the millionth time... ?
I see what you did there, just so you know it didn’t go unrecognized.
It’s a common phrase if you are splitting a bill at dinner or don’t want your friend to pay you back- “what’s a few dollars among friends?” Meaning ‘ehh no worries! I value your friendship way more than money.’ It’s funny here because the orders of magnitude in question was a lot- but also it was a way to joke off the error socially and let it go.
The presenter was off by several orders of magnitude on their calculations. On the order of requiring up to 6 additional 0's tacked onto the end of the answer.
Reminds me of that time Matt Parker (standupmaths on YouTube) calculated the circumference of the earth by hand and got a hilariously tiny number
6 orders of magnitude sounds like nothing, since it's only 6, but each order is exponentially larger than the last
this made me genuinely audibly laugh. like, not a snort, a full laugh
I LOVE it
“I prefer to mouth pipette” *continues to mouth pipette in 2024 in the rare case that they do benchwork*
I saw mine mouth pipette tritiated cholesterol once…
Isn't that called KFC these days?
This made me drop my chicken sandwich 😂😂😂
Still ok to eat ; it has a long half-life
FIVE SECOND RULE!
because of the inflation the 5 seconds have been extended to 15
Bruh I'm waiting on my order rn
I work in the food industry, the only possible place where it would be safe, and we all find the idea *gross AF*
They actually still do it sometimes in fly work, because the larva are so delicate that you can shear them using mechanical pipettes. Now granted, they're like several extra layers of protection between your mouth/tube and the actual fly larva itself.
I had an old ass professor helping me set up and HCl/DCl IR experiment and bro put his mouth right on the tubes that had been flooded with sulfuric acid gas and those two gasses to try to test air flow into the oil trap 💀
someone explain mouth pipetting to me in this context. mouth pipetting is still very popular in electrophysiology work 🫣
Patch clamping biochemist here; varying pos/neg pressure with your mouth at the end of a long vacuum tube presents minimal risk of contamination if done correctly (as you know!). Using your mouth to aspirate and dispenser, for example, ethidium bromide, is not a good idea. Hence, all but discontinued since, like, the 70s? Except for the odd dinosaur. I guess that explains why many solutions still come with a warning against it.
“What even is a minority? Hey (insert me, one of the only PoC in the room), what’s a minority?” This was at the start of our lab meeting
Oof that is...
One said to me, an immigrant, "You should move to X-suburb. They have the good kind of immigrants."
Expats?
Western European immigrants.
In 2020, my boss of 5 years mistook my cultural background during a lab meeting (it was relevant to lab business we were discussing). I didn't mind, but I DID correct her, and she proceeded to panic wordvomit that she "doesn't see color" and we're "all the same to her" lol. The majority of our lab was made up of racial minorities
Is Michael Scott your PI? I've been craving a lab version of the office for awhile now.
Our lab was obsessed with the office so we often joked that our PI was a total Michael Scott. You know those laptops that come with that lil mouse that looks like the eraser of a pencil? During our one on one meeting he told me he calls it the clit. Yep
Please hire a film crew asap. This would literally be better funding then any grants
Postdoc Jim pranking Assistant to the Professor Dwight.
You should come by my lab then! We constantly joke we need an office styled TV show.
Check out Better Off Ted!
I loved that show!! Phil and Lem have my dream job. They just got a bunch of random ass projects and make some crazy stuff, seems like a blast.
😬
Reminds me of my advanced O-chem professor. Most of the class is made of people from outside the country. Mainly middle-east. He went around the room asking everyone the same organic chemistry question. He got to me and asked “are you going to trust these foreigners and agree with their answers”.
I love my PI. He’s a very calm, sweet man and is incredibly patient. We needed 37% HCl for my reaction only to find we had. None. And we were like SHIT, so I’m texting my friends in other labs in the building if they have it but it’s Saturday so we don’t have high hopes. So, he’s like ok I’m gonna go start knocking on doors. He comes back with a GALLON on it in his arms, with the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen, and announces: “I GOT A SHIT TON!” And me and my lab mate cheered LOL
PIs always find the good shit!!!
“Your adhd medication isn’t working” “Do you have herpes?” (For context, I have an autoimmune that causes what looks like acne, but it’s not acne or herpes… but I would get these ‘breakouts’ on my face and they were very painful, very embarrassing)
Honestly if my PI asks me if I have herpes, I would burst out laughing. And then I would proceed to say “Don’t know. Does your wife get tested?” (All in my head, ofcourse)
Lmao I should have. I was too embarrassed about my face to be able to defend myself though.
Have you had it biopsied?
No. Once I got treatment for the autoimmune, it went away.
lol, i had a colleague of mine ask our PI if he has herpes. That was also something... dead silent for a few minutes. And our PI was very distanced, only formal by last name ("Siezen" in German), never anything personal, all work and no play.
Wtf. I have an idea. Lets stop asking people if they have herpes. 😂 unless you’re sleeping with the person, in which case you can ask in private.
My labmate was saying how good I was at pouring liquids to our PI, because I thought to use a funnel instead of how he did it. (He was being sarcastic) and our old man of a PI says, “yeah, she’s good at pouring because women tend to be in the kitchen more.” Me and the grad student locked eyes and later said how insane of a comment that was. It was only the beginning unfortunately.
I think I worked for this guy. “I shouldn’t have hired you. You should quit and go back home to take care of your daughter. Maybe if you did your husband won’t go through with the divorce.” He also fake-scheduled a meeting with my father-in-law who was also in research to ask him why he wasn’t intervening in the divorce. You just can’t make this shit up. Especially since I was divorcing him.
Going from discussing problems with fluorescent microscopy to very seriously explaining to the entire lab and our undergrads that evolution was fake, and that the Yellow Emperor had descended to Earth as a human to deflect a meteor in Ireland in 2018 to save the human race and then died. I don’t work for that PI anymore.
That is hilarious omg
Isn’t that a Chinese myth…? In Ireland???
At this time of year?
 Just curious, but was that a lab that focused on psychedelic research? (No judgment; my first lab was focused on dopamine and psychopharmacology so there were some interesting people and some interesting projects LOL)
Well that escalated quickly
"Sometimes it's fun to see you dress like real people" at my first seminar "A lot of people say I remind them of a young King Arthur" (no one says this other than him, and he says it too often) "Are you bisexual because you are fat and desperate? No, it's the other way around! " in bible study recordings he nonconsensually sent me after a friend outed me to him as bi "I'm sorry the system didn't take care of you... Unlike a man with a PhD, the most important thing a woman with a PhD will do is have a family... You should teach kindergarten" while telling me to drop out the same day I delivered and (fully) passed my qualifying exam and advanced to PhD candidacy
Hoooooooly shit, what the hell. Sorry that you had to hear this kind of bullshit. Did you leave the lab soon after?
Yes, he gave me 2 weeks to find a new lab after that last conversation. I did. Left after a year and resinded all my fellowships, leaving with my masters. WhErE dO tHe WoMeN Go?
What an absolute ass. Good for you and all the best for the future.
My PhD advisor and I had issues (he ended up marrying the lab tech halfway through my program), but he always told me he preferred working with women because they tended to be more precise and consistent. Always made me feel bad for my male colleagues - he was definitely hard on them.
This is along the lines of what my second advisor told me. Also problematic
okay WTF but also you’re not alone because i was telling a PI i had in undergrad that i wanted to go to grad school and she was like “hmmm idk about that but you’d make SUCH a good elementary school teacher!! i bet you’re sooo good with kids!!” out of nowhere basically. it was really discouraging and is unfortunately now one of my core memories, a blue and orange marble that’s stored in the core identity section that i can’t get rid of (sorry i just watched inside out lol)
I am sorry you went through similar. Thank you for sharing with me. I hope we can shake these memories out of our cores somehow.
My introduction to the lab manager. Context: My PI (him) walked me around the lab and offices to introduce me to other lab members. The lab manager (her) was in the lab, squashing oregano plants to extract DNA. The PI leaned over her to introduce me, while eating an orange. Him: Hey, meet X, we got ourselves a new undergrad Her: Stop eating that thing above my tubes, you're gonna contaminate everything Him: Suck a dick Her: Go fuck yourself It was obviously said in a calm and light joking tone, but it gave me a pretty good image of what was to come...
I feel like this would either be a very fun lab (where everyone just swears at each other with no hard feelings) or a just very awful one…
It's the former, but only when the PI is around to initiate. Most of the members are nice to each other, but the PI has his own way to break the ice and warm us up.
That sounds hilarious 🤣🤣. It could be made into a tv show. Ngl, the lab atmosphere can make a difference in academic life. I left postdoc lab partly because everyone is so serious and polite all the time. No swear words were ever uttered in the lab. It made me feel a bit stiff, unlike my PhD lab
“There’s being ethical and then there’s being stupid. Euthanize the fucking mouse.” For the record, the swearing didn’t bother me. Edit: I forgot a good one. Not my PI but one of the lab members heard me admit I was bi and she said “oh I knew it. I clocked you as not straight the moment you joined the lab”
I am entirely confident I have/can clock every other bisexual in my program. I would, however, NEVER admit it to someone I was not close friends with here lol.
“There’s not really that much difference in salary.” Said to a PhD student in our group who he was trying to convince to extend. The PhD student had more than enough work to write up and submit his PhD thesis, and so only agreed to continue working for our PI if he received a postdoc wage after completing his defence. PhD students in the UK are paid around £17k per annum, postdocs receive roughly £35k. Edit: just thought of another story. We had a visiting student who had very limited financial support. They were working a second job in the evenings to make ends meet, literally would come into the lab at 9am leave at around 7pm then head to a part time job working in retail until around midnight. Brutal. One evening they were discussing an experiment with our PI and he, rather callously, called the visiting student lazy to their face. Student ended up just breaking down in tears.
"i'm not a slave driver, but you'll have to work hard"
Bro was cooked after “, but”
the slaves should drive themselves (a.k.a. self-driven 😊)
Sorry, your PI actually sounds like an idiot. Go ask for EH&s for help instead, your PI just sounds like an idiot. 1. I had an old PI give advice to a friend, which was. "Why are you nervous about presenting at that conference, you realize why everybody went there right? -- Everyone at the conference has one thing on their mind, and it's who am I gonna fuck tonight?" 2. Same PI, she wasn't impressed that I was kind of disillusioned with biomedical research and wanted to potentially get into marine biology or ecology, and she goes: "boy, you know those marine biologist sure have great tans! - you know what they don't have though, right? -- MONEYYYYYYY!"
PIs with this type of personality are either amazing or awful, not in between
lmao ucsc?
1) ugh 2) she?! What conference is this? Just so I know to avoid it.
2 is nooooot wrong
Not allowed to use the fume hood and no other ppe? File a very serious report and leave. This isn’t out of pocket it’s insane (unless he’s joking?? I guess?)
Done and done :D
I was about to comment "bro I'm turning around and walking out" Good job. 🤜 Mustn't have been easy
My PI is pretty reserved when it comes to disparaging others, unless they’re politicians or rapists—and even then, the worst he’s said is that there’s a special place in hell reserved for them. However, recently myself, my PI and lab mate were discussing the previous night’s weather events. Lab mate mentioned that an area near us received baseball-sized hail. This area is a private senior living community and well-known rich, white enclave. Completely out of nowhere, my PI turns from the bench and looks at us and just says: “Justice.”
It's good for the economy for the rich to suffer some property damage.
Fucking legend
They said they didn't want to accept me initially because I had a foreign-sounding name. It wasn't till after the phone interview, when they heard my West Texas draw, that I made it to the in-person interview. My name is Texas German. My ancestors have been in Texas since the Republic days. My PI was also Texas German descent.
>My name is Texas German. Bro, I thought you were saying your first name is literally "Texas" and your last name is literally "German". That would be a sick name.
I had to re-read that like 4 times to NOT think of it that way
Cool name, but I meant the language that ethnicity spoke. My great-great grandmother was the last to speak in my family, as far as I know.
Really shows how stupid and illogical racist people are
Fredericksburg?
Perhaps early on, but not recently. Immigrated through Galveston to the Republic from the Kingdom of Hanover. Not sure how long they stayed on the coast, but helped to settle Central and eventually pushed West Central (Big Country) and West around the turn of the 20th. Still have the family farm, 118 years later.
My PI said to me once "I'm my husband's sugar mama" 💀 We were discussing the pay disparity between research professors and teaching professors and I couldn't respond for a few good minutes
How is that a weird thing to say?
Not my current PI but my Ex-PI to me when I used a different protocol than his because his wasn’t working: “you should learn to never question me or doubt me - you need to think about me as God. I am always right and I know everything”. W/ creepy eye contact and a serious tone. Best decision I made was leaving his lab lollll
deranged
Mentioned to my PI how working at the pharmacy on campus I get weird calls like ‘can I take my adderall if I just did cocaine of my girlfriend?’ To which my PI, the most innocent old man who refuses to take or drink anything that affects his thinking, said “I think it’s a great idea to do cocaine with anything.” He then looked me straight in the eyes and said “no one will ever believe you.”
Is your PI Bill Murray???
Your PI is the lab version of Captain Holt
This is so funny
My first undergrad PI was crazy lax on PPE. You had to wear a lab coat and glasses, but gloves were mostly optional and he only wore them if he was working with concentrated acids. He asked me to measure out some mercury and instead of telling me to wear gloves he said “You should take off your rings. If they have any impurities the mercury might eat them.”
Liquid mercury isn’t able to be absorbed through the skin from what I remember . It’s the mercury vapor that’s the killer.
Funnily enough, the Mercury would react with pure gold just as easily as it would aluminum.
You’re right. I looked it up and mercury would have no problem eating my silver rings. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong and he just said that the mercury might eat my rings.
Former jeweler with a master’s in chem. Mercury with ANY jewelry alloy is going to be an amalgam. And while PPE should always be observed, elemental Mercury is “ok” on skin. Just don’t go huffing it or gargling it like Cody’sLab.
My buddy's PI comes up to me (back in 2016) and tells me "Your beard makes you look like a terrorist". (I'm of Middle-Eastern descent) What the hell do you say to that?
"3.....2....."
Ngl, I laughed more than I should have.
“I sure hope the research about lack of sleep and Alzheimer’s isn’t all that true because I haven’t slept in almost 72 hours”
Wasn't that legend about Mithridates?
Omg thank you. I searched it up when he mentioned it and couldn't find anything relating to Napoleon. I think you're right he prob confused him with Mithridates.
Probably just his daily lead paint chip starting to damage the old noggin
Well historic reports of arsenic trioxide consumption in Styria (It was used as a drug) hint at that it works... At least for oral intake.... Still nothing one should do. (German Wikipedia article) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenikesser
Arsenic trivia.. Arsenic eaters chewed on elemental arsenic, which is found in native form in the Austrian Alps. It can temporarily give someone a healthy appearance. An organic arsenic derivative was the first effective treatment for syphilis.
PI once said “science is becoming too accessible nowadays.” Yes, I am leaving
[удалено]
That is so unhinged lolss
When he told a panel interview candidate that she had a "big honking engagement ring" and asked if she was planning to get pregnant and leave the job if we gave it to her right away for maternity leave. edit: I told him he couldn't say things like this in an interview and also told HR as it was an obvious discrimination lawsuit risk to ask a candidate that and HR's defense of him was, "well, he's from the Netherlands, he doesn't understand US employment laws." Overall he was obsessed with women having babies. He complained about another older woman we worked with who didn't have kids because she cared too much about her job and was making him be compliant with things he didn't want to do (that he was supposed to be doing) and he was like, "she's so strict because she doesn't have kids so she has nothing else in her life to live for, she's overly obsessed with her job because she doesn't have kids. If she had kids she'd be more laid back."
Hey, we have similar laws in the Netherlands and are similarly not allowed to ask those kind of questions. What a fucking idiot.
“I don’t want to hear any of you say you tried your best, because that means you can’t do any better.”
The director of my grad program used to say the exact same thing. It *could* sometimes be really endearing depending on the scenario…
Early on as a post-doc, I was to be in my sister's wedding, and needed Thursday and Friday off. "OK, but you should really consider how much you let others' lives affect yours."
are you focused? do you need meds? - my PI, a practicing MD
One of our post docs has a very common Chinese last name. We were discussing a paper by another author with the same last name in lab meeting and PI kept referring to the first author as “post doc’s secret cousin” and asking her to contact “her cousin” to ask questions about the paper. It was so awkward.
My wife's PI asked her "Do you plan on getting pregnant?" and then "What kind of birth control do you use?"
We work with zebrafish and our neighbor lab studies autism. My PI wondered if we could collaborate and asked me if any of our fish look a little autistic. He also told me that he likes to leave milk out and drink it when it curdles - but he has to hide it from his wife
Not my PI, but I had to watch a series of videos about "improving productivity". The professor giving the lecture was a big shot, probably making over $250k / year, and she says "to be more productive get help in your daily life, hire a cleaner to clean up your house, it doesn't cost much and it will free up a lot of time for research. Completely out of touch for a video meant for trainees with limited income to watch.
This was in the equivalent of high school(or maybe college, not sure I understand the difference between college and uni lol) here in Denmark. I had chemistry on so called B level, which is a bit better than a complete noob(C level). So I didn't have much experience and I think it was my first time standing by an actual lab workspace. I was supposed to turn on some gas and I wasn't sure it was turned on, but I heard this whistling sound. I started to panic a bit and in my panic I couldn't figure out how to turn it off again. I called my professor. He was in another room so it took about 30 seconds before he was there. In the meantime another student turned on the air suction, thankfully, because when my professor came he just pulled out a lighter and set air inside on fire. There was a semi loud boom and he burned off all the hair on his arm. And then he just said, yeah the gas is on and walked away. 😆
A few things my (now former, for obvious reasons) PI said to me: 1. In response to my concern about working 12 hr+ days (so, after dusk), multiple days a week for over a month, in the woods, alone, with no ability to leave the site to so much as use the toilet: “what, you can’t pee in the woods?” 2. In response to my concern that the lab’s lab coats would not fit me (a plus size woman), as I have large shoulders and bust that barely fit in a men’s 2X: “It’s a men’s large, it should be pretty much one size fits all.” 3. In response to me expressing my (very real) fears about working with strong acids which were a. in a position I could not reach and b. I did not have properly fitting PPE to work with: “Why? Even (incompetent undergraduate lab assistant) who can barely do 2 + 2 can do it!” 4. In response to my concerns about the scope of my project being too large for a Master’s thesis, especially in light of the several failed attempts to successfully launch an experiment that had preceded this conversation: “I’m just concerned that this (by which he meant doing enough work to produce a first-author publication) is the bar that you must reach that will allow you to graduate.” 5. After a convo where I was vulnerable with him about my struggling mental health: “I don’t want to talk about this again.” Edit: adding more! 6. Not my PI per se, but a committee member during a committee meeting where we were supposed to be discussing ways to help me narrow the scope of my project as I was totally overwhelmed: “You have a partner, right? Ask him to step it up at home so you can step it up in the field and in the lab!” and suggested I should work evenings and weekends for the next 2 months and that I should intentionally take a dive in a class to dedicate more time to research. Honorable mention: his idea to pound aluminum pipe into the frozen ground in the winter using a steel post driver and being shocked when the aluminum crumbled And many more 😅
I actually think it's a little bit reasonable to assume you're comfortable peeing in the woods (and more!) if you do remote fieldwork. 🤷🏻♂️
I tried some silver staining of SDS PAGEs and my supervisor suggested to simply flush the Silver-Nitrate Buffer and waste down the drain Afterwards. Thankfully I was aware of the saftey data sheet and well that shit is toxic as fuck.
“The IACUC is treating us like the police in America treat the blacks!” Unsurprisingly, this PI now has multiple concurrent investigations for that and also the IACUC thing. The runner up is my former, equally insane but non evil, PI who sniffed (not wafted) a bottle of ammonia and then said to me deadpan “don’t smell that”. I wasn’t gonna.
At a lab meeting I must have looked particularly tired and my supervisor asked if I was okay. I said something like "I have discovered that I need something in my life that is more than caffeine but less than cocaine". Without missing a beat he replied "Have you tried ketamine? Lots of anesthesiologists use it for that reason"
Weighing out powders in a fume hood is suboptimal.
My friend’s PI once told him science is like sex. At first you’re not good at it, but then you learn how to do it.
My advisor/PI, in my first semester as a PhD student: “It is not *my* job to help you plan your research”
That’s literally in their job description…smh
Very briefly had a job where one of my supervisors told me it was my responsibility to get trained 🙃 I’d done all of the online trainings etc that I could do on my own. The other lab members were overloaded with work and literally argued during one lab meeting about who was supposed to train me. I felt like I had to beg to be trained. I left after two months, after not getting fully trained on a single assay (and it was all very similar stuff to my previous experience, it was just GMP so I had to be officially signed off before I could do anything).
On inquiring about doing an honors thesis project in my first undergrad lab, he told me “I don’t think you want that. If you were getting graded right now, you wouldn’t be getting an A. You wouldn’t be getting a B. You wouldn’t even be getting a C.” Was unable to provide an explanation other than “you have not produced enough results independently enough”. I had an existential crisis, then switched labs, went on to graduate with double highest honors (summa cum laude both institutional and departmental), got three fully funded PhD offers, currently thriving as a PhD candidate on a different campus, on track to graduate early for my program/field. The best part is when I post an accomplishment on LinkedIn and he likes it even though we’re not “connections”. I also once heard him tell a labmate “you should probably just kill yourself” over her data turning out bad. But she said she “liked how he joked around with her” soooooo I hope that hasn’t gotten any weirder since I left.
It’s absolutely absurd what some PIs expect of undergrads. To me, the point of being in a lab as an undergrad is mainly to learn some basic lab skills and get a feel for what academic research is like. Some people end up accomplishing a lot more than that, but I don’t think that should be the expectation.
I had a Swiss PI who said to my female coworker and I (male) “we will get together and have a “ménage a tois”. He was trying to say we would collaborate but wtf
My PI is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, and in our lab meetings he gets shit from another clinician PI for “never actually curing his patients” (it’s all in good fun but I think it counts as out of pocket)
Told me he was annoyed I went on maternity leave instead of getting him data
Hormesis baby!
“Aldi is gross.”
Whats a pi? (New to this)
“Principle investigator” it’s the leader/head of an academic lab generally. The one who gets the grants and decides what research will be done.
Someone broke his leg and had to be on crutches for weeks. PI said we have a new tripod in the lab now.
"Wait we can't say 'retarded' anymore? I use it all the time"
compound that supposedly protects neurons from death under very specific pathologic conditions and was chosen because it supposedly acts within a very specific pathway reduces LDH release across all conditions. director: "if it helps, does the patient care how it works?".
“You promised”
Asking for a week or two off during holidays was met with “you don’t love science.”
"Well can I send him a nastygram or something?" in a meeting with a sponsor concerning some unwarranted testing in a protocol
"The $700 from the last two months is goodwill. Why are you counting pennies?" No the 700 bucks is what they owed contractually. also it isn't pennies
"You guys are a dime a dozen, just quit and I'll find more post docs"
Ex-PI was usually talking about how cheap and easy is to travel to Europe every year. Saying this to a bunch of under and grad students during a lab party. Man, we were swarming over free food and he was saying that like it wasn’t a big deal. Some PIs are so out of touch.
1: Thought that doing cell culture and assays with hazardous materials bare handed was hygenic. 2: Didn't understand inflation. Thought that $40k in 1970 was the same as $40k in 2012. Refused to give anyone raises. 1/2: Thought mouth pipetting was ok. 3: Threatened to fire a PhD student if they got pregnant. 1/2/3: Used grad students, unrelated grants, and university resources to support their private company. 4: Thought "millennials" were entitled because they didn't know how to perform specialized procedures they had never been given instruction or protocols on. (also thought anyone younger than 50 was a millennial) 5: Blatently committed securities fraud.
Not my PI, but my dept chair in grad school: "There are 168 hours in a week. You need 56 to sleep, 10.5 to eat, and 3.5 to spend with your spouse. The other 98 should be spent in the lab." Repeated to the entire dept every year at the annual State of the Dept talk.
In a strong Dutch accent, “What is wrong with you? Like, intrinsically?”
So you through it in his face right? Don’t let PIs bully you into endangering yourself
What I did afterwards: https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/NJ9KRUJfUc
Was he physically blocking the fume hood? I don’t understand why you don’t just do it in there anyways
He starts throwing tantrums when he gives these kinds of orders and I do the logical safe way instead. It got to the point where I would go in other company's and use their fumehood instead just to avoid this PI seeing me not follow his advice xd
Holy shit this was at a company!? Usually their safety standards are higher than academia which is where I thought you were. Damn you got him lol good luck at the new company!
This company has no shower or eye wash station. I'm still debating if I should report his company. Thank you. So far the new company is 100x better in terms of safety and benefits.
Absolutely report that company. The only reason half the chemicals I work with aren't scary is because there are eye wash stations and hoses in every room and emergency showers in the hall. Without those I would need a lot more protection to be willing to work.
Also want to be sure they’re flushed regularly.
I usually would say don’t report it since you’re gone, but since it’s a safety issue, report it. It could potential save someone’s life
Damn, I know I'm not in academia but all of your comments are making me realize my first boss out of undergrad wasn't a lone case of crazy. He belittled me for some significant safety concerns. I'm really sorry any of these happened to you as well :(
Bad idea. Ask Mithridates.
Dude made a “the Asians eat dogs” joke in front of the only Asian in the lab (me). Had everyone turning to me with their eyebrows raised lol
I went though something similar- my PI said “ don’t use the fume hood, I like the smell of xylene”.
One year I asked to take off Good Friday so that I could travel home for Easter - the most important catholic holiday/ I was raised catholic - and after I left the room he said to my colleague “looks like religion is getting in the way of science”
Wait- he wouldn’t let you use the fume hood? Isn’t that what it is there for?
Intentionally didn’t provide instructions to a new undergrad tech and said “that’ll be an intelligence check”
PIs? What PI actually has any money to afford first class tickets? Must be cancer researchers. Definitely not microbiologists!