Ghetto Science

Reasons you know you are doing ghetto science (better not count, it's downright depressing)

(Background: I am happily doing science in New York, making about as much $ as the guy that sells me my bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and the boss decides to move the lab to Paris, France. Well, at least I speak some French, so that will help. The following is a description of some of the perils of doing science in a land that's not exactly known for its effeciency.)

1. We's so poor, we can't even afford no weigh boats. We use paper that's only been printed one side.

2. It takes 6 months to gear up to do in situs.
First: locate glass coplin jars. The Trick- they are in our boxes from the NY move where the guys basically wrote "plastic ware" or "glassware" on the boxes, which comprises about 95% of the shit in the boxes. Not especially descriptive if you desperately need to find something.

Step 2: order all of the chemicals and translate the USA catalog #s to something that is actually sold in France. I thought I had everything, then read through the protocol and gathered everything up. Wrong.

Turns out that SIGMA FRANCE had something on backorder for 2 months and they were NEVER going to call me. Sweet. So I give them a ring (and make them speak English- how cruel).

They need me to fill out a form to promise that I'm not using said chemical product to produce illicit drugs. They said they faxed it to me 2 months previously.

"Really? I never got that fax. Were you going to call and ask me to send it?"
Sigma- "No, we don't do that".
That's customer service right there friends.

Oh, and I have to call 3 times over the course of one afternoon and the next morning in order to inpspire someone enough to take the effort to fax the damn form to me. BTW it's all in French. I fill it out in English. Ha- take that!

Hmm, perhaps I should do some research on the internet to find out what the heck this chemical can be used for, I could use some supplimental income.

I call on Monday to find out the progress of fax reception and if the product has indeed been shipped. The switchboard operator informs me that they are having a meeting and can not answer my question. "I'm sorry, EVERYONE is in a meeting?". "Yes, can you please call back at 2pm?". Good god, what a way to run a railroad!

3. The dingo ate your baby. (yes, this IS a Seinfeld ref.)
My mice are so unhappy living in an animal house where drills and jackhammers continually disturb their sleep and odd smelling-vapors permeate their room on a continual basis, that they keep eating their pups. Joy. How can a girl collect tissues if she ain't got no mice?

4. How can a girl do mouse experiments if her mice won't mate? (see above)

5. I've been waiting for 3 months for hanging folders. I keep asking our secretary to order them, but she doesn't like doing "administrative stuff". I give up. I'll just keep piling shit up on my bench until some caustic chemical spills on it and I have to throw out the whole mess. That would simplify organization, for sure.

6. The bartender across the street is starting to understand my English accent when I speak french. I am wearing my own butt-print into one of the stools due to my frequent visits and have memorized the happy-hour prices of all of the pints they serve.

7. I have been considering self-medicating before coming to work to be able to have patience to fill out forms for shipping mice to France from the USA. It took a full work week, me being transferred a dozen times within our funding agency to find a warm body that would pick up the phone in August, and recieving phone calls on my personal cell while on vaca in Italy of all places (which cost to the tune of two Euros plus per minute) to get 2 shipments of the cleanest mice possible delivered to our hospital in Paris.

Let's hope they are happy over there in the new building!

8. Everyone uses the building as if it's their own personal ashtray. They smoke in the hallways, in the offices... don't mind the fact that they are painting the building and using hazardous chemicals all over the place, we do science here on occasion, you know. So though I am a doctor who doesn't smoke, I am likely to get lung cancer anyhow. Nice.

9. We have to steal needles from the hospital using someone's mom who is a nurse in Spain. It's too complicated to purchase them using French sources, we must order them by the gross, I think. Instead, I went to the local pharmacy to special order some. Why needles with surgical thread are available from the corner drug store- I don't know. I would feel much safer having a French medical professional sew me up, frankly, but hey- perhaps that's not the rationale here?

10. The hood doesn't work in the lab. We've been here for 4 months now. Wonder how much longer it will take. A trip upstairs to a room with a functional hood requires a cart-full of shit: pen, eppie tubes, pipetteman, tips, samples, and keys to unlock the door. Not to mention that you must dodge from 0 to 5 workman who may or may not have ladders or other crap blocking the way to the door. (Depends on if they feel like working today or not; it's a roll of the dice).

11. The ice machine is closed with a giant wooden clip, think of the world's biggest clothespin. No joke.

12. I've already mentioned there's no air conditioning right? Yeah, so when you wanna open the window, you've gotta use this lead block that weighs like 20 pounds to keeep a stiff breeze from rendering me unconcious when the window smacks me in the side of the head. So one night, I decide it's probably fine if i just leave the window open a crack, I mean, it was 37 degrees INSIDE the lab earlier that week. During the night the lead weight falls off of the window sill and the pointy part severs my computer cord in two. You know, the one that has the transformer in it? Thanks please pay 90 euros because the folks that remodeled your work space couldn't get the windows right. I clearly don't get paid enough.

13. One more reason I don't get paid enough. Ever heard of a mouse facility in the States where you've gotta change your own cages when THE animal caretaker leaves on vacation? Me neither.

14. We have entered month #5 of occupation of the all new state-of-the-art Lab Space, which still has a non-functional hood and ventilation system. But we still often work under the hood when working with some noxious chemicals, I think it's more of an ingrained habit rather than serving any functional purpose. During one of these rather amusing episodes of someone working with something smelly in the "hood" which does not actually suck smelly air out of the lab, one of our rather soft-spoken labmates said, "The hood may not work, but at least you can switch the light on and pretend that it works".