Some damn labmates

I am working in a big Plant Molecular Biology lab. Some labmates are really mean and selfish. I know that I should not curse anyone, but I really hope those people will disappear from this lab and never have chance to work in any other lab. They are nightmare to everyone.

I will just take some examples happened in this week. Please remember, this situation has lasted more than 1 year and it happens repeatedly. My lab is located in two floors and I am only talking about the floor I work.

Stir bars: We always keep our clean stir bars in one container on the bench of solution/media prep area. We used to have more than 10 in there, then they disappeared gradually since end of last year and there were only 2 left for recent couple months. One labmate wanted to make some medium in last week and couldn't find any. She came to ask me and I also couldn't find any. The other labmate walked by and showed us where those stir bars were hiding. There is one labmate who keeps one stir bar in almost every bottle he made medium. We randomly picked 11 bottles on his bench to check and found 11 stir bars. One labmate asked him to released some stir bars and he did it.

Gel electrophoresis room: Some labmates tend to store their used and unwanted gels in gel racks in gel running tanks for weeks. It happened several times that there is no empty gel rack and tank to use unless we clean up those several-day-old gels. Usually people rinse used comb and rack and put them on drying area next to sink. Some labmates tend to leave used comb and rack in sink without rinse them. Some labmates tend to splash or spill running buffer out of gel running tank and make the bench flood. They usually leave their mess behind and make the bench looks very dirty. Almost nobody will clean it up except one labmate and I. We just couldn't tolerate it forever.

(note) My lab has 2 small gel racks, 2 middle ones and 2 big ones. We usually keep running buffer for at least 1 week in each gel running tank and run gel over and over without changing it unless it looks bad.

Filters and screens for shooting: We need to use autoclave and oven-dry filter and screen when we use gene shot-gun for sugarcane transformation. One or some labmate(s) open the ready-to-use screens (i.e. Al foil wrapped, autoclaved, and oven dried) and left them open and un-sterile inside the oven in upper floor. It almost ruined the experiment for that person who prepared those screens and want to do her particle bombardment today. Luckily she found some autoclaved and dried ones in the oven at lower floor.

Cabinet for Tissue culture plates: Our lab in lower floor has a 5 shelves cabinet to store tissue culture plates made by each group. Each shelf can store 5x10x12 = 600 plates. People tend to put plates on the top 4 shelves and other autoclaved MSC medium in 1L bottle on the bottom shelf. Those autoclaved MSC medium will solidified after cooling down, but they can be melted by microwave and pour plates later. There are 6 groups in this floor need to do tissue culture, so there should be enough space if we share this cabinet evenly. Unfortunately there is one particular person who always occupies >2.5 shelves (i.e. >2 top shelves and >0.5 bottom shelf). It is not because she needs to do more tissue culture work than any other person, it is because she likes to keep tons of plates and bottles without using them and also doesn't want to clean them. It is December 2009 now and she has plates and bottles made in Feb.,..., July, August, ... When other labmate asked her to clean out some old ones and free some space, she just refused. This makes other 5 groups of people have difficult time to find space to store our MSC plates and bottles.

(note) Most people make plates to use, but not to store them forever. We don't make them unless we need them and we use them after we make them. Usually we make 5L MSC medium each time which can pour into 120 plates. We have different kind of medium, C3OSM, C3, C3G50, C1.5, C1.5G50, C0, C0G50, C3G50T150, C3H50, C3H100, C0G50T150, C0H50, C3G50-5FC, and C0G50-5FC for different purpose. It is quite normal that each group will need a space to store 100-300 plates, i.e. 0.5 shelf, regularly.

1L Schott bottle: There is one person who has occupied ~20 Schott bottles in the bottom shelf of tissue culture cabinet, ~5-10 Schott bottles in other shelf, and ~10-15 bottles on the counter next to our autoclave. It means that there are at least 35-45 1L Schott bottles are taken by one single person. It is the same person who occupies >2.5 shelves of tissue culture cabinet. Because of this, we are lack of 1L Schott bottle to make medium in lower floor, then we have to take Schott bottle from upper floor. Well, people in upper floor are not happy because they don't have bottle to use if we take theirs. When other labmate asked her to clean out some of her old ones, she refused and said that we don't need to care about what people in upper floor think because some of they will leave this lab in end of this year. It is so mean and selfish.

(note) Most people will pour plates right after they make and autoclave the MSC medium. Sometimes we do keep 1-5 1L Schott bottles with autoclaved MSC medium for a while, but we always use it asap, basically within 1-2 weeks after autoclaved.

Lab roster duties: In order to keep an acceptable and safe working environment, our lab has this lab roster duty system. Two RAs are responsible for 1 week and the other 2 take turn for next week. We had 10 RAs before and 8 now. Basically I am doing almost all things listed below. The RA supposes to do it with me is very lazy and almost do nothing at all. After I checked almost every listed duty this afternoon before I went home, I was ready to take 2 full yellow bins downstair. I asked this RA to take 1 bin down with me, because it is too heavy (~20 kg per bin) to take 2 by myself and she had nothing to do in that time. She refused to do so and said that we should leave it to next week. I think it is selfish to leave this week's duties to next week, so I took them down as usual.

(note) The things we need to take care are:
1. Once per week, test the autoclave is working properly.
2. Order supplies / chemical listed on the whiteboard.solution / media prep area
3. Check Path waste yellow bin daily. Take out if full, and bring an empty bin back. (ps. For PC2 lab, this bin is >1 m height and can keep up to 20 kg waste. All waste has to be double bag with bioharzard yellow bag.)
4. Check common use areas such as benches, solution / media prep area, common equipment bay (centrifuges / water baths), and fume cabinets.
5. Remove excess Styrofoam "eskies" and cardboard boxes for recycle. Check swabbing ethanol Winchesters and drums. Glass to the brown wheelie bins.
6. Wash-up areas: Put dirty plastic/glass/...wares into dish washer, wash them, put them on the drying cloth above the washer for drying. Put away clean and dry ware to suitable storage cabinet.
7. Empty yellow bins under prep bench, gel electrophoresis room, PCR room.
8. Check sharps containers in common use areas, dispose of if necessary and replace.