Job eliminations

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38 posts Page 2 of 3
Once I was told to assay 3 competitive products super-rush, was told by the Director of Product Development that the CEO "MJ" wanted the results immediately. The next morning, walked into the building and was told that the CEO had been axed; so I went straight to Director of Product Development and asked if MJ was still interested in the results !!!
ConsumerProductsGuy, I'm so glad you're still around. This forum benefits from experienced people like you, who know what they're talking about. Glad that things are OK.

Yeah, strange how everything is urgent. My pet hate is people who absolutely have to be trained in the use of an instrument Today because they're going on holiday tomorrow. They then let slip during the training that they have 27 samples they'd like to run at the same time, and a horrible question is left hovering in the air about who's going to analyse the results. The training is rushed, it usually turns out that something's wrong with the samples because they were also rushed, there aren't any standards, and after I've got completely stressed trying to identify what might be present in the samples, it transpires the boss is busy at a conference in China and never asked for instant results before student/post-doc's holiday anyway. By the time person has got back from holiday, they've forgotten everything from the rushed training anyway, and we're back to square one.

My all-time favourite was an ex-boss who asked me to do a 24-hour time-course experiment one lunch-time and was surprised I hadn't got the final results when he came in at 9.00 the following morning. To be fair to him, when I explained the technical difficulty with achieving his schedule, he was a bit embarrassed.
lmh wrote:
ConsumerProductsGuy, I'm so glad you're still around. This forum benefits from experienced people like you, who know what they're talking about. Glad that things are OK.


Thanks, I am doing OK.

Funny thing: I used to associate with maybe 20 people per day when working; some brought samples and projects to me, some just wanted to help their understanding of simpler stuff like pH (not always so simple !) or why their product was cloudy or separated, etc. So now being retired 1.5 years or so before I had planned, that daily association with people and the unknowns is a big change.

As to your story: oftentimes a QA manager in R&D would bring over a rush sample (with no communications in advance) and need quick results. I'd tell them by end of day and typically they'd come over like 2pm and ask if there were results. So I'd then ask the person if he would like incorrect results now, or wait for correct results, and always the decision was made to wait. Of course he had no idea that mobile phase had to be made up, column installed and equilibrated, maybe detector to warm up, stuff that might have been done in advance had there been a simple phone call or E-mail (TO ME, not my boss, not my bosses' boss, that chain of command thing really bothered me). And I soon learned that when someone "swore" that a sample would arrive at 10am FedEx, to never believe that would truly happen, sometimes a sample wasn't sent in time and no one communicated, or sample sent to QA who was at a meeting or offsite, or even to product development, or stuck in receiving because no one's name was on the package.
Hi CPG,

The manager thinking that the end of the day was at 2 pm might have told you something about his work hours.

Peter
Peter Apps
CPG, I just had one while I was reading the replies here that you may or may not miss :)

Girl just came in and asked if I had any Potassium Hydroxide. I had a 500g bottle of pellets and asked how much she needed. She said she needed to make a 50% solution. I told her that would be 250g plus 250ml of water. She looked at me and asked it that much would dissolve or not. I told her to go back and check the needed concentration. Guess what was actually in the method......

0.05M solution.

0.05M = 50%, must be some of that new math :)
The past is there to guide us into the future, not to dwell in.
Reading through this I am both saddened and relieved that I am not the only person who has gone through similar situations.

I never found Dilbert all that funny, then I graduated and got a job.
@itspip

I always found it interesting that Dilbert struck a chord with so many people. Very incisive.

See also his "mission statement" hoax

http://articles.latimes.com/1997/nov/16/news/mn-54489

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1997/Dilbe ... 0600f679ce

Regards

Ralph
Regards

Ralph
James_Ball wrote:
CPG, I just had one while I was reading the replies here that you may or may not miss :)

Girl just came in and asked if I had any Potassium Hydroxide. I had a 500g bottle of pellets and asked how much she needed. She said she needed to make a 50% solution. I told her that would be 250g plus 250ml of water. She looked at me and asked it that much would dissolve or not. I told her to go back and check the needed concentration. Guess what was actually in the method......

0.05M solution.

0.05M = 50%, must be some of that new math :)


I thought that many years of experience had given me some skills in working out how people arrived at wrong answers, but this one has me beaten. Did you ask her to run the calculation by you ?

Peter
Peter Apps
My favourite one is someone coming into the lab and asking if I had a hammer in our toolbox.

After searching and supplying one I asked what they wanted it for.

They said that they were trying to unsuccessfully use a spatula to loosen a screw and thought that a hammer might help

Really they just needed a big screwdriver.

It is an example of queries that are prejudiced and misleading and I have seen that before on the forum.

Sometimes you need to stop, think and ask "what is the actual problem?"

It is a little bit like going to your doctor - from experience! - just give the symptoms and not your diagnosis :-)

Regards

Ralph
Regards

Ralph
GOM wrote:
My favourite one is someone coming into the lab and asking if I had a hammer in our toolbox.After searching and supplying one I asked what they wanted it for.They said that they were trying to unsuccessfully use a spatula to loosen a screw and thought that a hammer might help


Someone once came and asked me if I had a hacksaw, they needed it to fix a GC!

Peter, The 50% NaOH may have come from a method that used that concentration of solution as a starting point rather than solid. But yeah how do you get to 50% from 0.05M??

GCguy
GCguy
gcguy wrote:
GOM wrote:
My favourite one is someone coming into the lab and asking if I had a hammer in our toolbox.After searching and supplying one I asked what they wanted it for.They said that they were trying to unsuccessfully use a spatula to loosen a screw and thought that a hammer might help


Someone once came and asked me if I had a hacksaw, they needed it to fix a GC!

Peter, The 50% NaOH may have come from a method that used that concentration of solution as a starting point rather than solid. But yeah how do you get to 50% from 0.05M??

GCguy


I think she just saw a 5 and some zeros on the page and by the time she walked over to me she forgot the number and just said what first popped into her head :)

Sadly I can't say I haven't done similar things when trying to work out multiple problems at the same time before. Simple misplacement of the decimal point, by several places :)
The past is there to guide us into the future, not to dwell in.
gcguy wrote:
GOM wrote:
Someone once came and asked me if I had a hacksaw, they needed it to fix a GC!


For the longest time I've had the picture in my head of a GC chemist using a hack saw to "trim" an HPLC column. One of those you're doing it wrong memes.
gcguy wrote:
Someone once came and asked me if I had a hacksaw, they needed it to fix a GC!


Don't laugh - I once used our department hacksaw to cut away some of the cabinet on a 386 computer so a 2nd hard drive would physically fit, thought the boss would have a heart attack !!!

One time I went home at lunch to get an extractor tool to help the Agilent engineer complete a repair which could not have been done the same day without that.

I also once took home a GC flapper assembly to rivet the flapper back on.
Consumer Products Guy wrote:
gcguy wrote:
Someone once came and asked me if I had a hacksaw, they needed it to fix a GC!


Don't laugh - I once used our department hacksaw to cut away some of the cabinet on a 386 computer so a 2nd hard drive would physically fit, thought the boss would have a heart attack !!!

One time I went home at lunch to get an extractor tool to help the Agilent engineer complete a repair which could not have been done the same day without that.

I also once took home a GC flapper assembly to rivet the flapper back on.


When I first started here in the lab, we had an old 286 computer with a hard drive that the heads would stick if you shut it down. The fix was we left the front open so we could slide the drive out. When you powered the computer on, you slid the drive out the front, gave it a slight tap on the counter and slid it back in. The thing ran for years like that.

I also don't know how many stands and shelves I designed and built in my woodworking shop to hold stuff at the lab. There is always something that needs a custom height stand to work properly in the lab.
The past is there to guide us into the future, not to dwell in.
Hi James

A nice post - thank you

That promotes some memories :-)

A 286 - I had forgotten about that

I recall the excitement of getting a "blistering fast" 386 - To quote Monty Python - luxury! :-) :-)

My first GC lab computer was a PDP-8 - the size of a couple of wardrobes and something like a "massive" 32K (I think) hard drive :-)

Rebooting took an hour a few times a week - feeding in the punched paper tape and toggling all the switches in a specific order from the manual

https://www.pdp8.net/#pictures

:-) :-)

Ralph
Regards

Ralph
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