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- Feb 13, 2011
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I have sort of a weird situation. I'm a lab manager for a fairly large clinical lab. I've been here for two years, one as an RA and one now as the lab manager.
As part of my lab manager duties, I manage all of the RAs (we have about 10-12). Most of them, like myself, are eager students who want to be involved and build their CV for graduate school. We have a reading group and a weekly RA meeting that I run. Then, we all go to the larger lab meeting which is 2x a month.
All of the students are great, except this semester, we had one RA who I just had some troubles with. First, her quality of work is really poor. She took about twice as long to get reliable on our coding procedures, and she's still just BARELY reliable. Second, she doesn't follow lab procedures. She'll leave files unlocked, doors open, things out and about, and last weekend she e-mailed me a bunch of coding. I was surprised by this, so decided to inquire as to why she was in the lab on a weekend the next time I saw her, to which she told me she wasn't, but had taken home videos to code !!!!!! This is totally against lab procedures and a HUGE NO NO! Finally, she's kind of awkward to be around. For example, many of the RAs get to run subjects, but she's so awkward, I kind of had to make up an excuse that we were "too full" for her to do that, and give her more coding...which she sucks at.
Here is where it gets complicated. First, my PI is basically like "Do whatever, I'll side with you." She already registered for it next semester, and I told my PI this and he's still maintaining his stance "I don't work with her directly, you tell me what we should do." I've had SEVERAL conversations with her, and at this point, I feel like I'm restructuring things just to accommodate her severity of incompetence.
The problem is that she's the nicest girl you would ever want to meet. She's very nice. English is also not her first language, and sometimes i wonder if part of the problem is that? However, there are just a variety of concerns about her, and I'm at my wits end with her.
It's just crazy because in my undergraduate lab, this would NEVER have gone on so long---the PI would have fired her within 2 weeks.
WHAT DO I DO!? HELP!
As part of my lab manager duties, I manage all of the RAs (we have about 10-12). Most of them, like myself, are eager students who want to be involved and build their CV for graduate school. We have a reading group and a weekly RA meeting that I run. Then, we all go to the larger lab meeting which is 2x a month.
All of the students are great, except this semester, we had one RA who I just had some troubles with. First, her quality of work is really poor. She took about twice as long to get reliable on our coding procedures, and she's still just BARELY reliable. Second, she doesn't follow lab procedures. She'll leave files unlocked, doors open, things out and about, and last weekend she e-mailed me a bunch of coding. I was surprised by this, so decided to inquire as to why she was in the lab on a weekend the next time I saw her, to which she told me she wasn't, but had taken home videos to code !!!!!! This is totally against lab procedures and a HUGE NO NO! Finally, she's kind of awkward to be around. For example, many of the RAs get to run subjects, but she's so awkward, I kind of had to make up an excuse that we were "too full" for her to do that, and give her more coding...which she sucks at.
Here is where it gets complicated. First, my PI is basically like "Do whatever, I'll side with you." She already registered for it next semester, and I told my PI this and he's still maintaining his stance "I don't work with her directly, you tell me what we should do." I've had SEVERAL conversations with her, and at this point, I feel like I'm restructuring things just to accommodate her severity of incompetence.
The problem is that she's the nicest girl you would ever want to meet. She's very nice. English is also not her first language, and sometimes i wonder if part of the problem is that? However, there are just a variety of concerns about her, and I'm at my wits end with her.
It's just crazy because in my undergraduate lab, this would NEVER have gone on so long---the PI would have fired her within 2 weeks.
WHAT DO I DO!? HELP!
