Moving Pains

Bad enough that we're moving. The security system they installed when they built the new building doesn't work, of course. So, to add insult to injury, they're telling us we have to make a $10 deposit of our own, personal money to get keys to the new lab. I'm not sure if it's $10 per key, since we have separate keys for our tiny, cramped offices, and separate keys to the tissue culture and microscope rooms. Who are they kidding?? What really flabbergasts me is that our Brilliant Leader didn't think to just pay the $10 for each of us herself.

So meanwhile, the storage space in the offices promises to be a fraction of what we have now, nevermind that we're the only lab on the whole floor that's cramming four people in offices that clearly can't fit more than two, plus desks. Similarly, the benches are just a few inches narrower than our old ones, which would be fine if the shelves above them weren't also just a few inches higher. Most people in our lab (including me) are pretty short, so that makes the top shelf pretty much, shall we say, out of reach for storing things we use frequently.

Even my student, who is in her first year of college and her first year in a research lab of any kind, looked around the lab and said, "Boy, whoever designed this place obviously hasn't worked in a lab."

And the list goes on and on.
There's a lot of equipment we've been sharing in our current location that won't exist when we move, so now we're shopping, at t= -7 days and counting, for equipment that can't possibly arrive until weeks after we do. This includes a water filtration system. Our lab manager helpfully suggested we could use regular water and then autoclave it, except that the autoclaves in the building don't work yet .

Anyway I'm trying to look at this all as a learning experience, i.e. what NOT to ignore when you move into a lab space. I'm hoping the next time I do that will be to start my own lab, so hopefully it will eventually pay off to know all this stuff. Or something. Bright side, right?