The idiot

I have talked about the idiot on BC and twitter and what-not but, I don't think I have written a proper post about him here. I think is time to leave it in the past and writing about it will help me.

I moved to Tucson in 2005 to be the idiot's technician, he is friend of my Bachelor's mentor and she recommended me for the job. At the beginning everything was fine, he was courteous and friendly. Then he started commenting on my outfits, "you look good in a skirt", or "my girls look like Charlie's Angels" (my hair was reddish at the time and my friend Maria's is black and we had a blond helper). Then came the time-in-the-lab talk, he wanted me to be in there at least 12-hours a day because I was single and without a family or a boyfriend I had nothing better to do.

Because of his comments and the large amount of time I had to be in the lab I changed my fashion style and started wearing jeans, t-shirts and snickers every day. He started complaining about it, he told me that I should go to the mall and buy clothes at Banana Republic or J-Crew (like he payed me so I could afford that). Then he started telling me I was too fat and that I should at least wear make-up to look a little pretty.

From work things everyday he would yell at me if an experiment didn't work or because it took too long to do it. He would tell us that "even housewives" could do this experiment or that and that even them could do them in less than 5 minutes. He would complain that his wife was fat (she was pregnant). On payday he would take the guys in the lab to a strip-club, they would come back smelling like alcohol and cheap cologne, it was really gross.

I had to meet in private with him every Monday. I would get sick to my stomach every Monday. Aside from making me feel completely useless in the lab, he would start with his comments about my clothes or tell me things like "if you had a car you could be in the lab at 2 am no problem but, because you take the bus you have to leave by 9 pm instead" or "are you afraid of the dark that you leave at 9 pm"? He told me I needed to tell my family I couldn't send money to them so I would be able to afford clothes "not bought at Walmart" or a car. He would tell me he needed to treat the American girls differently than the international ones because they could complain and we couldn't.

He had parties at this house were he would make us play strip-bottle with him. He would call 2 professors in the department "hot güeritas" (hot blonds). He dance very inappropriately with one of them, in front of her boyfriend. He used Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie's images to describe bacterial hairs during a class for Med-students (they all complained). He didn't get along with any of the professors in the department, they all knew he was a jerk.

Every lab meeting was a bitching session. He would complain that we didn't work hard enough, long enough, good enough. No picture of bacteria was perfect enough to be published, unless he took it. He told Maria and me that he took us out of a hole in Mexico and brought us to an awesome job at a 1st-world country. Things got really really bad when Maria went to England for 3 months. She was the lab manager and I had to do her job and mine while she was gone. It was horrible, everything I needed to order had to be authorized by the idiot. He yelled at me for ordering colorful tubes instead of just plain ones (the prize was the same for both). It was Valentine's day and I cried for most of it.

At that point I was already talking to my now-boss about switching to her lab. But, she was still at another University so, I had to wait 4 long months before I could quit the idiot's lab. The final stab he gave came a couple of weeks before I quit. "We" (meaning he) had sent a paper for publication, the final draft had my name as the 3rd author and I really had done 1/3 of the work in the paper. Well, the paper got published and my name was not in the authors but in the acknowledgments for technical assistance.

In one of our weekly meetings he had told me that if I wanted to leave the door was open wide. So, when I told him I was leaving I said that. He was shocked! I then went and talked to the head of the department about the paper, he didn't do anything about it. After I left the lab another 7 people left too. He was up for tenure that year and he didn't get it so he had to leave the University and I'm very thankful for that. Just seeing him around after I switched labs was awkward. I won't even talk about all his other ethical violations because I don't want to involve other people.

I still hate lab meetings and get sick to my stomach every time I don't have a good result to present, even though my boss is not at all like him and she understands that not every experiment works. I can help that my stomach gets knotted if my boss calls me to her office. I get upset every time he publishes a paper because the last 3 had data I produced and my name wasn't even in the acknowledgments.

I can thank him for 2 things though, the opportunity to come here, he was right about that one. Also, all the amazing friends I met in his lab, the situation was bad for all of us and that brought us really close together.