Dear Abbe,
This is more of personnel problem, I fear, but given your personal experience in dealing with, ah, unusual problems, you may be able to help us. I was recently working on the lab's Interocitor, when I was called away by colleagues trying to get a colloidal gold-conjugated antibody sample from another researcher. He was crouched in a corner hissing at the others and stroking the vials, whispering “my birthday presents, yesss my preciouss.” Short of throwing him in a vat of boiling bovine serum albumin, what should we have done?
Exasperated in Exeter
Dear Exasperated,
Ach. As you have unfortunately noted, my personnel problems tend to devolve into personal problems, so I can relate to your difficulty. I usually encounter cases of pathological obsessions like this gentleman's when talking to administrators about getting a share of the indirect costs of our grants. One thing you can do in cases like this is to distract your colleague with a bigger prize from someone else's lab. Just be sure to graciously let some Sündenbock take the credit for the distraction. Another alternative is to contact my personal friend, Madam Dikroic, and let her assemble a team of scientific misfits to subdue the man and destroy the One Vial that binds them all.
Dear Abbe,
We have a problem with our experimental animal facility where the fire/smoke alarms go off every so often (testing?). It only lasts about 30 seconds and does not bother the staff too much. Our problem is with our rabbits. They are so disturbed by the alarms that they no longer breed. A rabbit specialist has informed us that it is the frequency. However, if we change to a frequency that does not affect the rabbits, then our staff are unaware of the alarm. Is there something you have encountered that would solve this dilemma?
Interrupted in Instanbul
Dear Interrupted,
I am confused why you would worry about the staff—the rabbits are obviously more important. I can easily relate to the frustrated bucks. My current wife insists that the frequency of my nocturnal sonorous emissions kill her desire for most everything. So I ended up with a CPAP to counter my nightly growling. Now the rhythmic, Darth Vader-like breathing is allegedly forcing her to stay chaste, sometimes in another room. I decided to try noise-canceling technology, which improved our interpersonal interactions—we can't hear each other prattling on. I can live with that.
Interpersonal relationships are hard. Have Herr Abbe provide a reasonably useful solution and then be entertained by the results! Cast your relational worries on his loyal assistant at jpshield@uga.edu.
