Beyond the Drawbridge

Just because you’re DVC Research doesn’t give you the right to nick my chair EVERY TIME YOU TALK TO YOUR FUCKING USELESS POSTDOC.

Thanks to the Black Knight for offering me a place to vent things that I’d rather not put on a blog with my name on it. Like this story about the FACS booking system…

During my time at my old lab, I used the hospital’s flow cytometry facility to sort my cells. When we (lab and facility) moved to a new building, the facility merged with that of another hospital, and they changed their booking system.

The old system worked like this:
I would pop over to the facility, and the tech would say:
-“Oh, hi, how have you been? Need to sort? That’s great. I have some time on Wednesday two weeks from now.”
-“Nah, Wednesday is no good for this, can I go on Thursday or Friday?”
-“Well, I can fit you in on Friday, but I’d have to start half an hour earlier. Is that okay?”
-“Sure, thanks! See you!”
And they would write the booking in by hand on a supplier-swag monthly wall calendar, and I’d plan my transfection for the day before my appointment, and everything just functioned.

The new system “worked” like this:
They switched from the wall calendar to an online booking system that was originally meant for something else entirely, and adapted that so it kind of works for booking time on their machines. Everyone who had been using the facility needed to attend a seminar in which they showed us how to use the system. (To be fair, that was a good idea, because nobody could ever have figured it out on their own!) At the training they told us, by way of motivational story, how people at CSHL or Johns Hopkins or some other fancy US institute had to line up at 2AM for their FACS sorting, and we should be glad that we got this new system, which was at least not as bad as lining up at 2AM.
It’s very, very close, though.
Read more »

Brunhilde is agog at some of the language in the latest HR newsletter:

SydneyRecruitment manages the end-to-end recruitment of staff and the on-boarding of new staff.

On-boarding sounds like the sort of thing young, fit babes might get up to at Bondi.

I’m afraid I never read those emails anymore. They’re full of such stuff. I retrieved this month’s copy from the trash and chose a few lines at random:

…cancellation of any sponsorship rights going forward.

SydneyPeople is divided into HR teams that work together to service all your HR needs

advice and guidance to [clients] on strategic and operational human resources issues impacting the University’s performance.

…proactive development of internal talent…

…ensures the principles of workforce diversity and EEO are embraced

..ensuring the University’s overall remuneration strategy meets the domestic and global
competition for talent.

I thought ‘meeting competition’ was a great concept, but I’m worried that I’ve been re-aligned:

With an effective date of 1 August 2008 the HR Service Centre will have re-aligned the support of the University’s groups/schools/units to different HRSC Team Members.

Do you think that might impact my performance to such an extent that I might need to proactively embrace internal talent development and be serviced by HR?

This is what you get when stuff is written by people from the Centre for the Mind. Seriously.

The stupidity (and hubris) of Admin continues, I am reminded.  And we’re not immune from it in the cage:  the director of Academic Administration of the science faculties wants us to dob in all our mates (and spenda shedload of time on it):

The Faculty of Science is developing a database of Faculty International Collaborations to inform its future international strategies.

Academic staff across the Faculty are regularly collaborating with colleagues from around the world on a wide variety of research projects, but the information is not systematically captured by the Faculty and hence opportunities are missed to support, develop and enhance these collaborations.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide me with brief details of your three most significant international collaborations between 2005 and 2008 (and into the future if you have plans):

Who your collaborators are and which institutions they are from;

What was the project? 

If any funding was received to  support the project then where from and how much;  

What the outcomes were (eg the number of publications but not details on which journals).

A collation of this data across the Faculty will not only provide the basis for future international strategies but also inform the budgeting process.

Thank you in anticipation of a great response.

What’s telling is (apart from the inability to use a plural such as ‘data’ correctly and the concept of ‘inform’ing non-sentient entities) the line about ‘outcomes’.  These people just have no bloody clue, and they pay our salary.  

But maybe we are finally getting fed up with all this.  An email from the manager of the Science Awareness Section of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (let’s not even think about how well they all sit together) begins

You may be aware that the nomination period for the 2008 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science closes on 9 May.

To date, the number of nominations received has been disappointing, and is clearly not reflective of the number of potentially suitable nominees currently active in research.

It continues

We had hoped, in fact, to see an increase in the number of nominations for the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year and Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year, as a result of an amendment to the eligibility criteria for these Prizes.

The prize consists of a shiny medallion, a lapel pin, and a fifty grand ‘grant’, which apparently you’re free to spend on anything you want, but it would take a brave young post-doc to take that literally and buy, say, a sports car.

The thing is, Philip, we just don’t give a rat’s arse.