u/phles

For context, I just started a new job after leaving a job because of bullying and feel extra vulnerable because of that. My new job has a lot of people aged 30-60-ish and most of them either have children or are pregnant or planning to have children in the future. I’m 34F who has never wanted children and I also had a hysterectomy 2,5 years ago because of adenomyosis. My partner is also childfree.

So the other day I overheard a coworker say something along the lines of “People without children don’t do as good a job as people with children, because they are not used to doing things for others or doing things that they don’t want to do, which bleeds into their work ethic”.

It sort of stuck with me, which I’m not proud of (it’s clearly a load of bollocks), but for some reason I just really started questioning myself. Am I lazy? I’ve been trying to figure out ways to exercise more but I’m not quite where I want to be yet, and with my ADHD I really struggle to stick with habits.

And I think the way that everyone always talks about their kids or grandkids at work affected me somehow. I’ve been asking myself if my boyfriend and I really have a chance at a meaningful life together without kids, which seems to be what everyone is obsessing over. Again, I know this is some utter bullshit, but I’ve just struggled with these stupid thoughts lately.

I’m off my ADHD meds at the moment because they made me anxious and I couldn’t eat on them, and I’m waiting to see a psychiatrist to try a different kind of meds. I’m hoping that’ll help me regulate my emotions better, which is the ADHD symptom I’ve struggled with the most.

In the meantime, I’m here looking for some support among like-minded people ❤️ Please give me a childfree peptalk! I could really need some childfree role models at this point!

One of the issues I struggle with the most when I’m off meds (at this point in my life - I guess I’m in a pretty good place right now, which makes being off meds manageable) is time. Not that I’m too slow, but that time moves too slowly. A day at work feels so very very long and it’s excruciatingly boring. With meds, it’s like my brain slows down and time passes quicker.

It’s much easier to accept the «daily grind» on meds. Off meds I get bored so quickly and wonder how I can get through the week or even the workday, and I start fantasising about getting another (which really won’t help, because I’ll get bored there too - I’ve had many jobs already). Any tips on how to cope with that?

I’m off meds because I just couldn’t eat properly when on meds and it severely affected my functioning + Vyvanse crash sucked + stomach was upset all the time.

I haven’t tried any non-stimulants yet.

Hello, good people of laboratory Reddit!

So I’ve written about the horrific lack of quality at my new work place and how I’ve decided to F off from there asap (Link to original posts at the bottom, if I did this correctly).

I GOT A NEW JOB! Blood bank, daytime only, higher salary and the hospital is closer to my home than my current workplace. I’ve sent my resignation letter to my boss’ boss (because I have zero trust in my actual boss) where I have explained why I am leaving, because I’m worried about the mental health of my coworkers there if nothing is done about the toxic environment.

Now I’m waiting to hear back from boss’ boss to see if I can leave prematurely (in my country you have to notify 3 months in advance when quitting a job).

In the meantime, my boss finally discovered a mistake that I made (as opposed to herself) and is having a great time messaging me about it while I’m on sick leave (the reason I’m on sick leave is that I cannot cope with the toxic work environment). The mistake I made apparently has been made by herself before, at which point she just laughed it off (I put in 8/5 instead of 5/8 when registering the expiry date for the control manually. I guess I was confused by the different formats). Now she’s messaged me on my phone + sent me two e-mails marked “high priority” regarding this mistake. In the meantime, it turns out that she also forgot to order bilirubin reagent again so we cannot run tests for that at the moment… The e-mail she sent out informing the doctors about the lack of bilirubin testing was NOT marked as “high priority”.

This is getting ridiculous. I’m so happy I’ll be leaving this place!

I wish you all a good night/day and an un-cunty boss!

Original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/medlabprofessionals/s/rzg49ycArk

Follow-up post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/medlabprofessionals/s/bDXDrYPYUF

I wanted to use a flair called “support” but it didn’t exist, oh well.

Ok guys, a couple of months at ago I posted about the nightmare-ish lack of quality at my new work place, a small lab in a medical centre (not a real hospital). Old post is linked somehow, I hope.

I’ve decided it’s time to skidaddle out of here for good. I’ve been through so much bullshit and I cannot take it anymore.

After noticing the complete lack of quality in any part of the process for this lab, I first let the person in charge of the chemistry instrument know. It turned out that she didn’t believe that having a correct target value for an analysis was important. I drew up the problem on my iPad and sent it to my boss, while at the same time letting her know that I’d been experiencing some bullying-like behaviour from my coworker after I’d told her my views on the quality in the lab.

Boss did absolutely nothing. It got progressively worse and now this other coworker straight up hates me (she is very dominant and obsessed with power and her image outward) and my boss still doesn’t realise quality is going to hell in a hand basket.

At some point I realised that the centrifuge had the wrong radius set, and so I changed it after checking the radius calculator on the Hettich website and also doing a control measuring with the measuring thing I use for knitting (sorry, not native speaker, words can be hard to find sometimes). I wrote a detailed e-mail explaining the process and what I’d done to my boss, who then proceeded to “check” the radius with my terrible coworker helping her out, and they concluded that actually, I was wrong and lololol. Well, it turned out that they used a ruler that didn’t measure centimetres?! So then I had to come in the next day and unfuck everything again. And then my boss repeatedly denied the fact that setting the correct radius is important to get the correct g… How hard can it be to read a manual?

Then during Easter we had a patient who actually had a heart attack due to very low sodium (119 mmol/L), and I tried to remind my boss that we really should look at the control limits we use for sodium, because they are so wide that there’s hardly any point of having limits at all, about double of that is recommended and also we still do not use Westgard rules, so basically anything goes and in my professional opinion, that is bollocks. Of course nothing was done about it, because the external control we did 1 month ago looks great! So obviously that must mean that the ISE will be grand forever, it’s not like ISE modules are famously unstable or anything like that.

So yeah, quality is still shit, boss just brushes it off whenever I try to mention not feeling safe at work and feeling like I’m being bullied (“We all need to learn to work with all kinds of people”).

I’ve decided to f right off! Got a job interview lined up for Tuesday, as a biobank coordinator in rheumatology research! Wish me luck!

TLDR; I’m putting my big girl pants on and leaving a toxic work environment where the lack of quality was giving me nightmares. Need some love from my fellow lab people ❤️