The rise and fall of my utopian mass spec society

A month ago something amazing happened. A lab mate called me into a room down the hall. “I want to show you something,” he said. He led me next to the newest mass spec our PI had bought and said, “This is yours,” gesturing to the new ion trap. I couldn’t believe it. “Seriously?” I asked. “Yup,” he confirmed. “No, seriously?” I asked. “Yes, I’m totally serious,” he assured me. “You’re lying to me,” I accused, certain this was some mean trick. “No, it really is yours. Take good care of it,” he told me and left me with my new baby.

This was too amazing. I had waited three long years for this moment, certain I would always be considered the idiot grad student, too stupid to be trusted with the pH meter. But now my moment had come. And she was all mine. I kept her a secret for two days, reveling in the excitement of uninterrupted instrument time, a first in my graduate school career.

I had plans for this mass spec (MS). You see, most of the instruments are ruled by surly grad students and post-docs who offer unlimited instrument time to their friends, but screw over everyone else in the lab. If something goes wrong with an instrument, they instantly point fingers at whomever they like least, regardless of whether that person had anything to do with it. And if you should make a mistake with their instrument, look out. The whole lab is going to hear about it and they will never let you forget it.

But not my mass spec. It would be different. Everyone would get equal opportunity to use it. I would train anyone who wanted to learn. We would all work together and the result would be increased productivity and a boost in lab morale and my PI would finally be proud of me. This was my chance to show them all how it’s done.

Things started out well. We were sharing and getting data and we all got as much time on it as we wanted. See, I thought, and you all said it couldn’t be done. Look at me changing the world (my world anyway, a little bit). I should have known that kind of perfection can’t last.

After almost a full month of mass spec utopia a chemist in the lab asked me if he could use the instrument. He said he had run his compound on another mass spec before but that MS was in use and my instrument was idle so I figured, What’s the harm? And look at me being so accommodating, I share with everyone. Carried away by my own kindness I showed him the basics then left him to his work, neglecting to ask what was in the sample he planned to run. He had run it before, right?

Dun, dun, dun…

I received an e-mail the next morning from the lab mate who had bequeathed to me the MS. He questioned, Did I know the source was crusted over with salt? Something bad must have been run on the MS. Crap. Maybe he’s wrong or exaggerating.

I hurried to the MS to see for myself. Holy crap. I’d never seen such a source in real life. It was like the scary pictures they show you in mass spec courses of how bad it can get if you use the wrong buffer. What was in his sample? By now the chemist had heard about his foul up and he entered the room. “So, what was in your sample?” I asked, trying to sound calm, and not-surly. “I had my compound dissolved in PBS,” he replied. Oh. My. God. For those not in the lab, PBS is Phosphate Buffered Saline. I will always remember the early days of my mass spec training with my boss warning me gravely, “Never, ever, put phosphate buffer on a mass spec.” Right. To drive home the point for those of you who have no clue what an MS is, this was akin to sticking a metal pot in the microwave; everyone KNOWS you don’t do that. I mean, do you ask your guests when they enter your kitchen not to put anything metal in the microwave? No, because you assume they know better. All I could think was, How could you do this? But that’s not nice. Angela is the nice compassionate grad student who doesn’t yell. “Okay, I’m gonna need to clean this and replace some parts,” I told him in the nicest most not-yelling way I could muster.

So, for the rest of the day I cleaned and sonicated, and cleaned and sonicated, and switched out parts, trying to get the sensitivity back to where it was before. As I took apart fittings salt crumbled out onto my bench. As I used a fine wire to scrape out white chunks of who-knows-what I though, Fine, the surly grad students have a point. I went to them for advice. “You just have to be a bitch about it. Tell them they can’t use it,” they told me. While I rebelled against such notions, having been the victim of them before, I have to admit it was tempting. Simply banish the offender. Maybe, but I wouldn’t do it without my boss’s approval. So I fired off an e-mail to my PI, asking what he wanted me to do, praying he would recommend banishment.

Days later I got his reply, “I admire your collegial attitude. We should maintain a system that is open to all. You simply need to be more careful in monitoring its use.” Great. Cause I have nothing better to do than monitor other people’s work. What a giant suckfest I have created.

So, in the time since Saltfest08 I have been trying to come up with a system that will work for everyone. It’s not going well. And I feel like a huge jerk. Partly for getting upset with the offending party. And partly for believing in utopia, which, almost by definition, is doomed to fail.

So the record is: The System: 1, Angela: 0. But I’ll be back. And hopefully next time I’ll have a happier ending to my story.