Welcome to the dark side

Good day to you all, today I would like to talk about communication, a basic and primal quality in all living things, it is the key to reaching an understanding, when a level of agreement is reached based on that understanding goals are achieved and progress is made and so life evolves, new horizons dawn and civilizations raised over the foundations structured and enforced by this new found understandings.

There are many examples of communication in nature all around us, just look at how a beehive functions, depending on each and every individual bee to play its part in every day hive activities. Ants are another good example of such a structured community with loyalties to the colony and their spices of ant. I myself keep an ant farm and let me tell you it is very nice to watch! It’s made out of some nutrient gel material so we can see the ants tunneling and storing food and even farming, yeas ants do display activates that resemble farming as they sometimes feed on fungi , thus creating caverns and providing them with the right temperature and humidity for the fungi to grow!

It is truly sad to see that most humans do suffer from communication problems, if ants and all other living things got it straight I guess this proves you don’t need the full mass of a human brain to get it right, yet it is amazing how some people really don’t know how to pull it off.

I have experienced this laity with my boss, a work place kinda resembles a colony, a system where we all play a part in keeping it running smoothly, but I guess we just had a communication problem, long story short , we had a meeting , in this meeting I have explained that I have been assigned to a position that does not fit my expertise, she said that I was a scientist (microbiology , specifically a mycologist) and that I have wonders capabilities and that I would be an asset to the department, so I have to do this job ( work in a zoology lab looking at zooplankton), to simplify the matter, this is like asking a physicist to do a biologists job, I have explained to her that I have never worked on zooplankton or studied them in university or my diploma of higher education, my field was microbiology of extreme environments working with bacteria, viruses and especially fungi. In all my papers and work I have never touched upon zooplankton , if I wanted to then I should have been a zoologist, and the job description clearly stated that there is a microbiology lab in the department , so what the hell am I doing in the zooplankton lab ? the answer to that question was, you have a wealth of knowledge your C.V show substantial amount of work and dedication I think you can lead this lab to taxonomical studies in zooplankton!

Well it was obvious I was not getting anywhere and that this boat was sinking, because in my C.V I stated all the projects and experiments I have undertaken and all of them where on land and in hostile environment dealing with fungi mostly and some bacteriological and viral work.

I have tried one last time to explained that this is not my filed of expertise and that I’m in no man’s land, she said don’t worry you’ll be fine! , is this a joke, for the love of god it felt so wrong, I felt underappreciated, all this years of hard work for nothing , well I’m not certainly using any of the knowledge I have in this bloody filed, I might as well work as a garbage man or a janitor  (with all due respect to both professions) I’m just trying to say that you don’t need to be a rocket scantest to work in a gas station as the guy who pumps the fuel, even the methods used in the damn lab are nor recognized universally as scientifically precise , it’s a joke, this is monkey business, in my evaluation it is a waste of time and a disgrace to the country, the boss did not even know what the hell do her employees do in that lab!

Anyway, that’s what happened and now I’m just stuck in this hell hole! This brings to mind something I read on a fridge magnet “we don’t believe in miracles we depend on them”

For the readers that have never heard of the EPA, I don’t blame you it’s a real joke! (not in all countries but certainly in my country and trust me it’s not a poor country), like most government paying jobs it’s a slow growing organization (wait that’s an understatement , let’s face it it’s not slow it’s simply dead), I mean come on when you get a report from the countries institution for scientific studies ( which they funded a European country a lot of money to come and do), [I know this for a fact because I have attended the presentation], show that even if we virtually stop all polluting activities from factories shutting down to simply lettering on an individual scale (be it a cigarette bud or a candy wrapper), the country environment will keep suffering, spiraling down for the next 50 years!

Well if that’s not eye popping then let me tell you a story from my personal experience, well I graduated university with a degree in microbiology as my major and English literature as my minor, I even got a diploma of higher education (in microbiology). Most of my work in microbiology was specialized in mycology (dealing with Fungi), I have written many papers and preformed various experiments all the way to genetic analysis to reinforce many of my findings, but enough of the technical talk and back to the story: as I was saying, the next step in my career was to find a job, get some OJT (On Job Training), then find a good project to use when I apply for my PhD. This would be the goal of any scientist that is passionate about his/her work, so I applied for a job, young and egger full of energy I wanted a chance to show what I’m made of, mentally preparing for all the I would face, how to prove my worth, I even when out and got the latest books and research papers offered in my field of expertise, needless to say I made sure I had everything I needed to always be in tip top of shape.

In a country like my country, you don’t just go and apply for a government job directly you go throw what they call the system! Yup it’s a system that you register in and based on the government sectors that need someone like you, you are drafted to that sector. Sounds good? Yah but does it work? That’s the million dollar question, well let’s say I had 3 choices: - A) Ministry of health B) Ministry of education (as a high school teacher) or C) the EPA. Now naturally for an environmental scientist the obvious choice will be the EPA, so now I was prepared to take my place in the scientific community, go out there see for myself , take samples , analyst them in the lab come up with conclusions to solve environmental problems , make environment friendly suggestions for saving the environment, collaborate with other scientific minds , work as a team, with the group of the elite, be inspired and hopefully find a topic important enough to per sue a PhD in and come back to lead my country forward a step in environmental studies. Ok we all know what happened next , unfortunately this was not the case, I got the job , got drafted to he living resources department, where they stuck me in a zoology lab , looking at stuff I have never seen before or know anything about ! well you can imagine my disappointment, it was degrading, it made me feel like I have wasted all this years of a academic achievement, because I don’t get to use any of the knowledge I have obtained all the way to this point in anything, it was a totally different filed, with no one qualified to train me to do this job , you understand how I must feel ( ok I don’t mean to brag but don’t you think it’s a bit stupid to just put people where you need man power instead of expertise),I tried talking to the boss, but that didn’t work out to good , it was a dead end, I was stuck , yah pretty much, so I took a look all around me, to see this scientific community and how it functions…. Well let me call it as I see it, we are sopuse to be at work at 8:00am , some people show up at 9:30am , the daily ritual seems to be :-

1-      Read the paper and have a cup of coffee.

2-      Order breakfast from any restaurant.

3-      Stopover other coworkers to exchange gossip while waiting for the food to arrive.

4-      Eat on the lab bench and plot and spread rumors about other co-workers, discriminating them based on race and religious beliefs.

5-      Take a quick look at some samples (not more than 3-5 min each) and make a general assessment of No. and types that you’re seeing and chart it down ( it don’t matter if your right or wrong, no one has the scientific background or the decency to check if it’s right or wrong so what the hell).

6-      Look busy when the boss passes by  if he/she passes by mistake , and it’s probably because she/he lost his or her way and ventured towards the laboratories, then leave (we are suppose to leave at 1:45pm but some people leave at 12:00pm).

For honesties sake not all of them are that bad there are 2 other people that actually leave when they are suppose to.

When I talked to the boss about me not being the right person to do this particular job, I found out from aware meeting that for the past 3 years she/he was completely oblivious of what people do in the lab!

So not to keep going on about it, this is the reality of the EPA in some countries, unfortunately countries like my country.