Julie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

When it comes to pet peeves in the lab, I have very few. Just let me do my research in peace, and I will be perfectly content (provided at least one or two of my experiments work every month or so). Today, of course, as if I wasn’t already in a miserably foul mood because of the AWFUL Steelers game last night, I am encountering ALL of my pet peeves this afternoon.

1) Don’t steal things off my bench, and then claim that you weren’t aware that it was mine. It’s fine if you need to borrow my timer because you can’t locate yours, but don’t pull the “I didn’t know it was yours” card when it is labeled, in giant Sharpie letters, with “JULIE.” I am the only Julie in this lab… actually, the only Julie in the research oncology department, so I’m pretty sure that’s good enough proof that it is, indeed, mine.
2) Don’t steal my food. I have one of the crappiest desks in the lab, since it’s actually located in the middle of the lab and not in the hallway like most. As such, I’m forbidden from eating at my desk, keeping a glass of water on my desk, or even keeping a wrapped granola bar in my desk drawer. Therefore, I have to keep my food out in the hallway – where someone else keeps eating it. If you’re hungry, pack your own damn lunch and stop eating mine.
3) Pretty please use TEMED, formaldehyde, acetic acid, and other assorted chemicals in the fume hood. This would be why we have a fume hood. In the previous lab we didn’t, so I didn’t complain since people didn’t want to walk to a different floor just to pull out 200ul of TEMED, but now that we have our own fume hood in our own lab, USE IT. Otherwise, when you drop things and they spill all over, I (and the others in the lab) will get very nauseous from the smells, and I will vomit.
4) AUTOCLAVE YOUR TRASH IN AN AUTOCLAVE BIN. Really people, is this such a difficult concept for anyone outside my own lab to grasp? You have an autoclave trash bag full of pointy pipettes and liquid waste from your tissue culture experiments. If you stick it in a bin (and there are multiple autoclave bins SITTING NEXT TO THE AUTOCLAVE), then when I have to pull it out to put in my own glassware, trash from my lab, etc, the liquids will fall out of the holes caused by the pointy pipettes and pool in the bin. Otherwise, when I pull out the three bags you happened to just toss straight into the autoclave, all your nasty bacteria cultures and cell culture media will spill out all over me, and I will be very, very unhappy. If I knew who you were, or which lab you worked in, I would so give your name to Environmental Health and Safety so you could sit through that boring safety class again and maybe acxtually learn how to autoclave.

Honestly, are these demands that ridiculous? Am I being totally self-centered here in that I would like to make it through one day without having my timer stolen, half of my lunch consumed by someone else, getting physically sick from spilled chemicals, and having an autoclave bag dribble liquid lab waste all down my pants? Is this really too much for which to ask?