Mother, May I (split my cells)?

Yesterday morning, I came into lab and saw that my cells grew like weeds over the weekend and were in desperate need of a split. So, like any independent graduate student, I (gasp) split all 11 of my cell lines. Since we are extraordinarily (borderline insane) plastic-conscious in this lab, I did not make any new dishes from the splits (my PI gets VERY upset if we "waste" plastic and make dishes that you don't actually need -- in this lab, it is quite literally the end of the world if you make an extra dish to ensure you have enough cells for an experiment).

Today, my PI comes in and wants me to set up a new experiment. I tell him it will be a couple of days until I have enough cells regrown because I split them yesterday. Rather than acknowledging that if he talked with a post-doc about this experiment last week, he should have told me last week to set up the cells, he got angry and told me that I should be asking his permission before I split my cells because I may have other experiments to set up ASAP.

WTF? Is this NORMAL? Do most 3 year graduate students need to ask PERMISSION to split confluent cells? When I have an experiment to do, I always am capable of growing my cells accordingly. But, silly me, I need to actually know about the experiment to make sure this happens.

Fine, whatever. He wins. Considering I do my cell culture first thing, I'll now be calling his house at 5:30 every morning with a cell confluency report asking if it is acceptable for me to split my cells. Let's see how long this lasts.