Random Rant

So this has nothing to do with books. I just really need to rant because I had a terrible day at work and I have nowhere else to rant.  I guarantee I am likely to lose you in this rant.  Because it's all work shit.

First off, if you didn't know, I work in an environmental lab.  Second, my supervisor, boss and the entire QA (quality assurance) department were not in today for some unknown reason.  For those not familiar with QA in science, they basically exist to make my life harder.  They tell me what I can and can't do, what is acceptable, what's ethical, etc.

So I had this batch of samples.  I processed it and everything (which by the way was a pain in the ass because everything about this entire run was generally fucked up).  I uploaded the sample results to our system to find something was very awry.  I was missing one.  And I had an extra one as well.  One that should not be there.  Confused, I had some of the other analysts check it over with me.  We couldn't figure it out.  I checked the prep department.  The prep tech was not in today.  So I checked for the physical batch she used.  Nothing was in a particular order, and both samples were found in the same box as being prepped. I was even more confused.

Now, it must be said that we are currently short-staffed.  And people called out sick today as well in the prep department.  So I figured (along with the prep supervisor) that nothing would get done tonight.  I sent an email to the project managers explaining the situation without explaining what had exactly happened with the samples.  It was very confusing to write in an email.  Things happened and my email got forwarded to the general manager and he ended up calling the prep supervisor to yell at him.

This of course turned into the prep supervisor yelling at me for not including him in the email chain.  Well what did I do?  I just emailed the project managers to tell them the samples would need to be recollected.  That had nothing to do with his department.

Things went back and forth and we got the prep tech on the phone.  She explained what she thought happened and the prep supervisor came and got me from lunch to fix everything.  I only had ten minutes of lunch.  After dealing with this for four hours already I was really needing a break.

I go to check on the prep batch and see that what she told him was not matching up with what I remembered from Friday night.  You see, I remembered this batch.  That one that was not supposed to be there that was?  She had me remove it because she couldn't find it.  And now she was saying that she prepped it.  But she told me and another analyst she didn't prep it.

So I was again confused about what happened.  Since we had no clear idea about what was going on, my entire department discussed the issue and decided the entire thing needed to be redone.  The prep supervisor disagreed and started yelling at us.  And we tried to explain that since there was an error, we couldn't be sure where it happened.  Then he screamed at me.  I later received an email chain from him and the general manager with him saying he thought certain samples were okay to report.  I tried to politely respond by explaining why I was not comfortable reporting the batch at all.  Well I never heard back from any of them.

And so the decision was made that the only person in the prep department tonight was to reprep everything.  Even though there was certainly no time for him to do so.  He is likely to be working an 18 hour shift today because of everything that got added to his plate today.  All because of one project manager emailing the general manager instead of me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I have had a migraine all day and why I have been seething most of the day.

Sorry this wasn't normal blog content. But I needed to vent somewhere.