Get 'em! Be sure that the lessons you are about teach are never forgotten. Make them count!

Chall it might be a union mandated smoke break?  Granted I can't ask her yet because she doesn't show up until almost 11 am.

How does she get away with showing up at 11? That's insane!

I show up around 10 usually. You get your work done here; my boss is way too busy to care about "face time."

Word. I don't give a fuck when people are in, as long as their hours overlap to some degree with mine and they get their work done. If they don't, we have a talk and fix the issue.

Wait. Wait. Why are you afraid of white food??

Our boss kind of wants us in the lab from 10-5, mainly in case he needs us for something, but he isn't a face time dude.  But this kid is fucking noobie who still doesn't know their head from a hole in the ground.  I don't care when she comes in, WHEN she can actually work independently but she is nowhere near close to that.  She requires constant guidance and runs into problems all the times.  So she needs a ton of hand holding but isn't here when the rest of the lab is and I'm not changing my schedule to suit her.  The sad thing is that she has an MS degree in a closely related field but still can't comprehend a simple protocol.  She showed me a western blot last week and asked pointed to like lane 10 of the gel and asked if that was her marker ladder?  I looked at her like she just told me the fucking world was flat.  The week before she spilled marker ladder into the adjacent lane and thought it was her actual sample.  This time she tried to get me to believe that the marker ladder hopped 9 fucking lanes and took on a completely different banding pattern.  I need a drink...

As far as my aversion to white foods, I had a friend in high school eat a restaurant that was later on the news that night for a waiter doing something awful to the white gravy.  Nuff said.

Yep, I'd definitely pay good money to see Tideliar lose it at a grad student! I'd pay more if you guaranteed tears!

People in my grad lab used to come in around 10-11, a couple of us were in around 9, but my bosses would rock up at midday and then stay til late at night and were renowned for asking you to do some last minute experiment or want to have a meeting as you were about to leave, so coming in early was always a bad idea.  In my postdoc lab people get in much earlier (maybe a US vs UK thing?), but there's still the odd 11am straggler.

Maybe it's time to ask GRM's mom what to do about her. Maybe mom will have a few nuggets of wisdom!

Exactly the approach I would take to this. Problem with this approach (and I saw it happen one of the 6th year grad students here) is that then said grad student can whine to boss man that "No one is helping me.  It's not my fault that I haven't gotten anything done..."  But f-it.  Who cares.

You would think, too, that if someone is helping you with an experiment or showing you the protocol you would do everything short of kissing their a$$ to make sure the person is happy.  They are doing you a favor!  A little appreciation, consideration and gratitude goes a hell of a long way in my book.

As an aside- I take it if you prepared the white food your all OK with it then..:-)

Why did the comments get all wonky again?

Oh, I'll get this thing fixed for good...don't you worry.

GR:

The more I think about it, the more I think the grad student has the hots for you. The situation has all the classic mating ritual signs. By throwing your stuff on the floor so she can neatly arrange hers on your desk she's sending the dual messages of "When we're hitched I'll let you leave your junk strewn all over the place" (which is a lie) and "Look, I can make a nice place for us" (potentially also a lie). Your messed up lab station? "Look, we can do stuff together" coupled with the subtext "But you get to pick up the pieces afterwards." Missing power pack, used up antibody and used pipettes? The classic "What's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine."

Dude, you're toast. Best start ring shopping and just get it over with. Tideliar and I will get started planning the bachelor party.

We were all noobies once although this one seems to be a particularly bad one.  Even the good ones add extra work though because you have to constantly be checking up on them and redo what they do as well as your own work.

Nail -> Head

bang on mate. Now, strippers and beer, or beer and strippers?