Life Science Tools of the Trade

I went on a training day (”arrghh! We wants a training day!” - obligatory obscure reference for the Brits) last week. I was one of the first to arrive, and was intrigued to see the course leader placing small, stuffed toys on each of the tables. Most tables only had one but the table I sat at had two - a squeaky chick and a beanie frog.

We were all somewhat bemused and puzzled by these critters, and concluded that they must be part of an ‘ice-breaking’ session early on. But they were never used ‘from the front’, and we were told that at courses some people feel edgy and the presence of cuddly toys to play with relaxes people and gives them something to do when nervous or whatever. We ended up playing a rather vigorous game of catch (Feh. I *hate* American spell chuckers. It’s bad enough that you’ve got us spelling -ize the French way, but now you’re putting ‘u’s after every bloody ‘o’. Noah really screwed you guys up, didn’t he? Get a real dictionary) with the squeaky chick, and I wanted to demonstrate dissection on the (lavender-scented) frog but no one had brought a sharp knife.

That pointless little anecdote beings me nicely onto a flyer that, er, flew into my pigeonhole on Monday.

‘Animal of the Month’ it says. ‘Operon brings fun to your lab!’ it says. And it has a picture of a stuffed mouse peeking out of a pile of coloured eppies, presumably in a manner that’s supposed to make hard-nosed scientists go ‘aaaaaaah’.

Bleh.

A cuddly toy (sounds like the Generation Game) for every order above £100. Are they trying to insult me? Let’s not talk about worthless free gifts for a minute, but the deeper issue here. And that’s bribery. Look at it this way - this lab is publicly funded. The course I was talking about was on how to communicate with the public, which involves explaining the results and implications of our science as well as being accountable. I can see it now, at the next Open Day,

‘Why did you choose Operon as your supplier for oligonucleotides?’

‘Eh, they gave us cuddly toys.’

Doesn’t really work, does it? Doesn’t really tell the public they’re getting value for money.

FFS guys, cut your prices, or give us extra oligos free, or support a post-doc for a week, or something worthwhile. If you want to give us cuddly toys then when we’ve bought the things (based on your quality and price) then send that hunky rep round afterwards with a bag full of vibcuddly toys as a ‘thank you’. We’re getting enough flak from the report that we’re unethical (which itself is bollocks, but that’s another story) without news getting out that we can also be bribed.

And if you must give us cuddly mice or frogs, then a complementary dissection kit would be nice. (Or a digital camera).

Posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 4:13 am Categorized as:General, Suppliers

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