Five years ago, a chemist began his journey at a biotech firm, eager to make a difference in the field of medicinal chemistry. In a facility that lacked a dedicated compound management team, it fell to the chemists to manage their own compounds. This meant synthesizing compounds, labeling them, and delivering them to assay chemists for testing. It was straightforward work, or it should have been.
One day, amidst the hustle and bustle of the lab, the chemist made a mistake. He accidentally mislabeled a handful of compounds, which threw a wrench into the testing results. It was an honest error, one that anyone could make. However, instead of addressing the issue directly with him, a particular assay chemist decided to escalate matters. This colleague sent an email to both his supervisor and the chemist’s boss, expressing his discontent and calling the situation unprofessional.
What the assay chemist didn’t realize was that the chemist had a solid rapport with both bosses, who promptly forwarded the email to him. They assured him that mistakes happen and advised him to be cautious. It was a relief, but it also sparked a sense of mischief in the chemist. Rather than letting the matter slide, he decided to respond in a way that was both clever and somewhat petty.
He conceived a “foolproof” labeling system that simultaneously protected him from future accusations and added a significant burden to the assay chemist’s workload. Instead of providing the usual identifier code and structural details on the vials, he switched to a system that utilized barcodes. Each compound was placed in a barcoded vial, and the chemist meticulously created an Excel sheet that linked each barcode to its corresponding compound.
This new system, while ostensibly more organized, had a major flaw: it required the assay chemist to scan each vial with a barcode reader. Then he had to sift through the Excel sheet to figure out what each compound was, taking an additional five to ten minutes per vial. When the chemist debuted the new system with a batch of 200 compounds, he couldn’t help but chuckle when he saw the assay chemist asking in their company Slack channel if anyone had a barcode reader available.
The climax came when the assay chemist, overwhelmed by the new task, approached the chemist and asked if they could revert back to the old labeling method. The chemist, with a polite smile, declined. His supervisors were thrilled with the changes, finding it easier to track everything with the barcodes. For a glorious three months, the assay chemist struggled with the cumbersome new process, while the chemist enjoyed a quiet satisfaction in his little act of revenge.
Eventually, the company expanded and hired a compound management group, rendering the chemist’s barcode system unnecessary. But for those few months, the chemist reveled in his small victory over an unwarranted attack on his professionalism. It wasn’t just about the labels; it was about standing his ground and finding a way to ensure his work was treated with the respect it deserved.
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