Inside Scoop: Lab Edition
The lab thing might kill me at this point. A stroke or something.
Let me fill you in.
The Coalition (link here) I’m trying to build is going very slowly. And maybe badly. It’s hard to tell when you don’t really trust anyone in the industry anymore.
But let me set the stage for the last few days of writing.
First there’s the issue of the bank account. Cannabis is federally illegal (Xanax is legal, Alcohol - legal, Nicotine - LEGAL, NFT’s - yup, legal), which means that banks, jobs — pretty much anyone — has a right to turn cannabis users away because it’s a federal crime. It’s even worse if you’re an honest one like me who registered for the state as a patient - I’ve ADMITTED to a federal crime. Ends up banks don’t like working with criminals much, unless they are the white collar / politician sort. Straight up murderers like tobacco companies can have a bank account, but someone who wants cannabis testing to be clean and fair can’t.
Then, there’s also the fact that the labs largely don’t respond when I send them updates. And when they do, it’s to complain this might cost them money. It ends up, that labs are expensive. I know this is shocking, but that means that labs are often owned by very privileged people. People who don’t realize that what they aren’t privileged to is my time.
A couple of weeks ago, the Coalition’s main proponent has decided we should try and boost awareness by buying an ad. He’s buying the ad - I can’t as an organization because while I exist as an organization, I don’t actually have ‘buying power’ (I’m not impoverished yet, but I often run in the red these inflated days.) I did, however, handle sending the email to the partner labs and ask them to get back to me with their approval to run the ad with their logo on it as a partner lab.
The situation is a bit triggery. I’ve been trying to put together something about what happens when your skills lie close to trauma (especially if you’ve been re-traumatized at your job), and project management skills, seeking approval, and dealing with arrogant bastard’s bullshit are skills that lie really close to the traumatic events for me at UPMC.
But, I thought, nah, I got this, I gotta do this, and forged ahead anyway.
Oh, friends.
That day was the day that I posted Struggling to Word, and I mentioned that ‘no one would be quoted. I mentioned I asked for quotes and got nothing but static. It’s been a theme. I write stuff, send it out, ask questions, hear nothing.
Once I send the email about about the ad, just a bit later that day (so at least I didn’t have the trauma of a long wait), I get an email from a director that implied that I’ve been benefitting from this situation. This person has been insinuating this all along, and too boot, his numbers in the ‘round robin’ experiment were high. At some point my rage just went supernova over it and I wrote a scathing email - that I never ended up sending.
That’s been an issue with this one. That kind of politeness through gritted teeth? Absolutely not something I’m interested in doing, especially not at the rate I’ve seen ‘return’ on this lab story - which is really not good. So not only is this not paying well, nor do I think it will ever - I dread having to do anything with it, every time that I have to interact with it.
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