Another biochem faculty member, Lorraine, had also mentioned her open marriage. (“This is not the ‘70s. What are you people thinking?” Ramona muttered.) When Lorraine’s husband asked Ramona to dinner while his wife was traveling outside the country, she wondered, “Does Lorraine expect me to sleep with her husband?” She had heard of some crazy requests being made by senior faculty of their students, post-docs, and even junior faculty. Dogwalking. House painting. Child care. But this was the most outrageous.

     Ramona had experienced bad lab management before. She had once worked in a lab where the female manager barraged her with comments about her appearance. “Your skirts are too short. You should cut your hair. Why don’t you try to look your age?” Ramona discovered that the manager’s husband had left her five years ago for a smart young woman with long hair. But that was hardly an excuse for this harassment. In that same lab the department’s financial manager regularly hit the lab staff up for personal loans. And the department chair, busy hiring his children’s lacrosse coach and girlfriends as data analysts, had no idea, much less oversight, of what occurred in his labs. Ramona finally resigned herself to the fact that personnel, financial, and project management were highly underdeveloped skills in this department. Or perhaps she had unknowingly become a participant in a very bad reality TV show – “Research Lab Survivor.”