Tuesday, May 4, 2010

You Are Excused?

Hypothetical situation:

You are a PI and have hired a technician (female). Your lab's research occasionally requires work after hours and on weekends to monitor experiments or to complete critical analyses. After a few months, the new technician expresses fear at working in a nearly deserted building and asks to be excused from such work. The security at your workplace is not great, but there have never been any "incidents".  You have other staff who routinely perform after-hours research.  Are you obligated to agree to the new technician's personal preferences?

What do you think? Express your overall decision in the poll (for results, see bottom of page).  I'll provide my thoughts on the issue later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Was this in her job description?
Is there a campus pickup service (we have that at the campus I work, security will pick up at the lab after hours and walk the person to the car)?
The question is whether it really is a security question, or a way out of having to work after hours.