Microscope regulation

Scientists are stereotypically not good communicators. Having spent the years prior to my PhD in a laboratory when good communication was encouraged, I have perhaps forgotten this key lesson. Until today.

Here are several laboratory 'rules' that demonstrate this poor communication:

1. No microscope booking system. Instead, you are required to ask all the members of the lab every week to find out when everyone else is planning to use it. Tough titties if your experiment has taken several weeks to prepare and there's a clash with someone else.

2. A microscope booking system that only the 'senior' members of the laboratory are allowed to access. Supposedly this is to stop us minions from breaking the microscope by using it unaccompanied. However, as the supervisor is unlikely to accompany each minion during their imaging session, the minion is forced to use the microscope alone anyway. Surely logic dictates that regulating the booking system is thus pointless.

3. Previous failed attempts at instigating an 'unregulated' microscope booking system have failed. If I'm the only one using it, then there's still going to be a clash.

4. No interaction between supervisor and student. Regular updates to the microscope and its software go unannounced and undiscovered until attempting to use in those crucial moments of data collection.

5. Limited interaction between supervisor and student is only to tell the student off for using the microscope incorrectly. In both circumstances, I claim innocence...

The accumulative effect of all these occurring at the same time, leads to forced eviction from the microscope during a successful data collection, as the microscope is needed for undergraduate teaching purposes. A time slot known well in advance of the semester even commencing.

The lesson is clear: good communication is vital. But I'm not the research technician in this laboratory and it's not my place to stand up and say 'THIS IS NOT WORKING'. However, in the absence of a clear leader who reduces these mountainous problems back into the molehills that they really should be, and a lack of respect between student and supervisor...

What would you do?