Its just nerve racking to be screwing around on a machine that costs about $800k. To constantly be worrying that any false move and the thing will self destruct or some laser will fall out of alignment and the whole lab will be screwed until the maintenance guy can come around and fix the damn thing.

Plus its in such high demand that ever time I'm ever on the infernal machine I get at least two requests from other people in the lab to see if I need the whole amount of time I have booked, and can they jump on early if they can.

Then the data analysis is mind bogglingly complex and just hurts the brain after only an hour or two of looking at it. The individual scatter properties of different cell populations and different cell makers, and some cells that have various makers that you have to distinguish. Plus you have to hope to any god you choose that you even stained correctly in the first place so that any of this shit can actually make any sense.

I have yet to have a single GOOD day of running flow.