I cried at work today.. only a little. I am finding the scattered work really overwhelming. I like concrete jobs, and she tends to say I know what to do.. or to fix problems with something without explaining the problems. It does help a little to have someone else there. They new guy is very nice. He is very hard working, which is good but a little annoying.. I get there and he seems to tackle everything on the to-do list. She's made us a list and we have to initial what we did. I ended up writing in extra stuff that I did because it looked like I did almost nothing

Anyway, the crying. My bosses (above her) are crazy. The main boss comes in and says "What is that red box doing on all those blue boxes" (or something very close). We all look. The order I unpacked recently involved at least 30 boxes of PCR racks, at least 10 boxes of pipette tips, and some other stuff. I put every type of plate in the shelf under one table. It wasn't exact, but each color of plate was together (red, green, blue, clear, and I think yellow) but the stacks were a bit mixed to save space. I also put 2 other types there that I guess she thinks should be somewhere else.. which I might have known if I really knew what they were for (I haven't used them). All the pipette tips were together but not perfectly arranged.

Anyway, her boss says that and she goes off on us saying nothing is organized and it's all hodge-podge and our task is to organize it. We start. The new guy does say that it's already done by color. He was really nice actually. I started crying at some point because i put away a ton of shit by myself (this includes opening and unpacking the boxes and checking the packing slip and then putting them away). I think I did a decent job. Boxes were neatly stacked except the one box. The issue was that certain items were in completely different size/style of boxes, so why is it unreasonable to have an odd box out? It matched nothing else. We got it all organized better because it helps to have a 2nd person.

I'm scared of course because we're supposed to have another talk Friday about how I'm doing. Yesterday she said we did a good job. Today was a lot of little things.
1. I saw her typing the to-do list so I sat down for a minute (it wasn't even 9am yet) to see it when she printed it. She said I should start without being told
2. We are doing maintenance/setup on a machine. She asks if I've primed it. I said yes. She asked stuff about if I was waiting for the new guy or basically wasting time. I say I was waiting for the equipment to be ready, and I primed it as soon as it was. I had sent the new guy off to do something and stayed at the machine.
3. She commented on where we should or shouldn't be using our laptops. Of course, we are using our laptops because the damn lab has nowhere for use to work. She tells me I shouldn't wear my lab coat out of the lab. I shouldn't take my "lunch" by sitting in lab (I haven't eaten at work this week). I set my keys and phone on the counter. The keys were out so I could use my flashdrive.. the phone because I was reading a work email. But I see her point.
4. She left me to fix all the problems with the program I made for a machine. I asked her and tried to get her to narrow down what "problems" she meant because she said there were many. Many apparently includes one significant problem with equipment, but she mentioned nothing else.
I kind of sort out the problem but there are other problems. I tell her this around 6pm because I have been ignoring time and trying to finish the test. She asks if I emailed anyone and says she'll call tech support tomorrow. It was 6 and I was supposed to go home. I was more than willing to deal with it then.
Tomorrow she told me to take a day off. I normally work until 1pm Thursdays and go to therapy. She says she's going to be busy all morning with something so she can't train us. So it's better I don't come. She says she'll see me Friday. I am really hoping she wouldn't say that if I was going to be fired. She explained to us the hierarchy of employees.. Soon the genetics lab will have her as director, supervisors (not hired yet), and lab techs and lab aides. She doesn't know if we're techs or aides. I'm hoping if I'm not good enough I can manage to be an aide somewhere. It also might be better if I had another supervisor. It's hard to see a student in the lab next to me at school as my boss. I am working on that. I know I need to just listen and figure out how she works things because she clearly thinks differently than I do. I think I should have a supervisor or someone I can ask routine questions of because I've always had lab-mates to ask stupid questions of without being told they were too busy. Or a mentor/professor who if she wasn't with someone would explain at length what to do. Now I'm expected to know it when I really know very little about what this company does.

I am trying very hard to not think about it. Emailing/texting her might make things worse. It's also probably inappropriate to email my boss about this.