hi all - just wanted to see if someone else is going though the same...basically, i have had very back luck with lab mates. I worked 3 years as a technician before my PhD, and when i was trying to help them out in anything (even not doing my own job), they have been always quite mean to me, even spreading rumours to the rest of my department. The good side of this is that i have the most incredible supervisor i could ever wish. He is super supportive and always telling me how good I am. Another good news, my lab mates left before christmas, therefore i could finally breath. A new person came into my lab recently, and i was very excited. However, it did not turn as good as i thought. She is a nice person, and we get along. But I started to see that she only works when my supervisor tells her what to do. She has a double face with him. When he is not there, she doesn't have any interest for the project and goes away, or lies to me about where she is (and then i caught her having 4 hours long coffees). But in front of my supervisor she pretends to be a super worker, and she is cocky about it. Also she is experienced in something that i am not, and she makes that clear. She also patronises me for being a student. My supervisor has been suspicious about her a couple of times, but now every time she has a good result with the minimum effort, my supervisor praises her a lot. He really cares about the projects, and i think sometimes he is just happy things are working. My PhD at the moment is not working at all, and i feel very insecure about my experiments. I always work a lot, even on weekends, and makes me sad these type of people can be praised, when people who work super hard are often not valued enough. Any recommendations?

Take a break. Working weekends quickly leads to burnout and you end up under perform. I know it is tough but I also had to learn the hard way, that hard work does not always equal results. You might be under preforming due to the burnout and a break might improve your results.

Also I wouldn't judge your lab mate that much, we all work to different schedules. It is not your job to report how much time she is in the lab. If you are getting on well don't ruin by getting involved.

Your core issue here is your lack of progress in your PhD but instead of focussing purely on fixing this you are obsessing over what your colleague is doing. This has absolutely nothing to do with you whatsoever and I would back away from this immediately before it starts to affect your work and your health. I am sensing some jealousy and some resentment in your post. Really this is neither appropriate nor helpful to you. If your PhD was working fine I am pretty sure you wouldn't care how your colleague was behaving.

Leave your colleague alone. You have more important issues to deal with. If working weekends isn't helping, talk to your supervisor. That is what they are there for and this is when you find out how good they really are. Once your PhD starts working again you'll find your colleague's behaviour won't matter to you.

I agree with the above comments 100%! Are you far from finishing your PhD? Does their project impact on yours ?

Also, what is it about your lab environment that is “toxic” ? It seems ok to me at the moment now the other student have left, but maybe there’s something else worrying you? Hope you get to take a break soon

Glad to be of help.
When things go wrong it can be difficult to avoid getting sidetracked by stuff like this.
You have the right idea of taking a break to re-think how to proceed.
Good luck with it.