Core Facility Hell

There's a core facility on campus with which I have a need-hate relationship. No, love does not enter into this relationship at all. I need them to do Super-Complicated Procedure that I can't do, and I hate them because they keep fucking things up.

How this all works in theory:

1. I spend 2 weeks and use liters of media to generate a sufficient amount of each sample.
2. I submit my precious samples to the core facility (CF).
3. CF takes the samples through a 3-step process.
4. CF sends me the resulting data.

How this works in practice:

1. I spend 2 weeks and use liters of media to generate a sufficient amount of each sample.
2. I submit my precious samples to the core facility (CF).
3. CF does nothing with my samples for several weeks.
4. CF tells me one of their reagents went bad, and 2 out of 4 of my samples were destroyed in Step 1.
5. I start remaking the 2 lost samples.
6. CF tells me an error occurred with one of the remaining samples during Step 2, and although they were able to do Step 3 with it, the resulting dataset is incomplete.
7. I start remaking the third lost sample.
8. No news on my last surviving sample from the first submission.
9. I hear from someone in another lab that CF has a huge backlog in their pipeline, which I guess explains the silence.
10. CF finally sends me data from the last sample. A 25% success rate...woohoo!
11. I submit the 3 newly-prepped replacement samples to CF.
12. CF does nothing with my samples for 2 weeks.
13. CF tells me that 2 of my 3 replacement samples have insufficient material by their quantitation method. They were fine by my quantitation method, which was the same method I used for the first submission, when there was no discrepancy between my measurements and theirs. CF refuses to proceed with these two samples until more material is submitted.
14. I start making supplemental samples for the 2 replacement samples.
15. CF says the third replacement sample is borderline in quantity, and that they can proceed but will have to modify their normal protocol to make it work.
16. I tell CF that since I'm already making more of the first 2 samples, I'll just make more of the third one too since I'd rather they use their normal protocol.
17. CF tells me that oops, they've already begun Step 1 with the third sample so no more material can be added at this point.

In the words of the great Charlie Brown, AAAUUGH!!!