It’s December, and I’ve had to book time off for dental surgery. Normally, the recovery is two or three days, but due to the delightful combo of a tiny mouth, nerves that are about 30% larger than normal, and roots that are 50% longer than normal (which puts the root tips essentially touching the facial nerve along the jawline), the surgeon told me to plan to be out a week minimum.

I’m nervous about dentists anyway, so I am on edge before they even start. Thankfully, they knock me out for it, so I am only vaguely aware at the very end when they are putting the last stitches in.

They move me to a recovery room so I can wake up a bit before going home, and I get a text from my boss. Keep in mind, I’m loopy as heck still.

Boss: “Hey, just to let you know, I’ve calculated the year-end bonuses. It will be added to your final paycheck.”

In my drugged state, I think I have just been fired, and just before Christmas! I panic, of course, and my brain starts going on wild tangents about me not being able to pay my bills, losing my house, etc.

I look at my phone again, and only then do I see the text my boss sent immediately after the first one.

Boss: “You will also be getting a raise, so you will see that on your first January paycheck.”

At the time, all I felt was relief. But once the sedation wore off, I found it hilarious. I told the company VP about it, and he laughed and told me I would never be fired because I know how to do so many aspects of everything in the office besides selling policies and that the office wouldn’t be able to function without me.

It’s definitely nice to be appreciated, but good lord, that’s a lot of pressure!

Dear readers,

In the USA, we’re wrapping up Black History Month, and yesterday was Black Lives Matter Day. This particular day was designated in honor of Trayvon Martin, but it honors all Black people and the pain and injustice they have faced — and still face today — in our society.

While we have made some strides toward equality, we still have a long way to go. For examples of racism and ignorance in our day-to-day lives, we looked no further than our archives, from which we’ve pulled fifteen stories. Let’s take a look at some reminders of how not to behave toward fellow humans in a civilized society!

African-Annoyed – Step one to not being racist: educate yourself!

Acting Like The Hair Apparent – You are never entitled to touch someone else’s hair without their permission!

They Just Want The Change, Not Actual Change – Hits from the comments: “Being Black in America: d***ed if you do and d***ed if you don’t.”

(more…)

I worked at the help desk at a community college computer lab for a few years and encountered all sorts of stupidity; this one stands out above all the rest.

A middle-aged woman walks over to my desk and wants help opening a document she saved on a 3.5-inch floppy the other day. No problem. I follow her to the computer she was using. We get all sorts of problems with people and their disks here, so this is pretty run-of-the-mill. We sit down at her computer, and I open the disk.

It’s blank. Not only is it blank, but it’s a brand-new unformatted blank.

Me: “This is a blank disk; it’s never been used. Are you sure this is the right disk?”

Customer: “Yes, it is; I bought it yesterday. I was in the other lab and they said they were going to erase all those computers that night and I needed to save my work to a disk.”

Me: “Well, this disk is empty. It’s never had anything saved to it. Are you sure you saved it to the disk?”

Customer: “I did! I put the disk in and clicked save.”

Yup, I know what happened now; she never actually saved it to the disk.

Customer: “They must have erased my disk! They said they were going to erase everything on those computers that night, and they erased my disk!”

Me: “Did you leave your disk in those computers overnight?”

Customer: “Of course not! It was in my bag at home! They must have erased it!”

Me: “That’s not physically possible. There is no way they could do anything to your disk when you have it at home in your bag. You must have not properly saved your document to the disk. Would you like me to format this disk and show you how to do it for next time?”

The customer screamed, flipped the keyboard over, and then promptly stormed out.

The most memorable class I took during my university degree was one I took in my first semester. It was held in the largest lecture hall and packed to overflowing because it was a required class for an awful lot of degrees. Unlike most entry-level classes, it had no attendance or participation requirements, the topic was pretty easy, and you didn’t even really need to buy the textbook because there were lots of copies in the library available for a long-term loan, plus the lecturer provided photocopies and slides of the relevant sections. The lectures were recorded and available at the library along with copies of all the slides the lecturer had used. The final exam was open-book, and the tutors provided several years’ worth of past exams to use as study materials.

The class was a TRAP.

If you didn’t go, nobody cared — or even really noticed. If you didn’t hand in assignments, nobody chased them up. There were plenty of ways to catch up on content if you missed lectures, but nobody checked to see if you were using them. After the first few weeks of the semester, the lecture hall no longer had people sitting on the stairs because there weren’t enough seats. By the mid-semester break, it was mostly empty, and there was a Dungeons & Dragons group sitting in the back rows, complete with character sheets, rolling dice, and “I fire a magic missile at the darkness!”-level roleplaying. The left middle section was the territory of a social club that arrived, drank coffee, gossiped, and left without ever taking their notebooks out of their bags.

I missed a lot of lectures because I hated getting up early enough to go to them, but I went to the library at a more convenient time and listened to the recordings. When I came up with a question that hadn’t been answered in the text, I dragged myself to the next lecture and asked it or went to the lecturer’s office hours. He was always fun to talk to and had lots of great stories, so it wasn’t exactly a hardship.

Then, the end of the semester hit. Some students I hadn’t seen in lectures since the very beginning showed up at the library and seemed to be trying to go through all the recordings in the last week or so before exams started, but I think most of the missing were relying on the exam being open-book to get them through.

Well, the final exam was easy, but it was long, and it quickly became apparent that the students who were looking everything up in their textbooks just didn’t have time to finish. 

The final results came out, and the bell curve you expect to see in grades was pushed hard to the left side of the graph, with a spike at the far right. Anyone who’d realised it was time to take responsibility for their own learning and study without being pushed and prompted did well. Everyone who had taken the lack of direction as an excuse to skive off all semester — three-quarters of the class — failed. And because it was a prerequisite class, they had to take it again and pass before they could move on to second-year classes… the ones that, like this class and unlike all the other first-year classes, mostly lacked the tracking and reminders and attendance requirements the students were used to having to keep them on track.

It was a sneaky and effective way to teach people how to direct their own studies and filter out the ones who didn’t get the hint.

I have just rung up this older couple.

Me: “That will be $27.51, please.”

The lady hands me a ten. I wait for a second.

Me: “Ma’am, you only gave me a ten. The total is $27.51.”

She gives me this incredulous look.

Customer: “You want more?!“

She then started grumbling and looking through her purse, eventually pulling out a twenty. We finished the transaction, and they went on their merry way. I just stood there wishing I’d had a witness.