Unfiltered Story #245190

This was around a year ago, I’d gotten stuck with a microbiology professor who was known to give students a tough time. Everyone kind of got an off vibe from her. Somehow my friend and I managed to avoid any conflict throughout the semester, mostly by not being overtly enthusiastic and avoiding interactions wherever possible. But towards the end of the semester, we had to meet her personally to submit some files. It would’ve gone much smoother if she had us all email them, but she complained that our mails flooded her inbox and she’d probably get annoyed and delete them. So she wanted each and every one of us to go to her cabin and give them to her on a pendrive. My friend and I put all of our files on a pen drive which did not have any viruses, we checked.

The next day, we go to her. She pops in the pendrive and a message saying “certain files on this device may not be readable on your device” pops up. She doesn’t even read the pop-up, pulls the pendrive out and gives it back with a solemn expression.

Her : “My dear students, your pendrive has a virus. Didn’t you check??!!” She gives us a look of terror, like we had conspired to delete all her files or something.
Friend: “um no, it doesn’t”
Her : “Didn’t you see the message!!”
Me: “um actually the message was saying that some files can’t be opened, the pendrive doesn’t have a virus”
Her : “please go get your files on another pendrive. Who knows, maybe your pendrive caught a virus because you left it around”
We thought that might’ve been a microbiology joke, but turns out she was dead serious. She thought an electronic device could “catch a virus” by being left around in random places.

Note – we were petty enough to go buy a new pendrive and come back immediately stating it was new and that there was no way this one could’ve caught a virus. She was too shook to say anything XD.