I am doing a computer science degree at university. We have a group work project which is set out in two stages. Part A involves making an application and writing a report about it. For Part B, we get feedback from Part A and have to improve upon it.

There is a group contribution report at the end where each student puts in how much they think each member of the group has done.

I am in a randomly selected group with four others. We each pick a part of the work that we want to do.

I am apparently the group’s most confident coder, so I assign myself about half of the code. I finish up my work in about the first three weeks and work on other projects I have for other modules.

Then, soon after I finish my work, the others ask me if I can do their parts of the code, too. I initially protest, as I have my other coursework due, but eventually, I say fine, so long as it is noted in the group contribution report that they all agreed to this. I sweat it out over the next three weeks or so alongside my other coursework.

I contact my module organiser, explaining that I have done half the work.

Module Organiser: “If people in your group aren’t pulling their weight, I suggest you leave the group, take your code with you, and do the report.”

That would mean I would need to work flat-out to produce the report and probably would mess it up. I don’t want that. The deadline is in about a week. And I honestly can’t be a**ed.

Then, I get asked to do some of the report, too, because they don’t understand how the code worked. By this point, I feel pretty used by them, but I don’t really mind so long as I get the marks.

All in all, I work out that I have done the workload of three people. There is talk amongst the others of all writing that we each contributed 20% of the workload to “make us look better as a team.” I flatly refuse. They explode, calling me every name under the sun, swearing at me, telling me to “f*** off.”

I send off my contribution report with 60% listed for myself and 10% each for the rest. And I think that is that.

My module organiser then emails me.

Module Organiser: “Do you have any proof of your contribution to this project? Your fellow group members have put you down for 0% and given themselves 25% each.”

I email him back linking him to the program I used to share the code with the team, which shows who made changes to the code, proving that I did all of it. And thankfully, we did the whole report on Google Drive, so I can also see the history on that document and send him screenshots of all the alterations that I personally made, proving that I wrote about 20% of the report.

He adds it all up and makes a special exception for my group, saying he will give me the most credit for the work.

I think I end up with a 65% and they all get 11% for the whole coursework Part A. They would need 69% to even pass the module.

It turns out that I f***ed up a bit on the code, only getting about 50% of the marks with a massive issue in it, but my report sections were near perfect — just spelling mistakes, formatting, etc. There were a few glaring mistakes from the report that my groupmates had written, but other than that, it was not bad.

When the other members of my group find out their marks, they start calling me up and emailing me and messaging me almost for about three hours. Apparently, my module organiser had sent an email explaining that they had lied, and he had proof of it, so he had corrected the marks accordingly.

When I get back to my phone, I screenshot all the messages they sent and record all the voicemails, including the ones they had sent previously, featuring multiple occasions where everyone in the group told me to “f*** off.”

And f*** off I do. I send all these voicemails and screenshots to my module organiser via email.

Me: “I would like to leave my group. I understand that it is more work for me, but I’d rather not deal with that.”

The organiser agrees and escalates the messages to someone higher up.

Me: “I would like to take all of my code with me and remove their access to it. Is that allowed?”

Module Organiser: “That’s fine. It’s your work, and since you are no longer in their group, the others cannot submit it.”

I fix the error in the code in about two weeks. Then, I do the whole report from scratch almost.

I then get messages from the group during the last few days of the assignment.

Group Member #1: “Please come back! We really need you.”

Group Member #2: “We will literally pay you to come back and help us.”

I screenshot the messages and send them to the module organiser, just to let him know what is happening, and then I just ignore them.

I end up submitting two weeks early for the deadline and get 100% on the whole of Part B, which is basically unheard at university, especially by yourself for group work.

Later that day, I get an email from a plagiarism and collusion officer — not someone you ever want to get an email from. Basically, it says that I’m being summoned to a hearing, as an external body looked at both the coursework I did by myself and the coursework my old group did, and they thought it was very similar. I get the whole project that my group handed in and my own back as evidence so I can look and prepare my answers to their questions.

I email my module organiser to ask if he supports me in this, because basically, in these situations they can punish all parties involved or one party — never nobody. He says that, yes, he supports me in this. Perfect.

I prepare for this meeting by going through the hundreds of commits I have made while they had access to find the one that is most similar. I find a perfect match — zero differences, not even a single character — through the thousands of lines of code.

And then, I go to the meeting, which is held over video chat. The VP of computing is there — a guy who could basically do whatever the h*** he wants to us. My old group is asked to explain why this has happened, and they go on about how they did all of the work by themselves, blah, blah, blah. You get the point. This goes on for about ten minutes.

Then, I am asked to present my argument.

Me: “Can I share my screen?”

VP: *Puzzled* “Yeah… Okay…”

Apparently, some of the people in the meeting weren’t aware that I’d worked with the group before. I show all the screenshots I took, including them basically begging for me to come back, and offering money. And as if this wasn’t enough to convince them, I then download a fresh version of what they submitted, and a fresh version of one of my commits on the sharing program, and I run it through a trusted comparison software. I narrate this to explain what I am doing just to be clear. It takes a while, but it comes up, as I knew it would, with zero differences.

Everyone is stunned. One of the group members utters, “But…”

I just laugh. And I am quickly asked to hang up as I am no longer involved.

It turned out that they had cloned one of my commits and still had a copy on their laptop when I blocked their access. They were not able to fix it at all, so they just submitted it and hoped for the best.

I found out through a mutual friend that they failed the whole module; they got a zero for Part B, giving them just 5.5% overall for the module. You need 40% to pass. Therefore, they would have to retake the module over the summer, costing everyone in the group their placement year jobs. After all, who wants someone who failed a module so badly and who was intellectually dishonest working for them? This meant that they all lost out on being paid around 20k each for the year’s work, which goes a long way for a uni student.

I happily got mine.

I have been noticing a lot of minor and odd occurrences in the car park that my garden backs up to. It’s little things, like my valve cap covers going missing, toys left in the road, my bin disappearing, drinks and rubbish left all over and on the cars, etc.

It’s annoying but nothing major, so I chalk it up to the new family that just moved in and hope it will sort itself out.

Eventually, I set up a couple of cameras and unsurprisingly see the new family’s kids messing with cars, throwing rubbish around, etc.

One day, I find a football in my garden. I check the cameras and see that the kids have been kicking the ball against my fence and actually other people’s cars! The ball goes over my fence, and then they actually try to come into my garden — thankfully it’s locked — and give up. I’m pretty annoyed, so a few days later when their father arrives at my door, I am ready for him.

Father: “I’m very sorry, but my kids kicked their ball into your garden. Could I have it back?”

Me: “No.”

Father: “Please, I am asking as they did it only by accident. It was their present.”

Me: “No. You see, I put up cameras. And what do I see? Your children damaging cars, throwing rubbish around, and then trying to get into my garden. You can have your ball back when you promise to actually supervise your children and they apologise.”

He disappeared without saying a word.

On reflection, it occurred to me that I had no right to keep the ball, and I felt pretty bad. I figured I would throw it back over the fence after a day or two.

It was a surprise to see the police at my door the next day. I let them in and confirmed that I would return the ball, but I also showed them the camera footage. They took particular interest in the cars the kids were interfering with and they visited each of the houses.

It turned out that no one wanted to take the issue further, but they did speak with the father to inform him of what could have happened, and how he would be responsible for any damage his children caused.

In the end, he stopped letting the kids play unsupervised in the car park. Hopefully, he didn’t just set them loose on another neighbourhood.

I work in the games department at an amusement park. My “area” is the children’s area. I am working the basketball game and I am doing callouts to various guests. I decide to call out to a boy that looks about ten or eleven. The boy has, who I assume to be, an older sister with him.

Me: “You there, with the red and black NBA shirt. You look like you would like to give my game here a shot!”

The boy looks at me for a moment before shrugging and walking over.

Boy: “Can I get a free shot?”

This is a common question.

Me: “No, but if you have two dollars on your game card, you can get one ball. If you have five, three balls you can shoot. Ten bucks will get you seven.”

The boy looks down at his game card while one of my coworkers enters the game to help me run it while we wait for our third to come back from storage with our supervisor.

Boy: “There’s no way I can get a free ball?”

Me: “Sorry, but no.”

Boy: “B****.”

After this, the boy turns and walks away. My coworker walks over and asks what’s wrong as she was able to hear what I was saying, but not what the boy was saying.

Coworker: “You good?”

Me: “I just got called a b**** for the third time today.”

Coworker: “That has to be a record.”

Later, when my supervisor is walking with me back to the office, she asks me about what happened earlier. I guess my coworker told her. We see the boy and I point him out to her. He proceeds to run to his group, which consists of two more females besides the one I originally saw him with.

Supervisor: “If you ever see that kid again and I’m working, call me. That same kid called [Coworker] and [Area Manager] b****es, as well.”

Due to the health situation, as well as personal preference, I wear a mask any time I leave my home. Nobody in the area has the same mask, and we’re in a small town, so people often recognize me. This morning as I am grabbing my morning supplies at the gas station down the street, a customer recognizes me.

Customer: “You, help me find these things.”

Me: “I don’t work here.”

Customer: “I know. I need help.”

This exchange went on for a few moments, her getting more and more insistent about me being the person to help her. The woman even tried to block me in the store! Now, I am generally a helpful and pleasant person… at least until I am treated with disrespect. The moment she blocked me in, I flipped on her and warned her that I would remove her by force if necessary.

Luckily, she ended up moving and I left the store in a rush to her threats of calling my manager.

Whoever you are, lady, I hope you get the help you need, but I don’t work everywhere and I’m not licensed to get you mental help.

At least my coworkers and boss got a funny Entitled Woman in the Wild story when I finally did get in.

My family rents a large house for a week on Cape Cod to celebrate my grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday. There are about fourteen of us staying here. I, as the oldest of my grandfather’s grandchildren by far, am the one looking after my younger cousins the most, but I don’t really mind, since most of the kids pair up quite nicely age-wise with one of their cousins.

One day, as a day trip, I take my aunt’s new ten-year-old stepson — [Cousin #1] — and my seven-year-old cousin — [Cousin #2] — to the zoo, which is about an hour away. They are surprisingly well-behaved so the drives there and back are quite uneventful.

It is worth noting here that [Cousin #2] was born with several disabilities, including severe lazy eye, missing fingers, and limited use of one leg. She cannot take more than a few steps at a time and usually prefers to use forearm crutches, as she was on that day.

We get to the zoo and spend most of the day there. We pick up some cheeseburgers from a drive-thru on the way to eat at lunch. We sit down in a quiet area away from the crowds to eat lunch.

As we are eating, an old lady who is there with what appear to be her toddler grandchildren walks over to us. She begins talking to [Cousin #2], saying quite rude things about how little children shouldn’t be wearing glasses, how her hair is too long to be becoming for a little girl, and how her very pale complexion indicates she ought to go outside more.

Then, she notices my cousin’s crutches, which she has propped up against the bench right next to her, and the obvious brace on her leg.

Woman: “You should stop eating that burger, dearie. Otherwise, you’ll be too heavy to use your crutches.”

Perhaps it is the really calm way in which she says it, or perhaps it’s that [Cousin #2] is really absent-minded, but she very politely and enthusiastically says:

Cousin #2: “Actually, I have a really high metabolism. That means that I eat a lot of food just to keep my body warm. My mom says that when I become a teenager I’ll probably be eating double what she eats.”

The woman looks taken aback, which the kids seem to interpret as confusion.

Cousin #1: “No, metabolism is a real thing. My dad says it’s not fair because I eat like two teenage boys and never gain weight and he eats like a normal man and is kinda fat.”

The woman doesn’t seem to have noticed [Cousin #1] up until this point. She looks at him, a short, skinny black kid, and then at [Cousin #2] and me, very pale kids with similar shades of blond hair and rather similar faces. About the only thing we have in common appearance-wise with [Cousin #1] is that his glasses looked quite similar to [Cousin #2]’s. The old woman turns to [Cousin #1].

Woman: “Are you all right, dearie? Have you been kidnapped by this man? I’ll call for help, shall I?”

Cousin #1: “No, I’m their step-cousin. My dad married their aunt.”

[Cousin #2] raises her hand, which is missing a few fingers and has a rather unconventional shape, and points at [Cousin #1].

Cousin #2: “Yeah, he’s our step-cousin, but we usually call him just our cousin because…”

She trailed off as she saw the old woman’s eyes grow wide at the sight of my cousin’s hand. The old woman picked up the toddlers and walked off in a hurry. That did hurt my cousin a bit, but after some ice cream, she seemed to have gotten over it.

Indeed, that evening after dinner, she confided in me that she had a new idea for her Halloween costume. “I’m gonna be a pirate,” she said, “because if my normal hand scares adults away already, then if I get a hook hand, I can scare all the adults! Then, my friends and I will get all the candy!” She then attempted her scariest evil laugh, which would have been more threatening if she weren’t wearing glasses, her mouth had all its teeth in it, and she wasn’t giggling while she did it.