This was told to me by my sister, so the details of the conversation are paraphrased, not exact.

There’s currently a road closure near our house, as they’re digging up the road to install utilities for a new emergency services station. It’s not too much of a hassle to go around – just go up one road and down another – but there’s absolutely no way you could get through, as again, the road has been dug up.

As they’re walking the dog one evening, my dad and sister see someone get to the roundabout where the road is closed off (well in advance of the actual hole) and drive right past the sign and the road cones, onto the closed section. Dad gestures for the driver to roll down the window.

Dad: “The road’s closed; you can’t go that way.”

Driver: “I know, I can read!”

Dad was apparently thinking at this point that clearly she couldn’t, given she’d driven past a sign saying the road was closed, but anyhow…

Driver: “I live around here; I’ll turn off before I get to the hole in the road!”

There are no turn-offs before the hole, which is why the road was closed at that point.

At this point, the driver pulls away and heads down the closed road, where my dad and sister got to watch her stop at the concrete barriers placed in front of the hole, and then inevitably turn around and come back the other way.

I work at a local science centre. It’s a not-for-profit organisation, and a lot of tourists come in. We have a brand new exhibit space that costs extra to enter. It’s pretty cool in there, and it’s very popular with the tourists who come from all over the state to see it.

We get pretty slammed when it’s busy. We present shows in the exhibit space and run three sessions a day. We can only seat about forty to fifty people in there as a maximum, and the tickets can sell out pretty quickly. Some people get really cranky about the unavailability of tickets when they just expect to be able to walk in through the door five minutes before the session starts and get tickets even though people have been booking online and calling us up for days beforehand.

An older lady walks in with her family. The second session of the day is about to start, but it’s completely booked out.

Me: “Hi! How are you today?”

Customer: “Hello, my family and I would like tickets to the 1:00 pm exhibit session.”

Me: “Oh, I see. I’m afraid we have sold out all of our tickets for that session; however, I do have many tickets available for the 3:00 pm session!”

The customer stares at me blankly.

Customer: “Oh, really? That’s so disappointing. We’ve literally come all this way just to see the exhibit show. Can you just fit us in there?”

Me: “I’m afraid we only have enough room in there for a certain number of people, and we have sold all of our available tickets for that session. If you want to catch the 3:00 pm session, we still have lots of stuff to do around our centre while you wait.”

The customer looks annoyed and disappointed.

Customer: “So, there’s nothing you can do? You can’t fit us in? We came here just for this. I don’t understand why we can’t just join that session.”

She’s looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to bend the rules for her.

Me: “I’m very sorry, but we do have a limit on the number of tickets that we sell because it is a small, dark space and we want all of our customers to be safe in there.”

Customer: “Don’t worry about it. We don’t want to wait that long. These tickets should have been available to us.”

They walked out the door, and I was left wondering where the f*** people get their entitlement from. They seriously act like they’re the only family coming to visit us, and they should be able to get whatever they want.

I worked at one of the smaller government departments for about three years before fully transitioning to female. After my driver’s license was updated, my manager told me to complete a form so that my employment record was updated.

There wasn’t a spot on the form to update your gender, so I completed the “Other” field and sent it off. A few days later, I got this phone call.

Me: “Good morning, [My Name] speaking.”

Employee: “Good morning. I’m [Employee] from Human Resources. I’ve got a form from you about updating your records and just needed to clarify some things with you. Is this a good time to speak?”

Me: “Yes, it’s my work-from-home day and I’ve no meetings. Go ahead.”

Employee: “Great. So, I can see that you’ve said you need to change your gender. I need to check if that’s correct, or if that was an error.”

Now, I was nervous and defensive.

Me: “No, that’s correct. My driver’s license was updated, and it needs to match my legal records, and—”

Employee: “Hey, it’s okay. That’s all fine, then. I just need to make sure it’s not a misunderstanding or if you really want us to do something else. It looks like you want us to change your record to female, yes?”

Me: “Yes. Yes, I meant to do that. I’m sorry, I’m just used to…”

Employee: *Quieter* “Do you wanna push the button?”

Me: “…sorry?”

Employee: “I’m not meant to do this, but I can share my screen with your desktop, and you can move the mouse if I do that. We can both see your record — no one else’s. I’ve made the change, but I haven’t put it through yet. Do you want to push the confirm button and make it official?”

Me: “Do you usually offer this to people?”

Employee: “No, but I thought you might like to be able to say you officially changed and made the government change it all on your own.”

I pushed the button!

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My office tests its fire alarm systems every fortnight during office hours. I’ve never met our lead fire warden, but I love him.

Intercom: “Good afternoon. In five minutes, we will be conducting a test of the fire alarm evacuation system. As this is only a test, please stay in your seats. We are testing the alarm only today, so please stay where you are unless you have a headache and need to get a coffee right this minute.”

Intercom: “We are now testing the fire alarm evacuation system. At the first tone, you would pack up your belongings, secure sensitive materials, and prepare to evacuate.”

Intercom: “At the second tone, you would evacuate immediately. At the sound of this tone, you would evacuate to the assembly area and listen to the fire wardens for further instructions. Remember that upon reaching the assembly area, you need to locate your manager and inform them that you are there, or we will assume you are burning to death.”

Intercom: “At the sound of the third tone, it means that Santa Claus has entered the building. When you hear these jingling bells, you should hang your stocking over your cubicle and take a nap under your desk. We haven’t used this alarm yet, but I continue to hope!”

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.