I worked at a cafeteria at my college about thirteen years ago, long before vegan items were very popular. We had several dishes with their names on display.
A girl walked up and pointed at the beef stroganoff.
Girl: “Does this have meat in it?”
Me: “You’re asking if there’s meat in the beef stroganoff?”
Girl: “Yeah! Well, is there or not?”
I was too stunned to do much other than say, “Yes, there’s beef in the beef stroganoff.”
More than a decade ago, I am taking classes for my Master’s Degree. The graduate-level classes are all held on an urban campus of the university, while the undergraduate classes are held on the university’s main residential campus a few miles outside of the urban center.
One semester, I learn that a 7:15 pm class that I am taking will be meeting at the residential campus library three times that semester to use the archive there. I try to talk to the professor about it, because I have a class on the urban campus that ends at 7:00 pm, and it will take fifteen to twenty minutes with traffic just to get near the residential campus, not to mention find parking and walk to the library. When I explain this to the professor I am told:
Professor: “Well, try to get there as soon as you can.”
The evening of the first residential campus class session arrived. I got out of my first class at 7:00 pm, ran to the parking lot, got in my car, and hurriedly pulled out onto the street. As I approached the first traffic light, it turned yellow, but I had time to get through it, so I did not brake. An approaching car, thinking I was going to stop at the yellow light, turned in front of me to make their left, and I crashed into them, ripping off my bumper, setting off my airbags, and totaling my twelve-year-old car.
The next day, I was in pain from being hit by the airbag and had no transportation to get the thirty miles to campus. I emailed the professor whose class I was rushing to, explained that I had been in a car accident, and asked if there was any way to get notes from the session or make up the work somehow. I never received an answer.
My other professors whose classes I was missing while trying to quickly buy a new car were much more understanding, sending me class notes and worksheets to make up for missed attendance.
I was late to the rest of the residential campus meetings for that class, and I did not feel bad about it at all.
I used to work in IT as a student job for my university. We’d fix problems, set up machines and conference rooms, and rent out equipment like loaner laptops and projectors. Sometimes when the projectors and other loaner equipment weren’t really being used, we’d attempt to “advertise” by using one to project something random on the wall of our room.
One year, we decided to start streaming the World Cup on the wall. None of us were really sports fans, let alone soccer fans, but we had a diverse crowd move through, so it wasn’t distracting and it brought people into our office.
On day two or three, we started streaming, and we had a random guy come in all sheepish.
Guy: “Hey, uh, I hear you’re showing the World Cup?”
Me: “Oh, yeah!”
I pointed to the wall.
Guy: “You mind if I sit in for a bit?”
Me: “Nah, go for it.”
He was there for a while. He was a really nice guy and pretty quiet. We had almost forgotten that he was there when, suddenly, one of the event coordinators barged in like a bat out of h***.
Coordinator: “YOU! YOU’RE ON! NOW!”
Guy: “OH!”
He ran out of the room.
Apparently, he was the guest speaker who had flown in from outside the country. They were tearing apart the building looking for him and by sheer dumb luck stumbled across him in our office. He was there for at least thirty minutes, possibly an hour or more.
I don’t know exactly how long we delayed the conference, but from then on, we were banned from showing any World Cup matches. Apparently, it’s just too addictive.
Two young students are walking through the hallway outside the labs. There’s a Hispanic man on all fours scrubbing up a spill with some paper towels. As they pass, I hear [Undergrad #1] say something that ends with, “…just a janitor.”
Undergrad #2: “Just a janitor? Do you know what they do in this lab? This is where they keep the disease! I bet he studied longer than us before they let him clean here!”
They turn the corner. The man stares after them and then finally turns to face me. I see he’s holding a crumpled coffee cup, which he presumably dropped.
Man: “I mean… I’m a PhD student, so I guess he wasn’t that wrong?”
I work at my university’s tech help desk. An elderly gentleman walks up to the desk one day with a newly bought iPhone.
Customer: “I want you to be here in case I need you.”
He fiddled with the setup process. I went back to my usual duties as I saw him attempt to type in his email address on the iPhone display keyboard. Instead of typing with two thumbs, he subscribed to the method of placing his index finger on a random letter, then sliding it slowly over to the letter he wanted. He couldn’t quite get the hang of lifting his index finger at the right moment, resulting in many sighs and harrumphs of frustration.
Ten minutes later, almost to the point of yelling, this fine gentleman proceeded to pull a mini Phillips screwdriver out of his pocket, grip the handle in his hand like a javelin, and ready his arm to poke out the individual letters of his AOL email address.
I quickly intervened before he destroyed his ten-minutes-old, very expensive purchase.
Related:
A Touching Story But Not That Way
