I work in tech support for my university. A “regular” comes in one day and explains that a Word document from her email won’t open on her Mac. She is elderly and a regular at tech support, so I know it is about to get interesting.

Me: “Okay, let’s start by getting into your university email.”

Customer: *Starts logging in* “What’s my password?”

Me: “I have absolutely no idea what your password is.”

Customer: “But you guys gave that to me!”

Me: “That wasn’t me. You’ll have to go back to [office] where they reset university account passwords.”

She grumbles and heads to the office, and they handle her and send her back. She next shows me the email in question. I download it and test it on our Mac, and it works fine. I resave it in a different file format just in case.

We go to her email account, and I attach the document and email it to her. She says she’ll try it and leaves.

Ten minutes later, she’s back and walks right over to my desk, balls her fists up, raises them over her head, and yells:

Customer: “Why won’t you help me?!“

The receptionist comes over and tells her she needs to stop yelling. She says a bunch of things about how much money is at stake, that no one is helping her, and that she needs help desperately.

Again, I look at the file and show her that it opens just fine on our computer. I’m not really allowed or supposed to go with anyone anywhere, so I give her the phone number and tell her to call when she is at the machine in question.

Nope.

She comes back ten minutes later again, and this time she is VERY angry.

Customer: “You’re not helping me! You’re doing a terrible job! They shouldn’t be paying you; in fact, you should get fired!”

My boss then came out and shuffled her away immediately. My boss actually went with her to the machine she was trying to work on. It turned out that it wasn’t a Mac but a Dell. The Dell did not have Microsoft Word on it, so the file would not open.

She returned three more times that day, one time just to talk, one time to ask for a paper clip, and one time to ask to use the phone.

This is the story of how our CEO who I admire and respect became CEO.

He had been the Senior Vice President for a few years. The owner of the company wanted him to take over as CEO as the owner was going to retire, and the company was going to transition into more of a corporate governing structure. Some of this had already been completed; they had a board of directors, etc.

The debate over who would be the CEO came down to two people: [Senior VP] and [VP].

[Senior VP] was hired by this company straight out of college when he was twenty-one; he grew from the bottom up. He had worked in basically every department and led every department, and he understood the company inside and out.

[VP] came into the company as a vice president. He had an MBA and experience in the industry, and he was the second favorite to become CEO.

In an early discussion, the board apparently wanted to vote on who would become the interim CEO before the owner retired. They wanted this to be an eighteen-month run-up as taking over was considered a big deal. [VP] knew [Senior VP] was the primary contender and had him beaten out by a few votes. So, [VP] brought up the fact that the company bylaws stated that the executive officers — CEO, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Financial Officer — all had to have college degrees, and therefore, [Senior VP] wasn’t qualified.

This caused the meeting to come to an end. I believe at this point [VP] felt he had [Senior VP] beat. So, [Senior VP] went to the owner and had a conversation.

At the next meeting, the CEO stated that he intended on doing one year longer. The board was shocked, but nothing said the CEO had to retire when he said he would.

That’s when [Senior VP] went into action. You see, [Senior VP] had ninety college credits. His brother was also the assistant dean at the local community college. [Senior VP] was an English major when this company hired him thirty-five years prior. The local community college quickly admitted [Senior VP] as a senior in their English Lit major. Due to [Senior VP]’s thirty-five-plus years of business, three required business classes were given to him. [Senior VP] also loved math, so he was able to take an exam to exempt himself from his final math class. This gave [Senior VP] 102 credits — eighteen credits shy.

[Senior VP] enrolled in the twelve credits for the spring semester. He completed those and finished up his last six credits in the eight-week summer semester.

In the third-quarter board meeting, the CEO announced that he was prepared to allow the board to vote on his replacement at the fourth-quarter meeting. The CEO made it clear that he considered the two front runners [Senior VP] and [VP]. [VP] brought up the fact that [Senior VP] needed a degree. [Senior VP] smiled, reached into his briefcase, and pulled out his diploma from the community college clearly showing he had graduated with honors with a major in English Lit.

In the fourth-quarter board meeting, [Senior VP] won by a landslide to become the next CEO.

[VP] left the company not long after that.

This story was told to me by my father. In the 1980s, he worked at a university library and archives. All of the staff had their own offices in the back. They all had gotten desktop computers at some point recently, and most of the staff were pretty comfortable with computers having used them for years.

Apparently, at some later time, university IT sent surge protectors to the building to plug the desktops and monitors into, instead of straight into the wall. My father passed them out to everyone, explaining what they were for.

Several weeks later my father was speaking with a colleague at the colleague’s office. My father noticed that [Colleague] had the surge protector plugged in and turned on and had it sitting on top of the desktop case… with nothing plugged into it. The computer and monitor were still plugged into the wall! My father asked the colleague what he was doing with it on the case and explained that he had to plug the devices into the surge protector.

Colleague: “Oh! I kinda figured it was an aura thing.”

My father said the librarian was older but had also been working with computers since punch cards. Maybe he was really optimistic about technological progress.

Living in the dorm, I am on good terms with everyone. I try to learn the names of the various custodians and staff, and I take pride in being polite and helpful.

Recently, maintenance came into the bathroom while I was on the toilet (in a stall), so they left to return when I was done. I didn’t see the man so I wasn’t sure who had come by. 

The toilet seat had been very loose, and I didn’t recognize the design to tighten it myself, so I went to mention it to the man who had been in the restroom three minutes before. His tools were in the hallway but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I had to go to class, so I grabbed a whiteboard marker and left a note on the mirror.

Note: “Dear Maintenance: Please tighten the toilet seat, second from the left.”

Later, I came back to find that the seat had been tightened, but as crooked as possible. This hurt my feelings because it felt very deliberate and passive-aggressive. I made a mental note to check in with my buddies on staff to see what had happened. I just don’t understand why someone would go through the extra effort to make it crooked; tightening the screws takes about two minutes and would straighten the seat. I don’t know how they even got it to stay crooked.

I didn’t see any maintenance members for a couple of days, so I couldn’t ask about it. Then, while I was in class, I got an email that was sent to the entire dorm. The resident director wrote a scathing email, dripping with disgust, about an inappropriate and disrespectful message.

I started shaking as I read about how this horribly offensive message written on the bathroom mirror showed a completely unacceptable violation of community standards, she was appalled to hear about it, etc.

I ultimately sent an email, asking politely what the offensive message said. I don’t expect a reply, but I figure that someone misrepresented it to her. I feel it was out of line to send that email without any proof that the offense took place, and it was detrimental to my well-being. Then again, I can’t blame the resident director too harshly; who would expect the staff to go out of their way to tell a bald-faced malicious lie, with no apparent benefit to their doing so?

I already usually just fix everything myself if I can, but now I’m REALLY not going to want to ask for anything. I really don’t handle people lying about me well.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes people just assume malicious intent from innocuous notes, and I should avoid those people. Unfortunately, this dorm is falling apart, but since there is no correct or effective way to ask maintenance to do anything, I might be able to accept that which I cannot change. It takes a fair amount of wisdom to figure out who I can trust versus who will just live rent-free in my head as I try to understand why; sometimes there is no “why.”

This takes place around 1980 or thereabouts.

In my last two years of university, I was also a part-time staff member at one of the campus cafeteria locations. By the time of this story, I had worked my way up to become one of the “Assistant Managers” at this particular location. It was a pizza- and sub-themed cafeteria that normally did not open until around 4:00 pm, so the two full-time day staff were primarily there to do prep work for opening. One, [Coworker], was a gruff little Italian lady who could be nice, but if you did something wrong, you had to watch out as she could be rather testy with you from that point on.

When I worked a closing shift, which normally wrapped up around 2:00 am, I was responsible for locking up, including the door from the loading dock. It could only be locked and unlocked from the outside, so when I left, I had to exit to the dock and then lock the door. The normal procedure was to return the key sometime in the morning after the day staff were in.

The morning after one such shift, I was just starting to wake up when my phone rang.

Me: “Hello?”

Coworker: “Hello, [My Name]. I was just calling to let you know… you forgot to lock the door last night. It was unlocked when I came in at 7:45.”

Me: “Unlocked? No… I’m pretty sure I locked it up as usual.”

Coworker: “Well, I was the first one in, and it was definitely unlocked. I know you think you did, but it wasn’t—”

Me: *Interrupting* “No, I am sure I did….”

Coworker: *Interrupting, and in that condescending tone we all know* “I’m sure you think you did, but it was not locked. That’s okay; we don’t need to tell anyone. We keep this between you and me, okay?”

Based on other student staff experiences with this particular lady, I recognized that as the “I’m going to hold that over your head and watch you like a hawk, and you’d better not screw up again or else” message.

I ended the phone call because I had to get up and get ready to head out for my first class of the day. I planned to go past the cafeteria to drop the key off after that and argue my case with her then.

A couple of hours later, I arrived in the kitchen and stepped into the office to return the key. When I came back out, [Coworker] was there waiting for me.

Me: “Morning, [Coworker]. I had my doubts when you called me early this morning, but I can assure you that I did lock up properly last night…”

Coworker: *Rather quietly* “Yes, you did. I know.”

Me: “Wait, what? If you knew, why did you call me—”

Coworker: “After I called you, I had to call [Other Kitchen] to find out where our baked goods were. They hadn’t been delivered yet. Just as I was doing that, [Driver] came in with them, apologizing. He came by just before I came in, unlocked the door, and then went into the truck to get the baking and realized he’d forgotten ours. He finished his rounds, went back to get it, and came by later than usual. After I talked to him, he realized he’d forgotten to lock the door before getting back in the truck.”

Me: “I see.”

Coworker: “So, it wasn’t you after all.”

With that, she turned and went back to work. There was no apology or recognition of her unfounded accusation. The best I can say is she was always pleasant to me on the occasions our paths crossed after that.