I’m in a college communications class of fifty people, not including our teacher. For our midterm, we are to “become the US Senate”. The class will vote on several classroom measures, the goal being to “communicate professionally whilst demonstrating competent debate strategies.”

My teacher often sticks to his word, and we really do make a cool little senate, complete with dress codes, a candy desk, a gavel, and a flag. This is important to note because the teacher wants our senate to be as accurate as possible.

We debate three measures, all created by us, the students, in advance.

• Hats should only be allowed in the classroom if they are cowboy hats. (Passed, 39 to 11.)

• We should be able to wear pajamas to class. (Passed, 48 to 2.)

And finally:

• Fidget/stim toys should not be allowed in the classroom. (You’ll find out how that went.)

I use fidget toys because I have ADHD. They’re all pretty silent, and the person who wrote this “bill” has it out for me because I get accommodations — like extra time and earphones — that no one else does. Since we are allowed to talk as long as we desire about any measure, I get comfortable in my seat (since we are all remote) and begin to talk about what my ADHD accommodations are, why I need them, the fidgets I use, my favorite books, and what majors I’m thinking about.

Five minutes pass. Then ten. Then twenty. And then my professor interrupts.

Professor: “[My Name], you’ve talked too long. Give someone else a turn.”

I look him dead in the eye.

Me: “No.”

The LOOK on his FACE!

Me: *Politely* “Since this is a senate, I am allowed to filibuster.”

That is, to delay a vote simply by talking us out of time.

The other classmates looked at [Professor]. He turned red and spluttered but allowed me to proceed.

Grades are based on individual performance, so I knew I wasn’t harming anyone but myself; everyone else had already spoken enough. So, my ADHD a**, the one always scolded for talking too much, successfully filibustered the remaining hour and thirty-six minutes of our four-hour midterm. As for the fallout, my classmate’s bill died on delivery and I got a B+.

I used to run a small business (a wedding space), and I was very successful in a very short period of time. It got to the point that I was getting all-expense-paid invites to industry conferences less than six months after I opened. Needless to say, this ruffled feathers.

Enter [Competitor]. [Competitor] is a chief [Entitled Jerk] who competes in the same space and has been nothing but awful to me from the moment she became aware that I wasn’t just competition but was doing better business than her. She complained that I had gotten expenses paid and implied that it was because I was pretty, said that she felt people who had been in the space longer deserved it more, and made a vaguely racist statement about how my outfit colors “don’t look good” on dark-skinned people. She also reported my booth for accidentally being less than three inches outside of our ten-by-ten slot, and she has tried on more than one occasion to have my competing products removed from vendors’ halls. Needless to say, I despise this woman.

Fast forward a little bit to the global health crisis. I saw major issues on the horizon for my business, so I decided to step out and sell it for a pretty penny. I bought a condo, took a job at a non-profit, and moved along with my life. But some of my friends still in the industry would give me updates or vent, and I was absolutely right to sell; most everyone doing what I did had already closed, including the person I sold my business to.

[Competitor], however, was still going strong, though I noticed that her prices were really, really aggressively low. My friend then showed me screenshots of [Competitor] bragging privately about claiming to be unemployed/disabled by using her long-time partner as a cover for her business and then dropping prices below what other sellers could because she was double-dipping.

This really, really, really made me angry. I have a mobility disability, and I felt horrible for the people she was running out of business by pricing so low. So, of course, I reported her, but nothing seemed to come of that. Then, one of the biggest conferences in our local industry came up on my calendar. This conference costs $8,000 to $10,000 to vend at, and many vendors make 50% or more of their yearly income from this one event.

My friend runs the vending hall, so I asked her to place me right next to [Competitor]. When I left the industry, I still had great contacts on the manufacturing side because I speak Chinese fairly well. I found the manufacturer for [Competitor]’s top-selling items and ordered a sizeable inventory to take with me to the conference. I priced them at cost, made ginormous signs about inventory liquidation, and created these super-aggressive bundle deals that made it nearly impossible for [Competitor] to do any business being right next to me.

I could see her over there fuming, and she did try to come over and complain, but our booth was too busy to even entertain her obnoxious huffing and puffing.

[Competitor] closed her shop last week. I lost about $5,000 doing this, but I got a lot of people deals on packages and items that they never thought they could afford for their special day, and it was honestly fun to help people out, especially at [Competitor]’s expense.

I used to work in a small self-service bakery as a cashier. The two aisles were too small for wheelchairs, especially electric ones. We had a regular with an electric wheelchair, and we had the deal that he’d wait in the front, and I’d take his order and money, get his items, ring them up, and bring them back to the front where he’d be waiting. It worked like a charm.

That is until the day some guy came in — walking perfectly fine, mind you — stood in the front for a while, and then came to my register, not quite yelling but close to it.

Customer: “Why are you just standing there not taking my order?!”

After a bit of back and forth, it turned out that he had seen me do that above service for the other man, so he expected me to do that for him, too. I didn’t argue. I called my “big bad” (really nice but intimidating) manager. I don’t deal with that stuff for 8,50€ an hour.

My good friend uses a wheelchair. She and her partner have reserved seats at our MLS (Major League Soccer) team’s stadium.

Once, they showed up to their seats to find a couple sitting in them. The couple refused to leave. My friend and her partner went to security, who removed the couple.

Woman: “Why does the girl in the wheelchair get special attention?!”

I was diagnosed with ADD and short-term memory loss when I started college around fifteen years ago. (Better late than never, I guess.) The only accommodation I really needed was a formula sheet for my algebra class to use on tests. There were no answers of any kind on this sheet, just formulas, e.g., a²+b²=c². I still had to do the actual work myself.

Somehow, though, my algebra professor took this to mean that I had a “cheat sheet” and constantly made nasty remarks about it, even trying to get my classmates to agree with him that it wasn’t fair that I had a “cheat sheet” when they didn’t. Thankfully, my classmates all told him he was being ridiculous and making everyone uncomfortable with his snarky comments.

I finally had enough and decided to stay after class to have an adult conversation about the comments being rude, unprofessional, and downright inappropriate, and to ask firmly but politely that they stop. Unfortunately, it’s hard to have an adult conversation when the other person refuses to be an adult. I explained that I needed the formula sheet because I have memory issues, and it in no way provided anything that my classmates didn’t have (since they had the advantage of keeping the formulas in their minds instead of on a sheet). Everything I said was met with more snark and condescension that was, honestly, childish.

Eventually, I realized that the man simply would not be reasoned with, so, irritated and out of patience, I had no choice but to pull out my nuke.

Me: *Frustrated* “Look. We can go back and forth with this as long as you want, but at the end of the day, you can either stop the nasty comments, or you can have a chat about the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] with my dad.”

Professor: *Scoffing, condescending tone* “Oh, you’re really going your father involved?”

Me: “Well, he’s your boss.”

And I watched this man’s soul leave his body.

Professor: *Tiny, horrified voice* “…what?”

I stuck out my hand as if to shake his.

Me: “Hi, [My First Name] [MY LAST NAME]. [Dad’s First Name] [OUR LAST NAME], head of the math department’s, youngest daughter.” 

The professor’s eyes went wider.

Professor: “…daughter?”

Suddenly, he didn’t have a problem with my formula sheet. I still mentioned the issue to my dad, who looked into [Professor] and found that he had several complaints against him from students with disabilities. Dad promised to keep an eye on him, and they did indeed have a chat about the ADA and professionalism at the end of the quarter.

[Professor] had been teaching at the college for many years already; Dad had just taken over as head of the department that year, so that’s why he wasn’t yet aware of the preexisting complaints against [Professor]. They would have been addressed as soon as he found out about them, my having issues with [Professor] just led Dad to find them a bit sooner.

Related:
Thanks To ADHD And The ADA, You’ve Been HAD