I am a teacher, in a broader sense. I teach English for a living but not at regular schools. In my country and the neighboring ones, we have what is usually referred to as “cram schools” in English.

Somehow in our cultures and systems, it’s not enough for teens to just attend high schools to hack it in our National Entrance Exam to get admitted into (good, top, or indeed most) colleges, so it’s part of daily life for kids to attend cram schools like mine to study more and work extra so they can do well on the Exam and go to their ideal school and major.

It was my first year at this institute, and my major responsibilities were with the so-called “re-sit” students: kids that either flunked the Exam or didn’t do well enough to get exactly what they wanted. We also had people who’d finished uni but didn’t like their career path and decided to jump through the hoops again onto a different major and profession. Not many, but probably more than you’d imagine. 

So, put around 200 or so mostly almost-legal kids in a confined space — six classrooms on a whole floor in a commercial building. They study, have classes, and have meals together for about fourteen hours a day on an intensively-monitored daily schedule, for days on end, for half a year, and naturally, you’ll have a lot of “bad romances”.

This one still boggles my mind now. 

A girl got closer to a boy — nothing really new. It was obvious to peers and staff alike since we were all spending that much time together every day. 

After a month or so, they went on their separate ways — again, nothing new. [Girl] later got closer to another boy with whom I had talked a bit more. He was a nice kid.

Not long after that, I began catching chatter from some other kids who were closer to me.

Kid #1: “Did you know that [Girl] was seeing two boys at the same time?”

Kid #2: “[Girl] went straight from [Boy #1] to [Boy #2] right after they broke up!”

…Say what now?

Honestly, I didn’t really care that much or make a big deal out of it because I still remembered my high school time. [Girl] and [Boy #2] never gave me problems, and [Boy #1], despite being a bit cheeky for my taste, had been behaving well as far as students go.

That escalated quickly in about two weeks from harmless small talk among kids to me having to escort [Girl] to the elevator hall when she was about to leave the school.

Apparently, [Boy #1] was talking s*** to everyone with functioning ears in the school that he’d been “given the green hat” — an expression that means being cheated on.

[Girl] quickly turned to me for counseling. I listened to [Girl]’s side of the story, let her vent, calmed her, and gave her simple instructions and guidance so that she could focus on studying. 

Over the next few days, my kids began to share a more detailed version of the breakup, and all of them referred to [Boy #1] as “Green Hat Guy”. [Boy #1] began instigating (verbal) fights with [Boy #2] at the school and would speak loudly about “morals” whenever [Girl] was passing by.

It got so bad that the day shift teacher-in-charge had to sit them down for a talk. That was a three-hour talking marathon that had her stay an extra hour after her off time.

Apparently, [Boy #1] demanded apologies — for what, neither [Teacher] nor I ever really understood. [Teacher] told me it was a run-of-the-mill bad breakup, even though she was doubtful that [Boy #1] and [Girl] had actually been in a relationship. It might as well just have been bad communication and definitely not something any of them should be focusing on. 

But [Boy #1] wanted apologies. The others, including us teachers, just wanted peace of mind, so they apologized to him. 

It really should’ve ended there. But there came more bitterness and, dare I say, even more petty, petty, childish, petty behavior. 

After that meeting, [Boy #1] got even more chatty than before. His failed attempt at scoring a girlfriend seemed to become all he’d talk about, to the level that one of the kids I was close with told me that she thought [Boy #1] was using that story to gain compassion while trying to hit on her. The “wasn’t talking to you but was being loud so you’d hear it” harassment got worse also. It was really getting on my nerves as [Boy #1] was now distracting himself, the other two involved, and at least two other girls who told me they thought he was hitting on them.

This led to my having to escort [Girl]. [Boy #1] was clever enough not to say anything within the earshot of any teachers. I really didn’t like that kind of smarta**, especially when [Girl] was the second, not first, to tell me about the harassment; it was another student who hung in a different circle. This one was not involved to any degree; she simply got tired of catching those random misogynistic nuggets and wanted it to stop.

Now, my hands were actually tied because we teachers never actually caught [Boy #1], and talking s*** (about him being cheated on, mind you) wasn’t exactly breaking any rules. 

So, for about a month, I would walk out to the elevator hall, talking to random students or just heading to the toilet or the water fountain, so that when [Girl] was leaving our door and waiting for the elevators, she wouldn’t have to endure that nonsense. A month, every night that I worked, right before their big exam. 

I really didn’t want to take sides, but I did notice after I began to give a f*** and started low-key escorting [Girl] that [Boy #1] would often come out right around that time, see me around, and go back to his classroom. ([Girl] took the bus to go home, so she’d leave around the same time every night.)

I was transferred to a different location not long after the exam, and [Girl] and [Boy #2] got closer to me after the incident and the whole drama. They reported to me that they did well enough, even though with our weird system it’d be a few more months before they saw which university they’d land on.

I didn’t see [Boy #1] again after the exam. I heard he did somewhere between okay and not ideal, but I couldn’t care less. 

It was very eye-opening for me to witness all of this. You may not have given love a bad name, kid, but you’ve sure as h*** given yourself one.

I’m coming off a breakup, and my ex-boyfriend is having trouble understanding that the relationship is over. This exchange happens at the tail end of a lengthy text conversation.

Ex-Boyfriend: “Then go f*** yourself, you soulless happy!”

Ex-Boyfriend: “*Harpy. Autocorrect, sorry.”

Me: “Do you really need to apologize when autocorrect f***s up a message to someone you hate?”

Ex-Boyfriend: “You ALWAYS apologize for autocorrect.”

Caller: “I’m calling about my laptop; it was stolen.”

Me: “I would advise you to call the police and file a police report. Then we can assist in recovering it.”

Caller: “I don’t want to involve the police. It was my girlfriend that stole it, and I just want you to turn it off.”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand. How would we turn it off?”

Caller: “You guys should just be able to turn it off, right? I’m pretty sure if you turned it off that she’d let me have it back.”

I had to explain to her, in the most professional way possible, that as long as this person had access to an electrical outlet, they would be able to turn the laptop on. She seemed genuinely disappointed that we didn’t have some sort of satellite power controller for intervening in lovers’ spats.

My ex-girlfriend and I were together for six years. Near the end of our relationship, the atmosphere was miles from what it normally was. Her idea of a happy home, which I paid for for the two of us, basically became her and her friends every weekend on the couch drinking wine until they all fell asleep or were too drunk to get home.

I worked at this time in a s***ty restaurant in town, earning just about minimum wage. It was back-breaking work — long hours, thankless jobs, unpredictable shift changes because the boss thought it was a fantastic idea to lease us to a pub on the opposite end of the road, etc.

One night, I returned home from a grueling thirteen-hour shift at almost 1:00 am. The bus I was supposed to get didn’t turn up, so I had to wait even longer for the next. Knowing I had to face another shift the next morning, my only real desire right then was to sleep. The second I entered, however, I was greeted by my girlfriend, her friends, and an opened bottle of wine.

Me: “Hey, I need to be up fairly early tomorrow, so can we wrap this up, please?”

Girlfriend: “Hey, darling. Of course, we’ll be done soon.”

“Soon” pretty much meant not at all soon from my experiences.

Me: “Well, you’re not working tomorrow, are you? I am, so I just want to—”

I stopped talking when I notice that she and her friends were just fixing a vacant stare at me. I realized none of what I was saying was getting through, so I just dropped my stuff and headed into the bedroom. Being that my girlfriend is Swedish, she scoffed and said, “Han är på dåligt humör igen,” which means, “He’s in a bad mood again,” accompanied by her and her friends laughing at my expense. Sure, because wanting to sleep in the bed I paid for so I can pay for your endless nights with the ladies is such a tall ask.

I lay in bed, unable to sleep because of the noise they were kicking up. After about twenty minutes, I got up, got dressed, grabbed my keys, and phoned a friend to crash at his.

Thankfully, he was okay with it, but evidently, my girlfriend was not.

Girlfriend: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Somewhere where you are not. When I come back, I want you out of my f****** house.”

I wasn’t kidding around this time. Of course, she tried to make amends there and then and practically threw her friends out, but it was too little too late. I stayed at my friend’s house that night, quit my job the following morning, and returned to find my now ex-girlfriend gone.

That month was Hell, but I was able to find a much better, well-paying job soon after, and I met a colleague who would later become my beloved wife, who respects and treats me like a king.

I am a gamer and a firm believer that something not being new doesn’t mean it’s bad. I bought a secondhand PlayStation 3 several years after the PS4 came out due to a lack of backwards-compatibility, I bought a WiiU the day the Switch came out because I hadn’t gotten a WiiU yet, and I still regularly play games for the PSP, Game Boy Advance, and GameCube. I have not gone a year without playing a game for each of these consoles for at least a week. Combine that with the fact that I DO enjoy new games, and… well, I now have a closet dedicated to storing my consoles when they’re not in use, so the TV stand and my bedside table don’t get crowded.

I say “now” because I didn’t at the time of this story; I had most of my home consoles sitting next to each other below the TV, switching out cords whenever I wanted to play something on a different system than the last, and all of my handhelds were scattered atop or in the drawer of my bedside table. When I decided to move in with my girlfriend, I had a giant storage bin dedicated to storing my consoles and another one that was holding all my games.

This game-hoarding (and I use the term facetiously) got me out of a bad relationship much sooner than I probably would have otherwise.

After we moved in together, [Girlfriend] started giving me “advice” (read: telling me and not letting me say no) about how I should dress and what I should or should not eat, that I should get more exercise and play fewer games, etcetera. This SHOULD have been a red flag, but in past-me’s defense, I am the exact opposite of fashion-minded, and I know my physique is not great; I didn’t put up much of a fight against her decisions. I got a LOT of compliments at work about how my wardrobe had stopped featuring blacks and greys, which probably gave me the idea that her advice was sound.

That is until I return home one day and find all my gaming stuff missing — my home consoles, my handhelds, all my games, and even a pair of headphones with an attached mic.

[Girlfriend] gets home shortly after I’m done turning the house upside-down looking for everything.

Girlfriend: “Hey, [My Name]! You’re back already?”

I’m somewhere between terrified and furious and really hoping this is a misunderstanding of some sort.

Me: “[Girlfriend]. Where. Are. My. Games?”

Girlfriend: “Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped playing video games? I donated them to [Secondhand Gaming Store]. Come on, why don’t we do something together?”

“Donated”?! So, not only did she get rid of all my stuff without permission, but she didn’t even get any money from it?

I don’t even respond to her questions. I walk out the door, ignore her asking me what I’m doing, get in my car, and drive to [Secondhand Gaming Store]. I go there regularly to check out their selection of no-longer-sold-new, and there’s rarely anyone else there; fortuitously, there is no one there today, either. Even more fortuitously, the clerk behind the counter is the guy who has processed 75% of my transactions at this place. He recognizes me when I get there.

Clerk: “Hey, [My Name], come here!”

Me: “Not now, [Clerk], I need to know—”

Clerk: “No, seriously, dude, come back here.”

My anger is starting to lose out to my terror at this point, but [Clerk] asking me to come behind the counter catches me by surprise. I come around the counter… and a familiar pair of storage bins are sitting there, open to reveal all my consoles sitting there in what looks like good condition.

Me: “Thank every f****** god in the Source, you still have them.”

Clerk: “‘Still have them’? Dude, no way was I going to let anything happen to them.”

I tell him what I found when I got home, and he tells me his side of the story.

[Girlfriend] parked her car in the nearest space to the door, carried my bins inside one at a time, and pushed the stack toward the counter. She asked [Clerk] what he could give her for my console collection and my giant pile of games. A red flag went off in [Clerk]’s head: who abruptly decides to sell five different home consoles AND four different handhelds all at once? Especially a PS4, in a year when the PS5 hasn’t even been announced. Combine that with [Clerk] knowing which consoles I buy games for, and he had his suspicions.

The standard procedure when you trade in a game or console to a competent secondhand dealer is that the dealer has to make sure the thing works. This gave [Clerk] a good excuse to see whether this stuff belonged to who he thought it did or this was some freak coincidence with someone off their rocker.

Since turning on a handheld is a faster job than plugging in a home console, he grabbed my Switch and hit the power button, and the screen lit up. When he got to the home screen, he found my account, the username of which uses a variation of my real name. He opened up the eShop and turned it toward [Girlfriend].

Clerk: “Excuse me, miss, could you do me a favour and log into this for me?”

Girlfriend: “Why? Can’t you just get rid of it before you sell it? He’s not going to use it anymore, anyway.”

Yes, she made it clear that these were not her things that she was trying to pawn off to him. [Clerk] refused to buy anything unless she brought the owner in with her, to which [Girlfriend] angrily demanded that he stop complaining and just take the goods from her. Eventually, [Girlfriend] got fed up with the argument.

Girlfriend: “Fine! Take them for free, then! I’m just trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff he doesn’t use! If you’re not gonna pay me for his stuff, that’s your fault!”

Yes, [Clerk] stressed, she did in fact say, “…pay me for his stuff…”

I thank [Clerk] and the Twelve about a hundred times each while I check my stuff for visible damage and find none. [Clerk] helps me carry my stuff back out to my car, and I call a friend, who agrees to let me crash at his place for a while. I take the gaming stuff to him first and then drive back to [Girlfriend]’s place and give her seven hells while I collect everything I own that will fit in my car.

Girlfriend: “Get back in here! Get rid of all that gaming junk, get back here, and apologize!”

Me: “I’ve got a better idea. How about you stop trying to decide what I’m allowed to enjoy and how I spend my free time, and I don’t treat you like a selfish b**** who cares about no one but herself?”

I would like to say that [Girlfriend] screamed at me because she’s human and a loud wordless vocalization by a human is usually described as a scream. But [Girlfriend] has a fairly low-pitched voice, and it genuinely sounded more like a roar. I turned around, got into my car, and drove away.

[Clerk], thank you again; I owe you big time. And [Girlfriend], f*** you with a greatsword.