This takes place a few months into the health crisis. I have chronic medical issues, so I wear masks if I have to go out. A longtime friend — a nurse! — has picked up on every conspiracy theory with lightning speed and posted about it on social media. One day, after seeing a particularly vitriolic post about ”face diapers” and “sheeple,” I message her.

Me: “Hey, I’d like to remind you that you do have a friend with chronic illness. I wear a mask when I go out now because I don’t want to catch this. That doesn’t make me a sheep.”

Friend: “Oh, [My Name], I was just venting. I understand that you need to wear a mask, and if I were around you, I’d wear one, too. I know you have medical issues, so I want to protect you.”

Me: “I appreciate that. Until the crisis is over, maybe you could pretend everyone is like me and wear a mask to protect them, too.”

She hasn’t talked to me since.

Related:
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 18
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 17
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 16
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 15
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 14

I am a twenty-two-year-old woman who has always been unnaturally tall. I am currently 6’9” (2.05m), and when I was twelve I was 6’3” (1.95m)! Life is hard enough for a teenage girl, but in my case, it was worse because I was bullied for my height, and the teachers at my school (a middle-class all-girls grammar school) were generally never very good at dealing with issues like this.

As an example, when I was thirteen, my mother, unable to find shoes that fit me, had to buy boy’s shoes. Someone in my school found out about it and started calling me “Boyshoes”. This in turn led to the rumour that I was born male (I wasn’t), and of course, all the girls in my school had to see for themselves if this was true by touching my breasts (to “see if they were real”) and putting their hands up my skirt (to “see if I had a penis”). When my mother complained to the school, they said there was very little they could do. I guess they meant there was very little they were willing to do. My mother claimed that this was sexual harassment, but the school disagreed, saying it couldn’t be sexual harassment as it was an all-girls school and the perpetrators were girls. My mother went to a solicitor, who wrote to the school, and they finally did something.

On another occasion, my mother had been having trouble finding a uniform to fit me. I was tall, but I wasn’t skinny like some tall girls; I was curvy and heavyset, and buying a uniform sized for a girl my age was out of the question. She tried uniforms for seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds — I wasn’t even fourteen at this point — and although they did fit, the skirts were far too short.

The school’s uniform policy stated that the hem of the skirt should not come too far above the knee. This was measured by kneeling on the floor and measuring from hem to floor — the distance should not have been more than about two inches. In my case, it was closer to seven inches, and when I stood up, the skirt was well above my knee because my legs were so long! At this point, my mother gave up; the skirt fit, the jacket fit, and she’d found blouses that fit, so she was just going to send me to school, shorter skirt or not.

It wasn’t long before I got a detention for a “non-regulation uniform” and was told to come in the next day with a regulation-length skirt. The following day, I got another detention for “non-regulation uniform and failing to rectify this issue in a timely manner”. I also got a letter sent home with me, warning my mother that I would potentially be suspended if I turned up to school in non-regulation uniform again.

My mother was livid! She stormed up to the school and demanded to see the principal. She waved the letter in his face and demanded to know why the school was “picking on me”. The principal was uninterested and made some excuse about how “the school’s uniform policy is for everyone’s benefit”. My mother told the principal that the school’s official uniform supplier didn’t make uniforms for girls of my height and build, and that if I wasn’t left alone, she’d be taking further legal action.

The school never bothered me about my “non-regulation” uniform again.

In my first week as a manager, I get a complaint about one of the contractors working for me. Apparently, he smells like he hasn’t washed in weeks. Other comments have been made about his lack of handwashing and overuse of deodorant spray.

I think long and hard about how to approach it. It’s not an easy subject; I don’t know what cultural or personal issues I might be stepping on. Eventually, I decide on an honest but fair approach. I get him in first thing Monday morning and check that he is okay and understands why I asked him here.

Me: “The bottom line is that you need to wash daily and apply some sort of antiperspirant or deodorant that works for you and everyone around you.”

Worker: “I do!”

Me: “Honestly, you’ve been here for thirty minutes and I can smell that’s not the case. I need you to make this change or we are going to have to lose you.”

He folds his arms in defiance.

Me: “Listen, we can deal with it here or we will have to escalate it. But it needs to be dealt with now.”

Worker: “Are we finished?”

Me: “Yes, you can go.”

I was being kind when I said I could tell he hadn’t washed. My office stank of body odor and I could see his clothes were dirty from the week before. Being a contractor, he was getting paid more than I was. We even have showers on-site! I decide to call the agency we use to manage him. I explained why we spoke and that I expected them to follow up and have the matter sorted within the week.

A week later, I got the same complaints. I invited him to a meeting with me and a representative from the agency. He didn’t show up that day. I rescheduled and he called off sick.

We fired him on the spot; being agency work, there is no notice period and no pay other than the hours he worked.

He claimed unfair dismissal (doesn’t exist for contractors), claimed I made things up (everything was documented), and claimed racial discrimination (no evidence was given, as there wasn’t any).

He then tried to apply directly for his old position. Of course, that didn’t work. His last act of defiance was to write me a list of accusations and vague threats. After he showed it to his agency, they fired him, too.

I have a new student for swimming classes who is a big chatterbox. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut for, like, two minutes.

Child: “I went to the doctor today and they say I have HDD!”

Me: “HDD? Perhaps they meant ADHD?”

Child: “Yes, that, too! I have ADHD and HDD!”

Me: “Are you really sure? Not just ADHD? “

Child: “Yes, absolutely sure! I talk a lot because of HDD!”

We went on with class and another teacher joined me.

Teacher: “HDD? Is that a new kind of thing?”

Me: “No, he just has ADHD.”

Teacher: “How come?”

Me: “An HDD is an internal hard drive. I doubt he has one of those installed.”

I later found out that HDD does exist as a disorder and I really, really hope the kid doesn’t have that.

I work as a software engineer — AKA code monkey — for a contracting company. Programmers get a lot of flexibility in our work hours; so long as we get in forty hours a week and are available for a few hours midday for meetings/discussions, we can pretty much work whenever we want.

I take advantage of this by taking many non-productive breaks during the day to goof off online. I’m on one right now as I write this story. I use the stopwatch on my watch to track exactly how much time is spent on these breaks and always work later to compensate for the break time so I get in a full eight hours of productive work. For reference, my extra breaks usually add up to one or two hours over a day, so not a trivial amount of time.

I should also explain that my company contracts me to the government. That means I have two lines of bosses: the government manager and above who I am contracted to and work for daily, and my company management who, ironically, I see far less of.

One day, my company manager shows up and drags me into a room with some HR people for a talk.

HR Person: “[Important Government Guy not on our project] reported that he saw you looking at comics at work. Is that true?

Me: “Yes, I probably was. I take breaks during the day to do stuff online, but I don’t charge that time.”

HR Person: “But you are being paid to work, not spend time online.”

Me: “I’m not being paid to be online. I told you, I track that time and don’t charge it. Studies show that occasional breaks improve productivity, especially in more mental fields like programming, so if anything, the government is getting more work out of me by my taking breaks.”

HR Person: “But it’s against policy to use government systems for personal use.”

Me: “It’s only unauthorized personal use that is against policy. [Government Manager] knows I take unpaid breaks and doesn’t have a problem with it, so I would say it’s not unauthorized.”

Company Manager: “[Government Manager] knows you’re taking breaks online?”

Me: “Yes. I explained it all to him the first week here and got his approval before I started doing it. He doesn’t mind so long as I don’t charge it and I get my work done.”

HR Person: “It’s still timesheet fraud to not claim hours you’re at work.”

Me: “But I’m claiming eight hours of work and I do eight hours of work. My timesheet never says which hours I work, only that I did eight hours.”

HR Person: “If you’re in the building, you need to charge the hours.”

Me: “So, if I log off and walk out that door, I can get on my phone and play around all I want, but because I do the exact same thing sitting in this room, it’s somehow fraud?”

HR Person: “Just stop reading comics at work. It makes us look bad to the customer.”

Me: “It’s important for me! I have ADHD; I can’t always control when my mind wanders. If I can’t take breaks when distracted, I’ll still be distracted; I’ll just be charging the government for it and being unproductive.”

HR Person: “Everyone else has managed without playing games on the Internet. I’m sure you can, too.”

At this point, I’m honestly getting a bit flustered and upset. I know these goof-off breaks may seem trivial to most people, but they really do help me. The real reason has more to do with something called hyperfocus than how I explained it to the managers, not wanting to get into the nitty-gritty of ADHD, but the point is that it’s an effective strategy that helps me. I know from experience that I’m far less productive without my breaks and that, when that happens, I feel guilty for not being productive and try to make up by staying late, which just leads to burnout and a downward spiral of productivity in the long run that I want to avoid.  

In fact, this is important enough to me that the possibility of changing companies is already running through my head. Given the lack of programmers and certain qualifications I have, I know finding a new company won’t be hard. I can quit this moment and have a new job in two weeks without difficulty, quite possible with a higher salary. So, there isn’t that much tying me to my current company if they are going to make my life terrible.

Me: “But I know from experience that I do need them! I’m a far worse employee without them. I’m not charging it, [Government Manager] is fine with it, it’s not hurting anyone, and it’s important for me!”

HR Person: “It’s making us look bad to our customers.”

Luckily, I think my manager can hear the desperation in my voice because he steps in.

Manager: “Hold on. [My Name], have you been officially diagnosed with ADHD?”

Me: “Yes, since I was in first grade. I even keep some knock-off Ritalin at my desk in case I forget to take it at home.”

Manager: “Then, as I understand it, you would be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and I’d say being allowed to take unpaid breaks at your desk would definitely qualify as reasonable accommodations, right, [HR Person]?”

The HR guy seems shocked at having his own rules thrown back at him like that.

HR Person: “Umm, possible, but we still need to do something about how he looks to our customers.”

Manager: “Let me verify with [Government Manager] that [My Name] has already talked to him about his breaks. If he’s fine with it, then before we ask [My Name] to change a system that works for him, why don’t you let me talk to [Important Government Guy] and explain why he is taking breaks and see if that satisfies him?”

I got excused from our little meeting shortly after that. Even more amazing, the important government guy that originally complained about my being on the Internet even spoke to me a bit later and basically apologized for leaping to conclusions and told me he didn’t have a problem so long as I didn’t charge the hours I was playing online.

Thanks to that manager, I stayed with the company for a bit over half a year longer, at which point I’d stayed long enough that it made sense to jump companies for the salary boost I’d get. Still, I appreciate my manager standing up for me and fixing the problem.