The first program a fledgling programmer is supposed to write is a “Hello, world” program, which literally does nothing but print out the phrase “Hello, world.” I’m not sure why it’s a thing, but all programmers know what it is.

I was going to a highly-rated college for programming and was taking the Operating Systems course, the most notoriously hard class in the entire curriculum, where we had to build our own functional operating system. We were nearing the end of when our last assignment was due, and of course, it was the hardest of all the assignments. Most of us were pulling a few all-nighters to get it done in time.

When class time rolled around for the course, we all filtered into the usual classroom to find someone had been doodling on the whiteboard in the room. In large, colorful letters, the unknown vandal had written, “HELLO, WORLD!” Underneath that, in much smaller writing, they added, “(Goodbye, social life.)”

One of my peers pointed it out, and we were all getting a bit of a chuckle out of it when our professor walked in and saw it.

Professor: “Okay, who wrote that? We have to erase it immediately! I’m not allowed to be that honest with you folks until after finals are over!”

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.

I work for a biotechnology company. The most recent few weeks at work have been EXTREMELY busy — not a moment to sit and think, always running from one fire to another, etc. It’s hectic and crazy, we’re severely understaffed, and everything breaks all the time. We all bring our laptops to meetings because we can’t afford to lose an hour, and we inhale our lunches in five minutes while typing with the other hand.

Our CEO thinks of himself as a cross between God and Socrates. He’s an arrogant a**hole who believes he’s filled with wisdom to impart yet has absolutely no idea how hard everyone is working.

As I was flying between tasks, [CEO] came in with someone I hadn’t seen before.

CEO: “[My Name], this is our new intern, [Intern].”

Me: “Oh, hi, nice to meet you.”

CEO: “She’ll be primarily reporting to you.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

CEO: “She’ll be here all summer. Please put her to work right away.”

I quickly introduced myself and my team to [Intern], who seemed pleasant and competent enough but knew nothing about the company. As grateful as I was for additional help, bringing on a new person means training, and I sure as heck didn’t have time to give even thirty seconds’ worth of training that day. I thought about having her follow me around just to watch, but most of the craziness that day was happening in the lab, and she wasn’t allowed in the lab without certain safety training that wouldn’t even be available to her until the next week.

So, the result was that I did my best to hand her some papers to read, apologized that I wouldn’t have time to do much training that day, and left her at her desk to start reading. It’s not the way to give someone a stellar first day, but I had emergencies and deadlines all through the afternoon, so I really couldn’t do much else.

Apparently, while I was running between tasks later in the afternoon, [CEO] sauntered in to ask [Intern] how she was getting along. He directly asked her what she was working on at that moment, because that’s the kind of a**hole he is. She had already finished reading what I gave her, so she honestly answered that she had read a couple of papers but had run out of things to do.

Next thing I knew, [CEO] summoned me out of the lab, where I was rushing to meet multiple deadlines, and called me into his office. He sighed, got a contemplative look on his face, and seemed to be gearing up for one of his facetious, self-aggrandizing lectures. Meanwhile, I was so busy that I’d brought paperwork with me TO HIS OFFICE to fill out, and I’m pretty sure I filled out some of it while walking down the hall. A lab timer in my hand was counting down to some other unmissable deadline. In other words, on an afternoon when every second counted, the last thing I needed was to be called into [CEO]’s office.

When I arrived, [Intern] was already sitting there.

CEO: “[My Name], do you know why I’ve been successful in life?”

Me: “Why?”

He pretended to take a few moments to think of the answer. I mean, for f***’s sake.

CEO: “Because when I have people working for me, I always make sure they have something to do. Now, five minutes ago, I asked [Intern] what she was working on, and do you know what she told me?”

He then, at great length, described the scene between himself and [Intern], as well as how appalled he was that he’d hired someone to help me, yet I left her without any work to do. Never mind the fact that he didn’t tell me in advance that he was hiring an intern or the fact that he’d dropped her in my lap on a day when I had no time to train her. In fact, I ended up missing several deadlines and timed events that day because I was stuck in [CEO]’s office, listening to him talk about time management.

I don’t work there anymore. They never understood that if you don’t hire enough people, you’ll be stuck forever in a downward spiral because even the people you have are too busy to train the new people.

By the time I take psychology class in high school, I have already had a regular physics course and am now taking an advanced AP physics course. We have just gotten a test back that covered the senses and psychological effects on them. I go to my teacher at the end of the class.

Me: “[Teacher], you marked this question as wrong but I’m pretty sure it’s correct.”

Teacher: “No, violet light is a lower wavelength than red light.”

Me: “I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Radio waves have the longest wavelength; that’s why we use them for long-distance communication. Then, they get shorter, going up to infrared, followed by red light, up to violet, then ultraviolet and x-rays.”

Teacher: “That’s not what it said in the book.”

Me: “Regardless of what the book said, I’m pretty confident about wavelength; we’ve covered it numerous times in science classes. I could get [Physics Teacher] to check the question if you want.”

Teacher: “If you think the book was wrong, why didn’t you say something when you read it?”

Me: “I didn’t notice. I already knew plenty about wavelengths so I wasn’t paying as much attention to that section, and it always takes me half a second to remember which is shorter wavelength and which is shorter frequency. I probably wasn’t worrying enough about it to think through whether it was right or wrong while scanning over it.”

Teacher: “Well, we were testing if you learned by the book, so you need to give the answer in the book.”

Me: “But not if the book is wrong. I’m sure my answer is correct. I can get you proof if you want.”

Teacher: “It doesn’t matter. If you had a problem with the book, you should have brought it up before now.”

More than half a year later, it was the end of the year. During our last class, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to share their favorite and least favorite parts of the class. When it was my turn, I gave my favorites before moving on to my regrets.

Me: “My least favorite part is that you still don’t believe me that red light has a longer wavelength than blue light!”

Teacher: “Well, you’re in luck, then, because I believe you now.”

Me: *Hopeful voice* “Does that mean I get my point back?!”

Teacher: “No.”

Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, one point on a test hardly mattered. I still aced the class; it was quite easy compared to some of my other courses. But the sentiment of refuting the truth coming from a teacher has always bothered me.

What I found most confusing, though, was that supposedly, only one other person came to the teacher to refute the incorrect question, which implies most of the students gave the answer the teacher expected. We were all in our last two years of high school, so everyone should have had basic physics, not to mention chemistry and middle school science — courses where they learned about light. How could an entire classroom of students memorize the book’s incorrect answer without any of them realizing it conflicted with everything they had been taught previously?

We keep backyard chickens. One day, we find that our hen Emma has been savagely attacked — we believe by a raccoon — as she was brooding on her nest. Emma is a big chicken; she probably got the injury because she stood her ground and fought the raccoon rather than letting it have her eggs. And since two small Silkie hens have disappeared, presumed dead, we credit Emma with saving the lives of the other two hens that are still safe.

We take our war hero to a vet that we use a lot, not because we like them, but because they are close by, open twenty-four hours, and treat birds. Emma is indignant and unhappy and obviously in a lot of pain, but she is feisty and pretty energetic for a hen with a giant piece of flesh torn out of her backside.

Immediately, I start to see red flags. They warn me that Emma might have to be put down because, if she was bitten by a raccoon, she might have rabies. Chickens get rabies so rarely, I don’t believe it’s ever happened in the US; the CDC claims chickens can’t get it. Because they don’t have saliva, they can’t transmit it if they do get it. Then, they tell me that there is nothing they can do. They can’t stitch her up. They strongly recommend that we put her down because chickens don’t survive injuries like this. They tell me she is “dumpy” — meaning withdrawn and low energy, seen in dying birds but also in ones that are just in a lot of pain — and that she cannot recover from this.

I have seen many chickens die. Emma does not strike me as a dying chicken. My husband and I agree that we cannot leave Emma with this vet. They’re quoting me $1,400 for an overnight stay, which is bad enough, but they’re recommending euthanasia so strongly that they make me sign paperwork saying that I am refusing the recommended treatment against medical advice. We both feel that if the vet there feels so strongly in favor of euthanasia, Emma will not survive the night.

There’s another vet that takes birds forty-five minutes away from my house and they’re not open twenty-four-seven. I demand my bird back. She has had no treatment aside from her wound being washed. They give me antibiotics and painkillers to give her but they have not given her anything for pain or wound treatment themselves. And by the time they finally hand her over, it’s fifty minutes until the other vet closes.

I drive like a bat out of h*** to the other vet and show up minutes before closing. They check her in and take her back immediately for wound care and painkillers. After about half an hour, the vet comes to see me. He wants to do surgery on her in the morning. He says that chickens are one of the toughest birds out there and he’s seen chickens live through worse. And the cost of surgery and an overnight stay is going to be like $350.

Emma has a long and tedious recovery, penned in our house because other chickens will attack a bloody wound. We have to give her antibiotics and painkillers by hand for twenty days, and she has to go back three times for dressing changes and once for an additional surgery, but for a sum total of around $600, I end up with a healthy if cranky chicken whose feathers have grown back so you can’t even see her wound, who is still laying eggs despite the injury to her butt, and who is once again Top Bird in the pecking order around here.

I’m never taking a bird to the first vet again if I can help it.