Recently, [Coworker #1]’s son was sucker-punched and ended up with a concussion. (He has since recovered.) The day after it happened, [Coworker #1] was, of course, worried about him. I reassured her and related a story about my cousin, who was randomly sucker-punched when he was taking trash out to the garbage bin. It was scary; he lost consciousness and came to in a neighbor’s yard. We still don’t know who did it or why, but my cousin did make a full recovery. Hearing that helped [Coworker #1] to be hopeful about her son’s recovery.

As I was explaining what happened to my cousin, a second coworker overheard and butted in.

Coworker #2: “He passed out? Did he get the [health crisis] vaccine? There are so many reports of strange side effects! That’s why I’m not getting it.”

Me: “He’s fully vaccinated, yes — and so are most members of my family. No one’s had a stronger side effect than tiredness and a sore arm. My cousin was randomly jumped and attacked. I really don’t think that’s a side effect of any vaccine.”

She said something about hoping he recovered quickly and dashed off. 

Side effects can happen; anything strong enough to have an effect is strong enough to have a side effect. But grasping at straws for confirmation bias is ridiculous!

Back in seventh grade (ages twelve to thirteen or so), my class was working on an assignment. The teacher, a young man in his early twenties, was grading papers.

A female student approached him to ask a question. Keep in mind, this is the age when most girls have started menstruation, and their cycles can be very unpredictable, so some are caught off guard when a period starts. All the middle school teachers knew this. Some also kept a stash of supplies for those who needed them — although, due to construction at the school, class was being held outside, so there was no access to supply closets.

Student: “Mr. [Teacher], I need to leave for a bit.”

Teacher: “Is everything okay?”

Student: “I just have this huge, bloody, sticky, messy…”

The teacher was looking progressively more awkward and uncomfortable until she concluded:

Student: “…itchy mosquito bite. I scratched it, and I need to clean it up.”

[Teacher] let out the breath he’d been holding.

Teacher: “Of course! Stop by the office and grab a couple of Band-Aids, too.”

His relief was palpable!

I used to work for a third-party IT company, and part of my contract was that I was the onsite IT person for one of our clients. I was at work one day when a user came up to my desk. I was in the middle of something for a user based out of a different location, so I half-acknowledged her but worked on what I could until I was at a natural stopping point.

Me: “Hey, sorry about that. What’s up?”

User: *Just this side of huffy* “Yeah, you guys didn’t finish [New Hire]’s computer. She’s missing her E: drive.”

Me: “She should have mapped everything when she signed in. It’s on the list of drives that’s sent out.”

Because there were multiple shares used across the company, in their training document, each department had a section with their various drives and links to said drive and then the steps to actually map it. We’d had an automated setup at one point, but before I started, several people raised a stink about it, so it was changed to the training and the links. Don’t ask why that was smarter/easier — especially since nothing was actually locked down (don’t get me started), so it wasn’t like there’d be a permissions issue if someone accidentally grabbed the wrong link.

User: “Well, it didn’t! So, you need to map her E: drive.”

Me: “Okay. I’m in the middle of something, but I’ll be over there when I’m done.”

She seemed to barely refrain from stomping her foot, rolled her eyes, and walked away. I finished what I was doing and headed over to their area.

Me: “Hey, [New Hire], I heard you’re missing your E: drive?”

New Hire: “Yeah, I’ve got all these drives, but none of them are the E: drive.”

Me: “Okay, let me double-check something.”

I grabbed her computer, pulled up the training, and navigated to the path for the E: drive. As I was starting to map it, I noticed something.

Me: “Oh, you’ve got it right here. You accidentally mapped it as the G: drive instead of the E: drive. But it’s still the same drive. See?”

I opened the drive and showed her that all the documents were the ones she needed. The user who’d originally requested my assistance came and hovered over my shoulder.

User: “It needs to be the E: drive. She doesn’t have access, otherwise.”

Me: “Actually, she does have access, see? It’s the same folder; she just saved it to a different drive locally. In this situation, the letter is really functioning as a shortcut or bookmark. She’s still got access to the E: drive; hers just says G: instead. It’s still the same.”

User: “No. She needs to get access to the E: drive. I don’t know why you didn’t do this for her before.”

I was biting my tongue something fierce, trying not to point out that: A) we didn’t actually map any of the drives, B) it was still the same drive, and c) she was actually one of the people upset about the automation, so she was part of the reason why people had to map the drives themselves.

Me: “She does have access; it’s just under G instead of E. The only difference is the letter; otherwise, she’s got all the documents. See?”

I closed and reopened the file explorer to demonstrate, and [New Hire] seemed to get it, but [User] wasn’t having it.

User: “She needs access to the E: drive!”

I didn’t bother arguing with her anymore. I unmapped the drive from [New Hire]’s G: and remapped it to E:. [User] smirked her way back to her desk, and I rolled my eyes as I went back to mine.

I’m not sure what it was, but in the time I was there, I got the feeling that [User] didn’t like me all that much, but I honestly have no clue what I did to set her off. I didn’t bother to find out, either, because I was focused more on getting out of that job. Luckily, I only had to deal with her for about nine months in total.

After hearing so many stories about teachers and other authority figures who won’t let students use the bathroom in school, I wanted to tell this story about my first day of third grade, back in the early 1990s. My teacher was laying out the ground rules and expectations for the year.

Teacher: “And if any of you need to use the bathroom, raise your hand. I’ll call on you, you tell me what’s going on, and I’ll excuse you. But! If it’s an emergency, just go. Yell that you have an emergency on the way to the bathroom. If anyone tries to stop you in the hallway, just say that it’s an emergency and go to the bathroom. I’ll help you deal with it after.”

She sighed deeply and continued.

Teacher: “I say this because, in my first year of teaching, my class was working on an assignment. I told anyone who had a question about it to line up at my desk and I’d help. One little girl, a very sweet girl who never caused any trouble and always wanted to do the right thing, got at the end of the long line. She waited and waited while I helped the students in front of her. When it was her turn, she started to tell me that she didn’t feel well, and threw up all over me. So, if it’s an emergency… just go!”

I’m a school bus driver. The school district uses a program to help create the routes, and most of the time, it works great. But it has some strange notions at times: make a U-turn on a three-lane main road on a military base in a full-size bus? I don’t think so. This is why we review our routes at the start of the school year, or whenever changes are made, to catch little surprises like that. I noticed a few and was showing a coworker.

Me: “Look, the route for the first school has you drive down this road, turn onto a side street, go a quarter mile, circle the cul-de-sac, and then turn to go the exact same way down the road. There’s no point; there aren’t any students there and you don’t need to turn around at all.”

Coworker: “I’d just cross that out.”

Me: “I agree. And here! For the next school, it has me picking up a student at 8:55, and then driving four miles through residential streets and picking up another student also at 8:55.”

Coworker: *Facetiously* “No, that’s fine. The first student is at the beginning of the minute, and then you have fifty-nine seconds to get to the second student at the end of the minute. It makes perfect sense!”