I’m a med student. A couple of months ago, my flatmate went abroad for a year. She had been tutoring a boy in English and German (we’re German), and the boy’s mother asked her if she knew anybody who could replace her while she was gone. As I’ve done some tutoring before and I’m fairly good at English and German, my flatmate asked me, and I agreed.

When I started, the mother asked me if I could also tutor her son in maths. They used to have another tutor for that, but she had moved cities recently. I’m not particularly good at maths, but the boy is only in fifth grade (ten or eleven years old in Germany), so I said I’d try.

However, it became frustrating very quickly. At first, I seriously wondered how he’d made it to fifth grade because he couldn’t even do basic addition. I could tell fairly quickly that it definitely wasn’t due to lack of will or laziness; he simply couldn’t understand numbers at all. For example, they were learning about fractions at the time, and he couldn’t envision at all what the difference between 2/3 and 3/2 was.

I had heard about dyscalculia before, so I did some tests with him like asking him to tell time on an analog clock (he was unable to), making him solve a list of addition and subtraction problems in which each was repeated three or four times (different results for all of them), asking him to tell me which of two numbers is larger (mostly unable to), etc. I honestly wondered how neither his parents nor his teachers had ever noticed anything.

I didn’t want to keep getting money for a job I couldn’t do, so I sat his mother down after a tutoring session.

Me: “Your son has such massive issues in maths that I’m in no way qualified to help him. He shows a lot of signs of dyscalculia, and while I’m not a professional and that doesn’t mean he has it, I would suggest having him checked by a professional and organizing a professional tutor, not some med student who knows nothing about teaching kids with more serious troubles in school.”

She got ANGRY.

Mother: “Get your f****** shoes and get the f*** out of my house!”

Me: “What did I do?!”

Mother: “I will not tolerate strangers telling me that my son is dim-witted or stupid! This is a normal and honorable family.”

Me: “I’m saying the total opposite of that. Your son having that condition would be nobody’s fault, and he just needs specialized help, which is anything but dishonorable.”

Mother: “I’m going to call the head of your university! Someone like you is totally unfit to treat patients if you call all of them idiots. An arrogant b**** like you shouldn’t be let loose in a hospital!”

I knew she couldn’t realistically do anything, but it still hurt to hear. I didn’t reply anymore at that point and just took my things and left. I haven’t heard from her again — or from my uni, for that matter! — but I do feel very sorry for her son because it doesn’t seem like she will get him the help he needs.

I am working for an eCommerce company that sells online courses. One of our USPs [Unique Selling Points] is the fact that we offer a one-hour free tutor service if you purchase a course. One day, my boss came to me.

Boss: “Please create a page for this category and list these products.”

Before I started to create the page, I noticed that the company didn’t have any tutors for this specific category.

Me: “We’re not gonna offer the Mentor service, right? Since we don’t have any tutors for this category at the moment.”

Boss: “No, we are going to advertise with the service even if we don’t have a tutor at the moment.”

Me: “You do know that we can be sued by a client, right?”

Boss: “What’s the problem?”

Guess it’s time for me to find a new job.

I am working as a math tutor part-time while I’m taking online classes. Our department chair who oversees my boss is often unreasonable and unkind to us, as most of us do not have more than an associate’s degree. But this story really gave me a warning to get out of the place.

Due to a botched adenoid surgery I had as a toddler, I am prone to horrific sinus infections that cause unbelievable amounts of pain and can quickly progress to the point where I have to go to the ER. On this particular day, I woke up feeling the beginning signs, and throughout the day they worsened to the point that the over-the-counter painkillers I had in my purse did nothing.

My shift ended and I clocked out, intending to go to Urgent Care for antibiotics and painkillers. But on my way out, the department head stopped me.

Department Head: “I need you to go outside the testing room and watch a student we think is cheating.”

Students have up to two hours to complete a test, meaning I could potentially be in pain in the hall the entire time.

Me: “I’m sorry, but I’m on my way to urgent care. Maybe [Coworker] can do it?”

Department Head: “No, he doesn’t look like a student. We need you to do it. “

Me: “I have a really bad sinus infection and I really need to get to urgent care.”

Department Head: “I’m sorry you scheduled a doctor’s appointment so close to your work hours, but you should have expected that you might have to stay after.”

Nowhere in my contract does it say this. Hours are sent out the week before, and excepting illness or emergency, they are set in stone.

Me: “[Department Head], I’m really sorry I can’t help, but I’m in extreme pain and I really need to get medical attention.”

Department Head: “You seem to be perfectly fine to me. But if you won’t do it, I guess I’ll find someone.”

I got the heck out of there and rushed to Urgent Care where I was given antibiotics and prescription painkillers. I was also given a note not to go to work the next day, as I needed to be resting. 

The next week, I found that my hours had been cut to half their usual, leaving the tutoring center short-staffed. When I asked my boss if I could work more hours to help, she told me that [Department Head] had asked her to “shorten my schedule due to my medical emergency”.

This persisted for another week, with the short-staffing continuing as many tutors were students and had set up their work schedules around their classes and studying. Then, suddenly, I was back to my full hours.

This is only the first story I could tell about this place, and I finally ended up quitting when they refused to do anything about workplace harassment because the harasser was [Department Head]’s friend.

During my last year of college, in the early oughts, I used to work in a campus computer lab as a tutor/technician. My job was to perform routine maintenance on the computers and help the students and teachers who needed assistance. It was pretty simple; people could book a time slot in advance, and then there were a few computers that could be used on a first-come-first-served basis for quick errands like checking email or making printouts. Since both the students and their teachers were notoriously bad at planning ahead and always expected this to be everybody else’s problem but their own, there was always a line to those computers.

One beautiful afternoon, I need to make a routine update on one of the “quick errand” computers. I know the program will take a while to run, so I write a large note which I tape up so it covers almost the entire screen with the message, “Update in progress. DO NOT TOUCH.” Then, I go about my usual tasks, helping people with whatever they need help with.

After a while, I notice a student sitting at the computer I’m doing maintenance on, so I walk up to them. They have removed my note, shut down my update, and are on the Internet.

Me: “Sorry, what are you doing?”

Student: “I just need to check my email. No one was sitting here so that means I get to use it, right?”

Me: “No, I was trying to update it. Now I have to start over from the beginning. Didn’t you see the note I put up?”

Student: “Oh, I was in a hurry. I didn’t think it was important.”

Me: “Well, it was. You’ll have to wait your turn on one of the other computers or book one in advance.”

I shoo them off, restart the update, put up a new sign, and go back to what I was doing. Five minutes pass, and when I look up from what I’m doing, I notice another person sitting at the computer I’m working on. This time, it’s a teacher.

Me: “Excuse me, you can’t use this computer right now. I’m doing maintenance on it. Didn’t you see the sign?”

Teacher: “Oh, it’s all right. I just need to make a few printouts; the printer in my office doesn’t work. I really need to get this done before my class starts. It won’t do any harm, right?”

Me: “Actually, I was running an update on it, and this is the second time I’m going to have to start over because people can’t leave it alone.”

Teacher: “Really, how bad could it be? I need to get this done for my students. It’s not the end of the world.”

I look at the teacher. I look at the flash drive they’ve got plugged in. Then, I look back at the teacher.

Me: “Do you know which program I am trying to update?”

Teacher: “No, what?”

Me: “The security software. It stopped working on this computer. I wouldn’t plug that drive in anywhere else if I were you.”

The teacher went pale, snatched the drive out, and fled.

To be honest, it probably wasn’t that bad. It really was a routine update, but I was fed up with people not being able to follow very simple written instructions.

In the end, I shut down the computer, removed the power cord so no one could try to restart it, and waited for my coworker to come in for their shift. I then stayed behind for half an hour so I could finish the update while guarding the computer like an extremely vicious computer watchdog.

It’s probably been about twenty years since, but I still marvel at the fact that so many people with an upper-level education seem to be completely unable to read a simple sign.

I worked as a tutor in my mid-twenties at the same time that I was starting to experience symptoms of chronic illness. As I was trying to find ways to adapt to my disability, I would occasionally have kids ask about what was going on. One student, a third-grader, was especially curious.

Student: “Why are you using that really fat pen?”

Me: “I have something called arthritis, where my hands hurt when I have to hold things that are small for too long. The big pen makes it easier for me.”

Student: “I thought that was something old people got, like my grandma. You’re not an old lady!”

Me: *Jokingly* “Oh, you got me. I’m actually a secret old lady.”

When I started wearing compression gloves, the same student wanted to know why.

Student: “Why are you wearing those weird gloves?”

Me: “Well, you know how I told you my hands hurt sometimes when I write?”

Student: “’Cause you’re a secret old lady?”

Me: “Um, right. These help with my hands, too.”

One day, I showed up to work with a cane. It was a big deal to me; I’d been hoping for months that I’d find the right medication before I needed to start relying on mobility aids.

The third-grader was in the lobby when I walked in and gaped at me.

Student: “Why do you have a cane?”