(It’s that time of year for my annual OBGYN appointment. I don’t remember when it is, but they usually call a week before to confirm. So, I decide to wait for the call. We get a couple weeks down the line, and I realize they haven’t called. So, I call them.)

Me: Hi! My name is [Name], and I’m calling to see when my yearly appointment is.

Receptionist: No problem. Let me pull that up… Oh, your appointment was 3 weeks ago.

Me: But no one called me.

Receptionist: My system shows we did. You’ll need to reschedule, and pay the no-show fee.

Me: Which number did you guys call? Because I got nothing on my cell phone, and that’s the number you use every year.

Receptionist: Let’s see…. It looks like we called [Mom’s Number.]

(This happens occasionally, due to an autoimmune disorder I’ve had since I was little. A couple of my doctors still call my mom, despite me being an adult. She will usually just text me to call [Insert Doctor Here] back.)

Me: That’s my mom’s number, but she didn’t tell me you guys called….

Receptionist: I can check on that too. Hang on… All right, I found the notes from our scheduler. We called your mother’s number, but were unable to leave a message.

Me: And no one thought to call my cell phone, which is the primary number on file?

Receptionist: Huh. Good point. I’m sorry about that. Let’s waive that no-show fee. When would you like to reschedule? I have an opening next week……

(Due to my age and the fact that I do full time study, I get payments from the government. As part of this program, I get a concession card that gets me, among other things, cheaper train fairs. I notice that it’s going to expire in a couple of days, and I’ve heard nothing about renewing it, so I head down to my local branch to sort it out.)

(After a half hour wait, someone finally sees me. They inform me that there’s an online form I’m supposed to fill out from home. She sets me up on a computer to do it. Unfortunately, the website’s acting up, and after spending a good 20 minutes trying to access the form, we give up, and the woman decides to print off the form to do by hand. I receive the form, and it’s quite a stack of papers. It takes me a really long time to work through, and I am constantly having to flag down staff to assist me because it’s very poorly worded. I finally reach the end, where it tells me that I must include a bunch of documents including payslips and bank statements. Obviously I had none of this stuff on me, so I had to go all the way home, print it all off, and come all the way back again. Having now lost a good chunk of my day, I queue up once more to submit it. After another long wait, I finally see someone.)

Staff: “Yes, this all looks in order. You’re good to go. We’ll send out your new card in about a week.”

Me: “Ah sorry, but my card actually expires in two days, and I kind of need it for the trains.”

Staff: “No worries, if you give me a moment, I can print you off a temporary one.”

Me: “Great, thanks.”

Staf: “Huh? It’s not letting me. It says here that you’re card hasn’t expired. It’s still got another year on it. You must have misread it.”

Me: *showing her my card and pointing to the date* “No, it’s expired. See here.”

Staff: “Oh, you’re right. Ah, here we go. It says you’ve already renewed it.”

Me: “No I haven’t.”

Staff: “Says here you have. You must have come in a few weeks ago and filled out all this paperwork. Why did you come in and do it all again?”

Me: “I didn’t. This is the first time I’ve filled that out.”

Staff: “Oh hang on, I think it auto-renews.”

(She slides my paperwork back to me across the desk.)

Staff: “You didn’t need to fill this out. It automatically renewed. Your new card should arrive anytime now. Anything else I can help you with?”

(When I finally got home again, the mail had arrived. My new card was among it.)

A friend of mine has signed up for an English class in college. The teacher did not make syllabi or required reading availiable until the first day of class, but my friend felt pretty comfortable as the class was small and she’s socially anxious.

She soon found out why the class was so small.

Turns out the teacher was on a tenure power trip. His first statement to the class was to say that he has his own rules and invited anybody who doesn’t like them to drop out of the class. My friend cringed, but she really did need to keep her course completion schedule on track so she decided to stay.

Throughout the year, the teacher assigns horrific and/or raunchy books, while requiring students to assess the worst parts of said books with quotes. My friend is made deeply uncomfortable, as the sex scenes are usually disgusting and/or disturbing and she doesn’t really like reading about sex to begin with. Unfortunately, the window for dropping out without failing the class had passed, so she was stuck now. Since all the students are over the age of 18, the school was also unable to fire the teacher for this. The best she could do was get a well-regarded local tutor to help her navigate the situation to at least a passing grade.

The final book and the book required for all of the most important assignments was the worst of the bunch. While the previous books were more horror than sex, this one was straight up literary porn. My friend’s parents won’t even let her repeat the title outside of assignments from the class because it’s so inappropriate, the plot was vapid at best, and richly-described disgusting non-consensual sex happened every chapter. The teacher wanted a detailed literary analysis on the book, and it counted enough to effectively determine a student’s final grade.

My friend is not comfortable with typing up enough quotes in the book to reach the teacher’s quote quota, and especially is not comfortable with using the excerpts the teacher assigned as required parts of the analysis. Nevertheless, she nervously types up a rough draft that fits the requirements and the next day shows it to her tutor. Some good news comes of this– the tutor is equally horrified and discomforted as my friend, encourages her to take out any parts she doesn’t feel comfortable with quoting or analyzing deeply, and volunteers to advocate for her if the teacher raises a fuss about it. From there, they work together to fill in the analysis with the most sterile words they know of that are on topic.

As predicted, the teacher is patronizingly displeased when she comes with an essay that doesn’t fit all the requirements. At this point, she’s frustrated, exhausted, and knows the class is ending soon. So she speaks up. She affirms to the teacher that she is not going to include anything she does not want to, and besides, English was never her best subject anyway so a bad grade isn’t going to break her heart. She gets a glare from the teacher, but he snatches the essay from her and ignores her entirely for the rest of class time.

Her mother gets a phone call that day from the teacher. He demanded that my friend rewrite her essay immediately to fit the requirements or she will be punished for disrespecting him and fail the class. Her mother is very annoyed, but calmly explains that her tutor taught her not to include anything that made her uncomfortable, which happened to be the majority of the assigned book. She invited him to take it up with the tutor if he didn’t believe her, and then called the tutor to warn her that the teacher may call her soon to complain.

I don’t know how or if the conversation with the tutor happened. I know so much that at some point that day after class, the teacher’s brash, rude, and unempathetic attitude towards my friend crumpled enough to net her a B on the essay, which translated into a final grade of a B.

She wasn’t lying either when she said English wasn’t her best subject, though at this point a lot of it related to lack of confidence instead of lack of skills. Ironically, the teacher who tried to demoralize, discomfort, and embarrass her instead paved the way to boosting her confidence in her English skills. Her performance in English became much more consistently good as a result.

There is no one perfect solution to dealing with a power abuser, especially one in a protected position, but in this case standing up to the abuser with advocates on her side was exactly what my friend needed to do. While I would never advocate intentional abuse of power to promote self-growth, it’s important to know as well that long term good can come from short term bad in the most unexpected ways.

( I am a woman currently studying computer science in university. Early on in my first year, I “befriended” a fellow female classmate. She seemed decent enough for the first few weeks, but it did not take long for her to start moaning about how our classes were “sooo hard”, and how it was unfair that our compulsory classes always had a male majority and male lecturers / professors.)

(With chill brothers and Asian parents who wanted me to do well in whatever I study, I never really quite “get” her point of view. However I do know that she was setting off quite a few red flags in my books, so I allowed my introverted self be and skipped out on her partying invites.)

(I was lucky enough to earn some male buddies when I asked them about our assignments. Their kind souls invited me to their friends and self-review study sessions. I learnt a bunch, and they were otherwise polite and understanding as long as I fully explained any issue I had with the codes I ran. It went both ways, though: I “compensated” them by giving them priority in buying the latest video games my brothers grinded through, with a “thanks for being my coding buddy” discount.)

(Fast forward to results day. For two out of four of the compulsory courses, getting a D and lower mandated the professor’s review sessions and re-tests. I floated through with a solid A- average. My female classmate went missing for the last few days of class, when all the professors reminded those affected to sign up for the reviews and re-tests to pick their preferred time-slots.)

(I was off in Singapore to visit my family for the summer right after, and my clumsy ass got my phone buzzing when i dropped it in a puddle. I only got it fixed a week later because the local repair shop – near enough for my dad to drive my license-less butt to – was closed for his own holiday. When I finally synced my messages in my new phone, I was bombarded by messages from my female classmate. She had tried messaging me with great desperation about whether I had to go for reviews like her. Apparently, my name was missing from the list of people shortlisted for review slots, emailed to all those who failed. She had even emailed the professors “on my behalf”, and sent me screenshots of the early morning remedials and late night class reviews she was forced into (in case I wanted to “sneak in”).)

(I guess she got the replies from the professors already, because one of the friendlier profs got back to me the next day of her email confirming that no, I did not have to come and he would kick me out if I tried to sneak in.)

(I’m still in Singapore, but my buddies have already dug up most of the older material for at least one of the compulsory modules we have to take. I’m even helping them code through. So I guess that your gender does not really affect your aptitude in the sciences, huh?)

Context: I am dating a woman with a 6 year old child for about 2 years. We dropped her off at a local school summer camp.

I arrive early to see what shes doing at the camp. I walked along the sidewalk looking over at her playing, while texting her mother on the phone about the playground and how she was having fun.

20 mins later I return to pick her up.

While walking to the car we have this conversation.

Me: “So how was your day?

Child: “Okay, some kids thought you where taking pictures or video of us”

Me: “What??” (shocked by this claim)

Child: “Yeah, I told them I didn’t think so, but that maybe it was my step father. I thought you where busy so I didn’t wanna bother you”

(Shes never referred to me as her step father to other people before, Ive always been the roommate or her mom’s friend)

Me: (Overwhelming joy hits me hard) “Ah, I was just texting your mom to tell her about this camp”

We soon then change the subject and head home.

(I’ve never been so happy to be accused of recording children at a public school’s park in my life. She actually told the other kids I was her stepfather. I must be doing something right after all.)