This story reminds me of a history teacher I had. He was SO strict, everyone was terrified of him. And his wife — a French teacher at the same school — was worse. Terrible bullies, the pair of them. But, for some reason, he REALLY hated me.

We had him for the first period after lunch, in a “terrapin block” — a set of “temporary” classrooms, set up on brick plinths on some waste ground beside the main school buildings. To access the classroom, you had to go up a set of steep concrete stairs. Because we couldn’t be trusted — naturally, as we were school children — the school mandated that these classrooms must be locked at break times. The first teacher in the room after break had to collect the key from the office and unlock the classrooms.

One day, [History Teacher] was very late. We were all queued up on the steps but stood to either side to allow him free access to the door. He made us line up with girls to the left (because they should be LEFT out of his lessons) and the boys to the right (because they were always RIGHT in his lessons); his reasons, as stated to us, are given in parentheses.

I happened to be at the front. Some of the other girls in the class were pushing each other forward, and therefore into me. I was using the door handle to anchor myself to push back against them, so as not to get in trouble with [History Teacher] by being on the right. He eventually came along.

History Teacher: *Very snappily* “I can’t possibly access the lock if you have your hand on the door handle.”

The lock was readily accessible. I tried to explain, but he cut me off.

History Teacher: *Angrily* “Remove your hand from the door!”

So, I did.

And just at that moment, one of the girls gave an almighty shove to the girl in front of her, who barrelled into me, causing me to barge into the teacher, knocking him off his feet, as he was completely unprepared.

He tried to give me a detention for that one, but the teacher in the adjoining terrapin confirmed my story — that I had tried to warn him and then done exactly as he told me — so that went nowhere. I don’t think it made him like me any more than before, though.

Related:
When You Wish They’d Cool Off A Bit

My boss used to be a teacher in IT at university. He had the weirdest quirk for a teacher — at least compared to my own student experience.

During any written (noted) assignment, students were allowed to ask him any question they wanted, and he would answer them legitimately and correctly. In exchange, he would dock an amount of points depending on the importance of the answer.

His reason: in IT, when you are locked, you pay for a consultant. So, in order to prepare his students for real life, he applied the same principle.

I had a similar interaction to the one in this story with my senior-year English teacher. She hated me. She once pulled me aside after class to accuse me of doodling the entire time. We were reading “Hamlet” at the time, and even though her interpretations of everything were always way off, I knew that if my answers didn’t match hers, I’d be “wrong”. So, I made a point of taking copious notes that day.

This was in 2000 or 2001, so the days of black notebook paper, which I was using. She couldn’t read it, but she could tell she’d been wrong, and she looked like I’d made her eat s***. She very grudgingly let me off with:

Teacher: “Well… as long as you can read it.”

Me: *Happily* “I can!”

And I mentally flipped her off on my way out the door.

Related:
When You Wish They’d Cool Off A Bit

I work as a tech support guy in an elementary school. One day, I was asked by an older female teacher (probably fifty-five or older) why her projector wasn’t working and if I could come take a look.

I arrived and found that it wasn’t even plugged in.

Me: “Where is the plug?”

Teacher: “I don’t have it.”

Me: “Oh, that’s okay. I can probably get you a new plug, but I need to find one. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.”

But she wasn’t having any of it. She insisted that I make the projector work wirelessly and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Me: “That simply isn’t possible. Wireless electricity hasn’t been invented yet.”

She refused to listen. Then, she took out her phone.

Teacher: “If my phone can connect to the Wi-Fi wirelessly, why can’t the projector?”

I had to explain that Wi-Fi and electricity are different things, but she became angry and started threatening to report me to the principal.

I tried to remain calm and explained the situation to her again, but she refused to listen and accused me of being incompetent.

Eventually, I had to leave the classroom without solving her problem. It was a frustrating experience, but sometimes there’s just no way to make things work the way people want them to.

I later spoke to the principal and explained the situation to her, and luckily, she understood that the teacher’s request was unreasonable.

I work as a tech engineer for primary schools. Here I am, about three years ago, just promoted to Network Engineer from a service desk position, sent out to set up new Wi-Fi access points (APs) for a customer. The ticket states that their alarm system is fickle and I should steer clear of it.

No biggie: five APs. That’s about an hour of work, including configuring SSIDs and checking if they are placed conform to Sitesurvey. I send commands into one and… no connection. I check the IP I got from the DHCP server and it’s off.

Off to the patch cabinet, and lo and behold: in a world where 90% of all primary school devices use Wi-Fi, and 10/100 switches are a thing of the past, I find a 1000mbit fiber switch, functioning as a core switch to a stack of 10/100 UTP switches. Our firewall can be found here, as well, but no devices I can think of that could produce a second DHCP server.

So, I set a static IP in the subnet I got from this rogue DHCP server, and I manage to find a Gigaset VoIP box. I log in with the default credentials, and to my shock, it’s actually running a DHCP server and functions as a PPPoE modem toward an Internet connection no one heard of.

This is where the fun starts. I turn off the DHCP function and start configuring my APs. Halfway through, the alarm sets off. The customer is angry because I changed something. I’m flabbergasted.

I decide to go the “make the customer happy” way and go and fix it right this time. So, first things first: how is this alarm system configured? Luckily, VoIP and the alarm were installed by the same provider. Sadly, this provider sold all their alarm customers and all their VoIP customers to another third party. Both were unaware of what was actually installed due to a horrible handover.

The alarm company luckily can tell that they only have systems using IP to manage, and all they should need is a specific open port to the outer world. This goes against the interpretation of our customer, who is 100% sure the alarm uses a phone connection.

The VoIP company doesn’t have any information on the VoIP box I found and decides to just send someone to handle it and document everything to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Since the VoIP box isn’t in use, doesn’t contain any SIP information, and can’t be found, I decide to remove it from the network. These old switches, lacking proper ARP support, make this an old-school “let’s ping this and pull cables” search. But after eliminating this bugger and resetting the alarm and the actually used VoIP system, I’m finally ready to continue configuring the APs.

Done? No. The party that installed the APs neglected the request to remove the old ones from above the ceiling plates, probably due to a lack of documentation. (Note: we were not in charge of the old APs).

So, I track them down and remove these APs, which are covered in crusty mouse droppings. Never have I been so happy with a bar of soap and hand sanitizer.

When packing my stuff to leave, I hear the school head on the phone with one of our Relationship managers, complaining about the fact that I managed to set off the alarm and shouldn’t have touched it.

IT in primary schools is usually sub-par, but this school took the cake and complained about me after I fixed most of their issues, while not even being there for troubleshooting