How badly has someone overreacted to something you did?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Extending on the teacher-stories theme, I thought it would be interesting to share stories about bad overreactions someone (teacher or otherwise) has had to something you took part in, whether it was deserved or not.

I’ll start with a fairly recent one.

To give you a little background info, last year we got a new drama teacher at our school. She’s a wonderful teacher, and easy to relate to since she is in her early twenties. She’s always nice to us, and makes the subject fun. She was one of two drama teachers last year, the other being the Head of Department, who has been at the school forever. This year the HoD took a break and went overseas with her family. She was replaced by a new HoD, who we shall call Satan*.

Our drama class has hardly changed from last year. A handful of people have dropped the subject, and only one person I’m aware of (not including the international exchange student who is here for 6 months) picked it up who hadn’t taken it last year. We got the same teacher this year (the NICE one) so we all knew each other and everyone was happy and we got right into it.

Our first internal of the year was improvisation. It was a really badly thought out unit though, and we were told we would be the last year to do improv this particular way. The way we did it, we were split into groups of 3 or 4 people and each group was given a photo (we got given one of a woman looking all sad at a beach). We then had one period to prepare a loose story behind the photo and the next period we had drama we had to act this out. The reason this didn’t work so well was because one period was enough time to properly plan out the whole thing, so it couldn’t really be considered improv at all. Anyway, this bit went alright. But it was only the first half of the internal. The second half was where it apparently went wrong.

Once again, we were divided into different groups of 3 or 4 people. This time our starter was not a picture but a song. The song happened to be People Are Strange by the Doors. We had to base our scenes around the lyrics of this song, and the message they gave us. I won’t bother going into the details of what some of the people in our class came up with (not that it was even bad at all, just mildly controversial) but I can tell you that Satan (who saw the video of our performances when she was cross-marking them) was Not Pleased.

Now, we could accept that Satan might have had some objections to the topics we based our improvs on. She is, after all, the devil. But what we were not expecting was what took place the next day. We had drama first period. Our lovely, charming, nice teacher had told us she would be off helping the little 3rd formers with something that day so we would have a substitute teacher and would be working on the reflections for our improv internals. You can imagine our surprise when she not only turned up for our class… she spent the whole period yelling at us.

It was like being bitten by a friendly dog. When she left the classroom our class just sat there in stunned silence for a while, before spontaneously erupting in an explosion of injured whinging and accusations. The substitute teacher (who is an English teacher at our school, not an actual sub) looked vaguely amused in an “I’m not here but this is entertaining” sort of way. She must have told every staff member in the school about it (she’s also pretty young, in her late 20’s (?), and quite the talker) because that whole day, every time a teacher recognised someone from my drama class they would refer to the incident. The found it funny. We sure as hell didn’t.

Anyway, as it turned out, over half the class failed. I was one of the only ones (maybe the only one, I’m not too sure) who got a Merit. Which will mean nothing to most of you, as you will be unfamiliar with the NCEA marking system we have here. With NCEA you can get Not Achieved, Achieved, Merit or Excellence, based on certain marking criteria. The system has its flaws, but we’re used to it.

So tell me your stories.
*Note: She isn’t actually that bad, I suppose. She has her nice moments to counter her rages.

2

I’m working night shifts lately, so I never see any of my coworkers in the lab. Last week, one of the usual day people was doing an evening shift and was there when I arrived to take over. I was happy to see her, because it had been a couple of weeks at least. As she left, I said “Well, I hope I get to see you again!”

She whirled around with a shocked look on her face and asked “What did you say??”

She had somehow heard “I hope I never see you again” and thought I was remarkably rude.

I count this as an overreaction because, I mean, why in hell would I have said something so mean? I can’t stand when people mishear something, and even if it makes no sense whatsoever given the context of the conversation, assume their mis-hear was right.

3

Well, I’m quite sure it’s not the worst instance, but the teacher bit reminds me of when I was 13. One of my teachers at the time, a pretty nice guy, saw me before class giving my then-boyfriend (very sweet and innocent relationship) a peck on the cheek as we parted for classes. He ended up keeping me in his class at lunch trying to talk me out of throwing my life away for what seemed like hours. It was Twin Day that day and I missed out on it because of him. I cried at some point but was always aware of how stupid it was, I was a good-ass kid. Makes me laugh now. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

  1. So I saw this really really hawt 13 year old chicky, walking all by herself in an exluded area…

  2. …

  3. Profit

5

When I was 17 I bought my first car. It was an absolute piece of shit - a 1978 Morris Marina, one of the worst cars ever made, and in British car industry terms, that’s saying a lot. It cost me the grand sum of £30. It had rust all over it and big holes in the wings, and a dodgy MOT roadworthy certificate. It was shockingly bad, but I needed wheels and had a low-paying job at a gas station and it was all I could afford - my parents were teaching me a life lesson by not helping out, something I suspect they regretted when they saw this monstrosity parked in the driveway.

One day a cop came into the gas station to fill up his car and I asked him what he’d think if he saw my car driving down the road. He told me he’d bust me on about seven different counts. That’s how bad it was.

Anyway, with the full knowledge that nobody in their right mind would think the car anything other than a rust-bucket death trap, I was driving into my village, and the farmer’s son - a lad my age - was in front of me driving a tractor, which was pulling a trailer full of manure. As the trailer bounced down the road, a few clods of shit fell off it and stuck to my car’s hood. I thought this was hilarious, so I overtook the tractor and shouted “Look what you’ve done to my beautiful car!” and drove off, laughing.

The farmer’s son did not get my funny joke. In fact, he thought I meant what I’d said, and he was outraged. That evening in the local pub he told my friends “if Jim comes in here, I’ll take him out in the parking lot and kick his fucking head in”, “what a cunt”, “if I see him I’ll kill him” and various other unfriendly epithets. My buddies told me this the next day, so I filled them in with my side of the story in the hope that he’d hear this, and in future he’d realise it had been in jest.

The next day, all the tires were down on my car, so I had to spend a good while pumping them up with a foot pump. The next day, they were down again. So the next evening I sat in my darkened bedroom, watching out the window, trying to catch him in the act. After an hour or so I heard rustling in the garden, and shone a spotlight out of the window, illuminating him in the act of stalking across the garden. He ran.

The stalking stopped after that, but I was uneasy for the next few years walking around the village on my own. I’ve never seen or spoken to the guy since, and still don’t want to. I still have no idea what caused him to take such umbrage - perhaps it was an inverted snobbery thing, or perhaps he had just never liked me and was looking for an excuse to rag on me. Pretty unpleasant overreaction, though.

6

Ok, fine. :smack: But the teacher did know the kissee in question!

7

Lots of termoil in my family right now. My brother hasn’t talked to our mother in over a year. The reasons are uninportant other than to say my brother has a huge chip on his shoulder.

Anyway, throughout this my brother, whom I have always been there for tell’s me that “He has always stood alone”. Why? It aparently has someting to do with something I said to him when I was NINE years old over thirty five years ago.

I haven’t the first clue what the hell he is talking about.

8

bundykala (btw, what does that mean?), I suspect Satan may have threatened to fire Nice Teacher if anything like “this” ever happened again. From what you said, it sounds like it is Nice Teacher’s first job out of school, and being fired from it could destroy her career. Even if Satan didn’t threaten, Nice Teacher may fear that any further “screw-up” would result in her being sacked. It’s a lot easier to deal with really bad fears if you can channel them into anger, and it sounds like that’s what Nice Teacher did. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t proportional to the action in question, but if my speculations are correct, it was a perfectly natural reaction to the situation she faced.

9

Just last month, I walked into work about 10 minutes late. I should explain that I was an ESL teacher in Seoul at the time. Class starts at 4, so we’re required to be there by 3:30. I walked in a little after 3:40. For the record, during my 10 months at that school, I was late maybe 5 times in all, and never so late that I was late for the actual class.

Anyway, the AD (assistant director) confonts me as soon as I walk in with a “You are 10 minutes late.” Well, I was, and I wasn’t supposed to be, so I was very apologetic and told her I was very, very sorry and that I’d missed my usual train (which I had, and they come every 15 minutes). Some of my students were already there, hanging around just outside my classroom, but as I approach them the AD suddenly flips out and starts shrieking at the top of her lungs.

“HOW CAN A TEACHER COME TO CLASS LATER THAN HER STUDENTS? THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE! YOUR BEHAVIOR IS GETTING WORSE EVERY DAY, AND I WON’T STAND FOR IT!”

My students were staring at her, open-mouthed and shocked. So was I, actually. “Please, not in front of the students,” I muttered, but she just kept on having a fit about how my tardiness was a bad example and that I would lead my students into lives of immoral debauchery because of it (or something like that; I tried to tune most of it out). I could not believe that A) she would accuse me of bad behavior when I was one of the few teachers in the school who made an effort to prep for class beyond the material we were given, and B) she would humilate me in front of my students in such a manner. Talk about overreacting.

(For the record, I am not defending my being late - I was willing to be yelled at for that, but certainly not in front of my students. When I called her on it after class, she simply snarked at me that I deserved it for being late. :rolleyes: )

10

OOh, boy, none of you had to grow up with my sister! She tends to overreact to pretty much anything, and is a highly dramatic person. “Over the top” was an expression invented just for her!

The episode that comes to mind is the one where my husband first saw her flip her lid over something completely ridiculous - and I was talking about this just yesterday with my brother!

Anyways, a couple of years ago, my father organised a nice big special birthday party for my mom’s 50th, which also sort of doubled as their 30th wedding anniversary party (even though they were really only at 29!) When they got married, my parents used a set of rings that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and my dad has never bought mom a diamond ring. He wanted to do that for this birthday, but he wanted us kids to help him choose it. He asked if we could meet him at a particular store in the mall one weekend afternoon.

The thing is, my husband and I were only there for the long weekend, since at the time we lived in Ontario - basically we’d do the 7-8 hour drive Friday, spend Saturday with one set of parents, Sunday with the other, and drive back to Hamilton on Monday. It was pretty crazy. Because everyone we knew wanted to see us during these trips, we had a lunch planned with an aunt that day, and a dinner with my husbands grandparents. We were a little concerned that between these two events, we might not have time to make it to the mall, so our answer was “we’ll try - it depends on when we can get away from the BBQ at lunch”. It was fairly clear that my dad REALLY wanted us to be there to help choose the gift, but we had so many committments that unfortunately, it didn’t completely depend on us. I told him that I’d do everything I could to be there, but if I couldn’t, it was because of the other family events.

Somehow, my sister took offense at this.

She started ranting about “don’t you love dad? Don’t you love mom? Don’t you want to help them be happy?”(keep in mind, this is their 30th wedding anniversary - they are plenty happy!) to which I answered, “of course I do, but my SO also needs to see HIS family, and make them happy” which… somehow… devloved into her going on about how I “don’t care about anyone in this family, you come all the way from Hamilton and not do anything, you’re the worst sister in the world, all my friends hate you too, I bet you wish I had never been born, you probably wish I was DEAD!” (finishing up as she slammed the front door on her way out to walking the dog).

What?
The?
Fuck?

“I might not have time to make it to the mall”= “I wish my sister was dead”

Yep, that’s the way I see the world! BTW, she would have been about 18 at the time.

As it turned out, my aunt knew about the plan to go to the mall, and since it was basically just her and my grandmother and my family at lunch, it wasn’t something that dragged on for hours, so we were able to make it to the mall, meet up with dad, my sister and my brother, choose a lovely 5-diamond, 50 point ring (50 for her age, 5 diamonds for the family - yay symbolism from the Drama student!), had plenty of time to make it to the grandparents for supper, and two weeks later, surprised the hell out of my mom because we took the time off work to drive back down on a regular weekend to celebrate her birthday.

Crazy sister.

She also (more than once) jumped to the conclusion that “Please don’t use all my tampons and pads - buy your own” = “I hate your guts and wish you were dead”. Growing up with her was a challenge!

11

When I was in high school, I was sick a day and missed gym class. My mother was busy and asked me to write a note excusing my absence, which she would sign. She jokingly said, “For my dear, fabulous daughter.” I thought that was funny, so I put it in the note. The teacher thought it was funny, too. Laughs all around, right?

Mom didn’t think so. When I told her about it, she hit the roof. She said I had humiliated her and that I must hate her to do such a horrible thing. She didn’t even want to look at me, she was so angry. She screamed, she cried, she hollered, she did everything in her power to make me feel as bad as I possibly could.

She eventually “forgave” me, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.

12

A few years ago, I made the mistake of dating a woman I worked with who had asked me out. When it became clear that we weren’t compatible, I tried to end it as diplomatically as possible, but she wasn’t very happy. Not that she was especially crazy about me – she was very controlling, and seemed really mad that I had broken it off, not her.

She took to ridiculing everything I said, and especially enjoyed hinting that I was gay (the old if-you-don’t-want-me-you-must-be-gay canard – always a sign of emotional maturity). E.g., (she was a former Marine) she would show up for a meeting at the conference room and say, “At ease men – you too, F”.

I never responded in kind. I probably should have complained to management, but I have a regrettable tendency to avoid confrontation. Another colleague once volunteered to me that he would be glad to back me up if I did complain.

One day, the water-cooler topic was sexual orientation, and she made a disparing comment about lesbians. I replied, “You’ve got some nerve saying that in those shoes”.

She got so mad, she was almost in tears. Everyone tried to calm her down. Initially, I stuck to my ground: she was making a ruckus out of a comment no worse than she’d dished out to me countless times. But I ended up ‘apologizing’ through gritted teeth when it was clear that she was so upset.

She was later arrested for steroid abuse (she was an amateur bodybuilder), and we surmised her tirade may have been a case of roid rage.

13

An ex-boss I had overreacted to everything. She would cook up elaborate schemes of revenge against people who were perceived to have wronged her in even a very slight fashion. I think she was one of those people who thrived on conflict and was never happy unless she had an “enemy” upon which to wage her little wars.

She was also one of those people who over-interpret everything, often giving it meanings and motives that didn’t exist. If you said, “You look nice today,” she’d brood about it for hours and get angry because you had insulted her by implying that she looked bad every other day and that looking nice was something that was rare enough to cause remark. Then, she’d get back at you for it, and man, she was downright nasty when it came to revenge.

14

This happened last year, in my junior year of high school:

I had been practicing guitar for about a year, and I thought that I might be able to get into the high school jazz band. I went to talk to the Jazz Band instructor, Mr. Harshman (very fitting name), and he said that I should come in the next day to show him what I know.

I came in, and he said that he would be able to talk to me in just a second. I got in tune and plugged into one of the school’s amps (quite loud). I made sure that the volume wasn’t too high.

He came in and said “okay, well, how about you show me an A blues progression?” I knew exactly what he meant and played the 12 bar blues in the key of A. He said "okay, here, how about I show you something. I handed him the guitar. At this point, the amp (or guitar, hard to tell) starts malfunctioning and making strange noises. Eventually, he settles the problem, but in doing so has turned the volume up to an astronomically high level. Maybe an ear-damaged rock star could stand it, but not me, not by a long shot.

He was trying to show me some new chords, ones that I would need to be able to play in Jazz Band. However, the volume was way too high to hear what he was saying, I mean waaay too high. I asked “could you maybe turn that down?” He leaned over (because he couldn’t hear me) and I said “maybe a little less volume?” I was not trying to irritate him at all. I was genuinely interested in learning these chords so that I could join the band.

He immediately (and violently) unplugged the guitar from the amp, handed it back to me, and, in an obviously mocking manner, walked into the other room, shouting (so I could hear him) “Dan! I’m ready!” Dan was evidently someone who had been waiting to speak with him.

I was in shock. I was sixteen years old and some high school teacher had just thrown a fit because I asked to turn the amp down (I was really asking to be able to hear him!)

Eventually, he came back, where he explained that if he was going to take timem out of his day to help me, we were going to do it his way, and if I think he plays too loud, too bad, and blah blah blah.

There were a few people in the room when this happened, and they agreed that he was being an asshole. They told me that he does this sort of thing all the time. I considered writing a letter to the school, but I didn’t get around to it.

I just wanted to hear what he was saying.

15

bundykala = the baby-fied versions of my dogs’ names stuck together.

You’re right, and Nice Teacher told us all pretty much the same thing the next day, and apologised for it. We forgave her, of course, but it was still a bit much considering we hadn’t done anything to jeapordise her career. Satan is very inconsistent with her values, she got us yelled at for bringing up issues normally brought up in drama, and then she goes and comes up with suggestive jokes of a sexual nature for a school production! :eek: We can handle it, but parents can’t. Anyway, we have no respect for her.

I just had my drama exam by the way! It hurt my brain.

16

The OP reminds me of a drama exam I took. The teacher was late, and we couldn’t start without her. We were all getting quite annoyed. When she finally walked in someone asked her why she was late to our exam. She started yelling that she was in a meeting, burst into tears and ran off. This was a teacher who went on and on about “leaving emotional baggage at the door.”

The head of the drama department came in, told us off and basically told us to be nice. The teacher finally came back and we were able to get on with the exam.