Me? One time I had a job prospect. So did another guy who happened to be a friend of mine. We were not allowed to share any information about the job with each other. But we saw each other socially quite often. I told my friend that I would always uphold the rules imposed (i.e. no discussion about the job) and he also agreed. Nevertheless, the client determined, independently, that information sharing had taken place and rejected both of us.
I think I know how the false determination was made - it was because both I and my friend were so much of the same mind that we did our job the same way. And that might have looked like information was being shared.
Quite often a teacher accused me of things that I didn’t do, some of which I got punished for. I would say their accuracy of blaming me correctly was about 10% as I did things differently than they expected, and usually nothing wrong with what I was doing, but differently from the normal and their normal assumptions. Many such times I was amazed of how the teacher would even come up with the things they said I was doing as they were things that never even entered my mind.
One such time was 2nd grade where we had a math test/quiz and I just got a belt to wear that week and needed to adjust it. My teacher accused me of cheating using a pen with a multiplication table on it inside my desk. I tried to tell her what I was doing and what she accused me of didn’t even make sense as the test was on subtraction and that pen would be of no help anyway. I got graded with ‘cheated’ noted on it.
Accused of panty raiding a girls cabin at a coed church camp as a youth. Offered to let them search my stuff, asked to be provided witnessed to my supposed wrong doing etc. Nope, none of that happened, instead I was segregated from the rest of the camp for the night until my parents could come get me the next day. That was the day I realized my mom was an Avenging Angel of Wrath and Justice and whooooo boy she gets LOUD. My best friend at the time told me camp closed early that year.
When I was a freshman, An eyewitness told security that I broke into the popcorn machine. I began to believe it, after all there was an eye witness. I checked my mouth for popcorn kernels. Nothing.
When I was about 10 My friend’s little sister accused me of calling her a name and pushing her down. I don’t know if she had me confused with some other kid but I had done no such thing. Her parents confronted me in their living room. Even though I denied it and attempted to help figure out what the deal was they cut me off, demanded I apologize, and sent me home.
I was so angry about it, never told my parents about it, and absolutely hated my friend’s parents from that point on. Their abuse of being the adults in that position, willful ignorance of trying to get the facts, and their smug look when getting me to confess just ticked me off to no end.
Years later I guess karma came calling when the parents decided to make the whole family Jehovah’s Witnesses, two of their three now high school kids rebelled and left the family including the daughter who had drug problems and became a teenage single mom.
The whole family became one big mess and it was so clear to me how much damage a mix of ignorance and arrogance could do.
I was on a renovation job at an eastern European embassy, leading a team of construction guys. My employer was extremely stingy with overtime, so it was basically a 40 hour week. There was an embassy employee who, for some reason, was envious of us, probably because he was a part-time spouse employee and wasn’t making the money we were. Anyway, he contacted our boss and accused us of claiming overtime that we didn’t work. A silly accusation, as our boss had to approve any and all OT, of which we had only gotten six hours in six months. Still, when we got back to our home office, I was suspended for three days “pending further investigation”.
Several to choose from, sadly, but the absolute most maddening was the time in seventh grade when I was sent to SIR (the Self-Improvement Room, what other places would have called in-school suspension). Yes, I was there for something I did do, no argument. The room, considering it’s purpose and clientele, was arranged ignorantly in two rows of study carrels down the middle of the room, in such a way that one entire row was 100% visible to the teacher in charge and the other row was 0% visible.
Because my attendance put the room at 1 person over half-full, I got put on the side she could not see. Alone on the side she could not see.
At some point, someone in the room adjusted their chair, making an admittedly loud, shrill sound. Which the teacher heard as a whistle being blown. And because she could see everyone but me and hadn’t seen a whistle, obviously I was the one who blew it. She read me the riot act. But she never searched for a whistle. She never asked me to turn out my book back, my pockets, anything. She thought she heard a whistle which didn’t exist, she assumed I blew it despite not having it because it didn’t exist, and I got (IIRC) an extra day in SIR because of it.
In highschool my Mother’s first cousin was the Principal. He took a certain perverse pleasure in keeping his eye on me and my sibs. At one time there was one each of us in 8th tthru 12th grade. So happpens I was a Sophomore. Me and my Junior sister were both Cheerleaders. It was a game day. We had a pep rally every Friday at 2pm. I had to make up a math quiz so I was late to the rally. My teacher put the test in front of me. She had hall duty she told me to put the test on her desk when I finished. I answered the 10 problems quickly. I was standing at her desk trying to decide where to put the paper, so she’d find it. Principal Cousin walked by and demanded to know why I was in a classroom instead of at the Pep Rally. He never gave me a chance to explain. Short of grabbing my ear, he marched me to his office. Lecturing me the whole way. I had a perfectly valid excuse but he wouldn’t listen to me. It took two days, the teacher, and my Daddy making a trip to school to get this arrogant ass to hear.
I never did anything wrong. He accused me of stealing, lying, cheating and even vandalism. My Daddy was livid.
My Marine Corps D.I. Dad fixed the problem in…idk…10mins.
Principal Cousin Meany-pants never forgave me.
Years ago. The job entailed printing checks on a printer. We start printing checks, line up the checks so it prints in right spot, restart the checks and void out the “practice” checks.
I was new. One time the manager told the lead to work on something else and let me do everything, including the checks.
I start the checks, but the lead decides to help and takes the checks off, and doesn’t void out the practice checks. They get sent out and some of them were cashed.
Manager talks to us about it. The lead reminded the manager that this was the time that I did everything. I said that the lead “helped” and took the checks off the printer and sent them on. He denied it.
It was my word against his. He was the experienced lead. I was the new kid on the block. The manager believed him.
There wasn’t a punishment but was told that if anything happened again I would lose my job. (nothing else did)
I worked for a large coffee company managing the truck fleet. The owner of the company asked me if I would be willing to transfer to the coffee production line to see if I could straighten it out. He was having big problems getting out the product. The machines were old and badly maintained. I wrote to the factories who built the machines and ordered manuals on all of them. Went through each machine one by one overhauling them and created a small parts dept for spare parts as well as establishing a maintenance program. In less than 2 months I had upgraded all the machines and they were running well enough that the entire second shift and all overtime was no longer needed. My boss became very jealous thinking I was after his job and told the owner he suspected me of stealing because I was coming in early each morning before anyone else arrived. My keys were taken away. I came in early to warm up all the machines so they would be ready when the girls started their shift. After constant harassment from the boss I lost my temper and cussed him out and was fired. I had a perfect record with the company for 15 years.
My brother was an addict and stole family money, jewelry, whatever he could get trade for drugs. In college, my mother let me wear her gold bracelet for a special occasion. She accused me of losing it when I couldn’t find it after the party. Thirty years later my brother confessed to stealing it. My mother never apologized to me.
HS freshman. My assigned lunch table was left in a terrible mess one day. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. We all got detentions.
On another occasion I did avoid punishment. We were allowed three minor latenesses (up to 3 minutes) per term. I needed them because I used a bus and two subways to get to school and couldn’t always quite make it. One term, I was called to the Vice-principal’s office. He greeted me with great glee because, he claimed, I had been late 4 times and therefore he could give me a detention (which obivously made his day). So he started going through the late slips in front of them, one a time. Until he got to no. 4 which was for a different student of the same last name. He was so disappointed I almost felt sorry for him. Prick.
Once, way back when I was married, I wanted to go to the local “hot spot” bar on a Saturday night. I tried to talk the wife into it for quite a while. She was not into it and suggested I just go by myself. So I go and the only person I know there is a guy I knew through the wife. They were classmates and though I didn’t know him well, he recognized me and invited me to join his group. I sit at the large table and there is a couple amongst us. The guy is the bass player in the band that is playing that night and she is pretty lit up. The guy joins the band when they start and the girl grabs me and say’s “We’re gonna dance.” I hate dancing. I just never enjoyed it and any time I do, I can’t wait for it to be over. She was pretty and insistent and overcame my objections because hey, it’s an uptempo song and it can’t last too long. As soon as we hit the dance floor the band shifts to a slow dance song and I head for my seat but she grabs me and now we are slow dancing. I had my one hand holding hers and the other was chastely positioned on her upper back. She reaches around, grabs my hand and moves it to her ass. Like really, really in her butt crack! Did I mention she was wearing a short tight dress? Yikes! I immediately look to her bass player boyfriend and while holding down the bass line, he’s also looking right at me with a huge smile and manages a thumbs up.
I’m beginning to suspect they are not true blue sweethearts or maybe they are swingers or something. So we finish the dance and rather than heading back to the table I head for the restroom and I’m almost there when suddenly, without warning, I get punched in the face. Hard. In front of a lot of people. People that were laughing. By my wife, who had decided to swing by after all.
Honestly, our marriage was spiraling downward at that point and I was kind of thrilled that she was jealous. It gave me some hope. She threw that back in my face a few times. Didn’t matter in the long run.
My mother had a large antique wooden storage box with a hinged lid that she loved - I no longer recall what its original purpose was but she used it as a clothes hamper.
When I was three and had just been living with my parents as a foster child for a few days, my mother noticed a scratch on the lid of the hamper. She accused me of doing it, and my denials were useless. She badgered and screamed and threatened, and put words in my mouth - “I know you did it! How? Did you scratch it with a hairpin?!?”
It was so terrifying that after repeatedly denying I had done anything, and not being believed, I finally admitted to the crime I didn’t commit: “Yes! I did it! With a hairpin, just like you said.” I was smacked for my transgression.
When my father got home from work that night, she showed him the evil thing I had done. He said, “Oh heck, that wasn’t CairoCarol - the cat did that this morning while I was shaving.”
Now, memory is imperfect, and I was so young when it happened, so maybe this story did not unfold exactly as I recall it. But my recollection is that she just said, “Oh, okay” but never apologized to me.
That didn’t get our relationship off to a good start. You won’t be surprised to hear that we were never close - I was pretty much scared and resentful of her til the day she died, more than five decades later.
I was accused of inadvertently destroying someone’s PDP/11 computer. I assumed that I was guilty as charged and endured months of anger from him and guilt from myself. About a year later, I sheepishly asked for my interface board that supposedly destroyed the computer. He told me that he had thrown it in a corner of his lab and never wanted to see it again. When I went to search for it, I found some other boards but not my own. On a hunch, I opened the back door of the computer (remember when minicomputers were so big you could go inside?) and discovered that my board was still installed and working perfectly in the repaired computer. It was a relief to know that I was falsely accused.
In grade school my family moved from a farm in a very rural environment to a more suburban environment, so there were many things that just weren’t part of my background and came as a rude surprise.
One fine day in 5th grade a girl got in my face about something, and as I was always getting into fights, the teacher immediately came over to yell at me.
She looked him square in the face and, lying, said “he called me a n*****” (she was black and I’m white)
That was a stunning moment for me, as I had never even heard this word before, and the instant effect it had on my teacher’s treatment of me was astonishing. I’m sure you can imagine how that classroom scene played out.
This was an injustice that left a lifelong impression.
I got in trouble as a kid when a nun came around to make sure our desk tops were clean, and just before she came to mine, kid across the aisle scribbled on it. Nun wouldn’t listen to me. It got uglier from there.
Once I worked at the admissions desk in a small hospital. There was a cash drawer for the occasional situation where we had to make change. Supervisor accused me of stealing $10 from the drawer. I hadn’t. My conscience looks like The Incredible Hulk, so it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. Eventually, he grudgingly let me go. Fast-forward two years. Supervisor gets arrested for embezzling funds from the department, $10 and $20 at a time.