What's the most unfair situation you've ever been in?

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was seventeen, it was not a very good year.

I was scheduled to take a student tour of Europe during the summer between eleventh and twelfth grades. I was avidly looking forward to this: a different culture, a chance to travel without my parents, and grow and expand and all that malarkey.

Didn’t quite work out that way.

One day in the spring, I managed to offend a girl who I didn’t know from a hole in the wall, and without intending to, or, in fact, knowing that I had offended her until she informed me. Long story short, I was on the bus that afternoon, and she was sitting behind me, informing me, loudly, everything she planned to do to me: in essence, “whup yo ass like it never be whup befo’.” Well, she had a lot more to say than that, and in fact, the whuppin’ never came off. But in the meantime, a girl who I will call Amy, since that was her name, who was in my French class and also scheduled to go on the tour with me, requested,

“Kick her once for me.”

WTF?

So I go to the French teacher, Mrs. H., who was to be the chaperone on this tour, and told her briefly that Amy had threatened me, and I didn’t want to make an issue of it, but could she please see to it that I did not have to share a room with her.

So what does Mrs. H. do? She goes to Amy about this, and Amy tells me, with complete phony sincerity, that she never said that. Well, I didn’t believe her, but what could I do but accept?

Flash forward to July. We get to the hostel on the first afternoon. Turns out I do have to share a room with Amy, and with one other girl. I think this was a matter of alphabetization; her last name began with T and my maiden name began with S. Upstairs, I flop down on the bed and go out like a light. I wake up and everyone else is gone. (There were 15 of us, including me.) Where? I don’t know. Frantic, I find Mrs. H. and the other chaperone. No, they don’t know where the other girls are, but they should be back soon from wherever they went.

So I go back to the room. And here comes the only thing I ever did wrong. I notice that everyone else flung their toiletries all over the bathroom, like they were in too much of a rush to organize. “I’ll do something nice,” I thought. “I’ll tidy up everything all neat, and that will make the others feel welcome!” (I know it sounds insane. But I did virtually all the housework at my house, so my mom could work; that’s just the way I was conditioned.) And in the process of tidying, I squeezed one of the tubes of toothpaste so that it was neatly rolled from the end, instead of unevenly squashed as it had been.

So the other girls come back; Amy sees her toothpaste and goes into a blue rage. “Who did this? Rilch?! That’s great; that’s just f—ing great! I really appreciate people touching my personal private hygienic things! Rant rave rant rave!” I apologize, of course, through tears, and eventually she quiets down, but I never heard her actually accept the apology.

Flash forward to, I think, three days later. It’s become apparent that all this is, for the other girls, is a shopping trip; that’s all they want to do. I’ve spent the day with two of the girls from the other high school; now, after shopping and dinner, I’m wearied from the effort of fitting in, and am alone in the room writing in my journal.

Knock on the door. In comes another girl, whose name I can’t remember, so I’ll call her Brenda. Can she borrow some paper? Can she borrow more than that? What did I buy today? Why did I buy that? Turns to leave, then, “Why are you in here all by yourself?”

“Because there’s no one with—”

“Why did you spent $1079 to be by yourself?”

“I didn’t know I was going to be by myself! I didn’t know—”

That’s the cue she needs to start deconstructing me. I can’t expect to have friends if I mess with their hygienic things. I can’t expect to have friends if I sleep around. You don’t? Well, I just heard that you slept with a lot of people. (I was, in fact, a virgin, but I think this was just bait to get me to admit that.) And I wasn’t so different, I just tried to act different.

At one point, I did get a chance to speak for myself, and gave a speech not unlike John Candy’s “Me…I like me” speech in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. She listened, or at least kept quiet, then rolled her eyes and said, “Well, that’s easy to say, but…”

Somehow she broke me down to where I agreed to go into the next room with her. Again, it sounds insane, but I was aware that I was disliked, and had to draw the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. And didn’t I want them to help me change?

So we go in there. Amy tells me that I’ve been acting stuck-up, not wanting to be with them. I pointed out that the previous day, I had asked if I could accompany them to the currency exchange. Someone else sneers, “Well, if you keep inviting yourself, you’re going to find that nobody wants you at all.”

So they go on a campaign to tell me how to act exactly like them. This is, of course, a failure, and I go back to alternating between the girls from the other high school, and solitude. I should mention at this point that Amy’s attitude is consistently 100% unpleasant. She hates the tour guide. She’s sick of looking at the Arc D’Triomphe. Mrs. H. is incompetent. She thinks they’re serving us horse meat. She calls her mom back home to complain of this, and her mom calls the hotel to rip Mrs. H. a new one. She wants to spend one night with her aunt, who lives in Paris (why couldn’t she just visit the aunt?), promises to be back by 8 the following morning, and is, of course, late.

Flash forward again to the last night in the Paris hostel, before we go to Switzerland. The other girls want to hang around out front and let guys hit on them. I am tired and go upstairs.

I ask the desk clerk for “101 A”. See, the rooms had wardrobes; if you had wardrobe A, you got the key that opened the room door and the door to that wardrobe. He hands me a key, and only when I get upstairs do I realize that he gave me “101 B”. This is, of course, Amy’s wardrobe. Well, I don’t need to get into my wardrobe, and I’m too tired to go downstairs, so I drop the key on the table and fall out.

At 2am, I get shaken awake. Amy furiously demands, “Did you go into my wardrobe?”

By now thoroughly sick of her crap, I sit bolt upright and reply, “Yes, Amy, I went through everything and I sniffed your panties!” Fall asleep again to the obbligato of “That’s great; that’s just f—ing great…”

Next morning, no one in Amy’s cabal is speaking to me. Much whispering and turning of backs on the bus to Gstaad or wherever we were going. We get to the hostel, and the people assigned to room with me refuse to let me in. Crying aloud, I go to find the tour guide, who gives me asylum to put my bags in his room, as well as a bottle of tonic water to calm me down, while he hunts up the chaperones.

So I’m there for about half an hour. Finally, there’s a knock on the door, and Mrs. H., accompanied by the other chaperone, strides in, saying urgently, “We need to talk to you.”

I should mention at this point that Mrs. H. has known me since I was in ninth grade. I had always thought she had faith in me, and in my integrity. So what came next was like being clawed by your own cat.

“I wasn’t really going to kill myself—” I begin.

“Never mind about that. What happened just now?”

"They wouldn’t let me in to my own room. In fact, that one girl actually said, “F— it; we don’t have that much room.”

“But Rilch, people don’t get these ideas about people just out of nowhere! Amy says you admitted that you used her toothbrush, and you admitted that you went through her things!”

“No, I didn’t! The desk clerk gave me the wrong key!”

“But you said you went through everything!”

“That was sarcasm! I told you, the desk…clerk…gave…me…the…wrong…key!”

“But Rilch! She could have had all her money in there!”

Stunned silence.

“And another girl says you sprayed her with something. (:confused: I guess they had to make up a third strike. Sprayed? I never sprayed anyone with anything.) And really, it wasn’t very ladylike of you to show the others the lingerie that you bought. It made Brenda very uncomfortable.”

More stunned silence.

“Look, we’ve decided that the best thing is for you to be separated from the group from now on.”

Weeping.

“Why is there a scarf hanging from the ceiling light?”

“I was going to hang myself.”

“Oh, Rilch…You don’t want to do that. Honestly, this is not that big a deal. And think of what that would do to your mother!”

Unbeliveable. Absolutely unbelieveable. No chance to defend myself, or clear my name. Guilty because they said I was guilty. Not only was I not part of the group socially, I had to be segregated physically, as if I were contaminated.

FTR, the girls from the other school did not shun me because of this, and even told me, a few days later, that “We’re on your side about this toothpaste thing.” For what that’s worth. I tried to rise above it, and still get what I could out of the journey, but it was a wash. Even if all this hadn’t happened, it still would have been a waste of time and money. We only saw one room of the Louvre, for instance. We had to stay in groups, which meant I didn’t get to do any of the stuff I wanted, like go to see “Le Flic de Beverly Hills Deux” . All anyone else wanted to do was stay in a cocoon of Americanism, and shop shop shop.

So someday, Mr. Rilch and I are going to go to Paris (where he’s never been), and hit the Louvre immediately. If it takes four days to see it all, that’s how long it takes.

Anyway…anyone else ever been cornered like that?

2

Every man with an ex-wife. Wish I could say that was a joke, but I’ve yet to see otherwise.

Have fun at the Lourve. I’ve been to Paris once, & was not overly impressed (Of course it was on the way back from HK, so go fig…), but I wish you & yours all the best on your upcomming journey there Rilch.

3

Damn! Girls are mean!…

If I had a beef with someone growing up, one of us would end up with a black-eye and be done with it, chumming around the next day…

And no I’ve never been cornered like that…

4

The Louvre? You could quite literally spend weeks there rather than days.

I’ve been “cornered” too, once.

It was about 5 years ago, in my first job right after I graduated. My direct boss was a complete asshole, who for some reason felt very threatened by my presence. After my traineeship, the corporate HR department had placed me in this small bank office in medium sized town about 25 kilometers from Amsterdam. I was the only one in the office with a college degree, and I my salary was probably on par with my direct manager’s, a man who was 45 and had been working for the bank for 25 years. I was 25 at the time.

So, like I said, my direct manager was hostile towards me from the start. Nothing I did was right. If I asked for help the reply was usually something along the lines of “Can’t Professor Coldfire figure that out by himself?”, that sort of thing. Never got a fair chance. I complained to the branch manager, but she was new to this branch as well, and lacked the managerial skills to intervene anyway.

So, about 6 months into the job, my direct manager pulls me into a meeting room, and tells me he thinks things are going badly. He couldn’t be more wrong: I was scoring like mad commercially, had brought down the credit revision backlog rate from 80% when I took over from my predecessor to 35% in 6 months, and I was converting prospects into clients left and right. I was one of the best account managers for small and medium sized companies in the region, in fact.
My manager disagreed, and scheduled a meeting between the two of us, the branch manager, and the HR advisor from head office (whom I already knew to be a completely braindead git).

So, the meeting date rolls around, and upon arrival of the HR advisor, my direct manager and the branch manager first lock themselves in the branch manager’s office for a full hour. Only then do they call me in.

What would you think? You’d think they were plotting against you, that’s what you’d think.

And how true that impression was. After I was called into the office, the meeting didn’t last more than 10 minutes. I got the most extensive list of non-measurable complaints I have ever seen in any HR file. I “walked round like I owned the place” (:confused: How does THAT look?), I “acted arrogantly towards my cowokers” (most certainly NOT!), I “didn’t produce enough commercially” (second best in the office, out of 10 account managers, all of whom had years of experience)… the list goes on. There was ONE measurable complaint in there: my revision backlog, with 35%, was over the accepted maximum of 20%. Never mind that it was 80% 6 months earlier - I was being chastised over the remaining 15% over the limit, not praised for the 45% I already reduced it with.

All these points were confirmed to me in a letter from the aforementioned braindead HR git, with an accompanying deadline of T + 2 months for immediate improvement of all factors involved, lest I be… fired.

I decided that all the intangible complaints were grabbed out of thin air, and planted my ass behind my desk for two months, further reducing my revision backlog to about 8%, which was the best score for the entire office. I did fuck all about the other complaints, didn’t behave differently (I wouldn’t have known how, anyway!), and visited far too few clients because I was focused on the one tangible thing: the revision backlog.

About 6 weeks into the 2 month deadline period, my manager calls me into the branch manager’s office, and the three of us have a talk.

They were pleasantly surprised with my improvements, and told me they would inform my HR git that Code Red was now definitely off.

Like I said: all I did was work on the ONE tangible aspect.

Anyways, thinking all was well, I go about my business, visiting clients once more instead of wasting my days behind a desk polishing some manager’s ratios.

About six weeks later, my direct manager pulls me into a meeting room again.

“I’m sorry, but we’re right back where we started from. I don’t think this is going to work.”

I was dumbfounded. It was clear to me then and there that my behaviour and achievements were not, and would not be judged objectively by this fucking idiot. Whether he felt threatened, outclassed, I’ll never know. All I knew at that point, in that room, is that I wanted to get the fuck out of there.

He handed me an evaluation form that judged my 9 months there with the number “1”. We value people on a scale from 1 to 5 here, 5 being “sublime” and 1 quite literally meaning “we really ought to fire you”.

And then I did the stupidest thing I ever did. I was so fed up with it all, I wanted to get away from that branch so bad, that I signed the damn evaluation. What I SHOULD have done is: refuse to sign it, escalate it to the highest echelons of HR, kicking asses and taking names. My direct manager should have been exposed for the small, insecure prick he was, the branch manager should have been slapped on the wrist for not supervising her middle management properly, and the HR git should have been fired for not seeing after MY needs in the organisation, but rather that of a line manager she spoke to all of one hour, and whose word she took at face value without offering me the slightest chance to defend myself.

I signed the damn thing, started looking for another job within the bank, and found one within 2 weeks. To this day, my salary is slightly below that of my peers because of that “1” evaluation.

I’ll gladly kick that direct manager in the nuts if I could ever get away with it. He wasted the first year of my professional career for me. He still works for this bank, although he has been shifted from department to department more times than a normal person changes underwear. Seems like nobody wants him, what a surprise. The branch manager still works for the bank as well, albeit managing another branch due to a reorganisation. When I met her a year after I left, she admitted that it had not been my fault, and that I had been the victim of an incompetent, but senior manager. The HR git worked for the bank for a total of 1 year: she left shortly after she completed my transfer into a new job. I wonder why…

But the most anger can be directed towards myself, for being stupid enough to sign a completely bogus evalutation, while I should have been cunning enough to seize that opportunity to kick the asses that most deserved it.

You live and learn. I still work for the same bank as well.

Sorry for the length.

5

Oh, Coldfire, that’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you.

But don’t apologize about the length. That’s the kind of story I was looking for. In a way, it’s true what Mrs. H. said, although not in the way she meant: people don’t get these ideas about you just out of nowhere. That’s because they nurture them. That manager had to have been resentful of you for doing so well right off the bat, so he spent nine months convincing himself that you were all those things he said.

Tony: Yes, I’ve often envied guys for having the option of duking it out and getting it over with. Teenage girls…they’re okay individually, or in twos and threes, but when they group up, they become lying sacks of dirt.

IEatFood!: Mr. Rilch read this over my shoulder, and pointed out that with the global situation the way it is, I should lower my sights to Hawai’i. He says that after twelve hours there, I’ll forget any other vacation I’ve been on, good or bad. :slight_smile:

7

I had a supervisor… well, not actually a supervisor. He was the weekend manager at my old employer.

His job was to walk around, ask questions, and get mesmerized by womens breasts.

Because of an incident with a work inappropriate shirt 2 years previously, I was on his shit list.

One day, I went to lunch. I sat out under a tree and read a book while drinking a soda. An hour later, after my lunch, I returned.

The Boss had come through, asking where I was. He was told “At Lunch”. Everyone knew exactly where I was. They knew if there was a problem they could come get me. No sweat.

When I got back, he came back again, and in front of everyone, asked where I had been. I told him exactly where I was, and asked if something had come up that my team needed to know about.

“No, but if you’re going to go to lunch, you need to call me.”

??? This was new. No other shift, no other department, and in fact nobody, ever, needed to call him for that. I said so.

He told me that I was so incompetent, that he needed to make sure things were covered while I was away. And since I hadn’t trained my people, he needed to make sure there was someone who could do the things that needed to be done.

I was stunned. I asked him how I could be so incompetent, and still be the primary trainer for my shift. How I could be such a scew up and be the team co-lead for almost a year.

He said it didn’t matter. He knew what I was REALLY like. He would make sure I stayed where I was, and that I would never get promoted. He actually said that to me, directly.

Several months later I move up the ladder a step. A year after that, I got fired.

Sigh. I’m not bitter. Not at all.

8

Poor Rilch! I’d send you the emoticon for a hug, but I can’t remember what it is. :frowning:

Keep shootin’ for the Louvre!

9

And, oh yes… keep the dream Rilch. You’ll do Paris, and have a fine time doing it.

10

Long post that the hamsters originally swallowed:
Awww Rilchy, that sucks. Buncha bitches :frowning:

I’ve been in a few unfair situations in my time, but one that stands out was during a promotion course when I was in the Air Training Corps.

This was a senior NCO course - designed to produce Sergeants, Flight Sergeants and Warrant Officers. You’d think the candidates being sent to these things would have some element of maturity, eh? Not necessarily so.

I am, apparently, one of those people who always seem to be shunned by the crowd. It had happened before, so when it happened this time, it didn’t really surprise me.

From the moment we stepped foot on base, it seemed I was being excluded from group activities. You know those team exercises that start with the words “form groups of x number of cadets”? I’d bounce from group to group to group, eventually finding the rest of the losers that nobody wanted in their group.

When it came to organising ourselves in the barracks, once again, I’d go from room to room to room, politely asking if there was a spare bed - nope. I finally found a bed in an empty room and another loser found her way in there too (not the bed, the room :stuck_out_tongue: ).

When it came to drill instruction, we’d be divided into groups of 7 - 6 cadets being instructed by another cadet - we’d all rotate so we all got to do the instructing. When it came my turn to instruct, the other 6 cadets in my Flight would stuff up the commands, turn right when they were supposed to turn left, that sort of thing. Basically mess everything up. I called one cadet out and gave him an earful - told him I’d had enough of this messing about, that we were all here to achieve our goals and that as NCOs we were supposed to respect each other’s rank and as candidates on a promotion course we were supposed to help each other out. Blah blah blah. The shenanigans in that particular lesson stopped.

Still, when it came to group activities, I was still being actively excluded. Friends I’d made in my junior NCO course a year earlier shunned me. I couldn’t figure it out. I remember one occasion at the mess hall, I’d try to sit down at a table and the cadets at the table would force me away and send me to another table. Repeat ad nauseum. I eventually ended up begging the instructors if I could eat at their table. They took pity on me and let me sit with them.

I don’t know why, but in the middle of a lesson where we were preparing presentations, one of the other cadets took me outside. I didn’t know why she wanted me outside, but I went. Much to my surprise, she burst into tears and apologised for being an arsehole to me. I hugged her, told her it was alright, and we went back inside.

It was three weeks of appalling behaviour from my fellow cadets and though it didn’t make me suicidal, it did make me very bitter towards them.

I ended up duxing that course, out of 74 other cadets. The real kicker was six months later, I was still a Corporal and half those turds had already made Flight Sergeant. Our Flight had a policy of waiting 6 months before approving promotions. So the thing I was (am) really bitter about was that having survived shitty behaviour, managing to rise above it all, I had to watch all those turds get promoted above me.

Bitter? Me??? NOOOOOOoooooooo…

Max.

11

This is stupid, because it was ultimately so inconsequential, but here goes…

The setting is second grade, I was six years old. We were given timed multiplication tests each Friday. You know the kind, with 100 questions, 1 x 1 through 10 x 10. For some reason 7 x 8 always tripped me up. I tend to multiply by addition–a habit that drove my mother insane, might I add–and that one problem just clogged my gears. So on one test, I’d managed to finish up in the allotted time and was working on the last one, that damn 7 x 8. I answered, erased, answered, erased, answered again-- confusing myself and nearing panic…The bell rang. Time’s up. When the tests were collected, I rushed to look up the answer and, there it was–56–I’d gotten it right! I was thrilled.
But when our teacher handed them back the next day I had a 99%. And what question was marked wrong? 7 by motherfucking 8. But the answer was right there! I’d gotten it right but she’d marked it wrong!

So I went to go ask the teacher. She was a nun. A big one, with a grudge against the world. She was also one of only two in the school who still wore the full gown and wimple. So she was intimidating, to say the least, even on a good day. But I swallowed my fear, went up to her, and pointed out her mistake. She took the paper from me and looked it over, looked at me, looked back at the paper. I fidgeted, feeling like a blashemer for telling a nun she’d mucked up. It was then that she stood and ushered me out into the hallway. Oh no! The hallway was never a good sign.
“You switched your answer!” she accused, pointing at the problem. I looked, and could see what she meant. From me erasing and answering so many times the entry (in good old ticonderoga #2) was a bit smudgy. And the cheap newsprint the quiz had been mimeographed onto didn’t really help. It was a little thin and nubbby there. But I held my ground. I had gotten that problem right! I hadn’t cheated!
“No Sister, I didn’t change it, really.”
“Don’t try to trick me, missy…” she warned. I gulped. In Sister Iranaous’s world, being “tricked” was akin to being drawn and quartered.
“I didn’t, truely! It got smudged from erasings during the test. You just marked it wrong.” I was convinced that since I was in the right, there’s no WAY she couldn’t eventually come to believe me.
But then she pulled out her showstopper,
“If Jesus himself were standing right here in this situation, what would he tell me young lady?”
Brilliant, the triteness of “WWJD?” long before it became some sort of pop culture oddity!
“He’d tell you I wasn’t lying, ma’am.” barely audible. At this point Sister just threw up her arms and stalked back into the room.

I never did get that extra point restored. And since my mother was also a teacher, she was of course immediately informed that I had tried to trick Sister Iraneous, and don’t you believe I didn’t hear about that at home that evening. I realize now that she’d thought I was lying from the very start, and nothing short of Jesus himself coming down to tell her different would have made a difference. And even then, she’d have probably asked him what his father’d say if he was “standing right here with us”. Like I said, it’s stupid and petty. But the fact that I still remember it so clearly, and it can still sting in that silly unjust way, amuses me. It feels like something I’d get all sappy over with a shrink, should I ever visit one. So now you know.

12

This guy I’m friends with was told my two of his friends (who do talk to each other) and his brother that I’m using him. Now what I find so un fair is that I can’t be using him because

1 we’re not going out, so I can’t be using for sex
2 he gives me no money
3 I have other friends

I asked the guy what he said his mates and his brother (they all really really hate me, they’ve picked on me for years) said I was using for and he went silent then says “I’m easily manipulated” So I said you think I’m manipulating you?" and he went silent. The funny thing is he slags all his mates off and calls them assh*les. But yet he still believes them over me. Now his mates and bro are asking him to choose between us. He says he doesn’t think his friends would lie, he thinks they’re honest nice people although he hasn’t told them he’s gay. If they’re so honest and trust worthy then why keep the secret from them and not me? The guy caled me a bitch and a liar and said that I don’t make it easy for him! He doesn’t make it easy for me more like. He tells me he’s gay when were going out and I have to watch him make out with one of my other ex boyfriends and some random from a club. The thing that pisses me off the most is that his brother lied and said that he saw me leave a party with some guy just to make me look like a slut. The guy gets pissed off, he has no right we’re not going out anymore and he wouldn’t believe me that I never left with a guy. I thnk this whole thing is so unfair.

Sorry for ranting on, I’m still really upset and worked up.

13

Most unfair?

I had been in a somewhat secret relationship with one of my graduate school friends. We told no one because we didn’t want all of our common friends to treat us differently. We had made plans to rent a house together with another classmate (this was before the relationship heated up–leases are signed way early in this town).

A month or so before we moved in, the relationship sort of unraveled. He found someone new. I was still smarting. I had no one to talk to about it, because I was still keeping our secret–he hadn’t told her. The pressure was horrible. It was very hard for me to live with him and to have his girlfriend over so often, listen to their loud, noisy sex, etc. Because she didn’t know about our relationship, she couldn’t figure out my problem and thought I was psychotic. And she let other people know about my bizarre behavior, so they all thought I was nuts, too. And yet I kept the secret, for his sake. I used to fight with him about not telling her. Yet I didn’t dare do it myself, because then I might lose the only person who DID understand what I was dealing with–him. It was horrible to have no support, to not have the strength to move on, to be ostracized for my feelings. It was a terrible time.

Finally, after their relationship was over, he told her. She was FURIOUS with him. And she sent me a letter, a very long letter, apologizing porofusely for not understanding, and for her own behavior. So that was nice. But I was driven half-nuts, and it was a difficult and unfair situation.

14

That sensation of sudden arbitrary unfairness leaves a sting not easily forgotten. I think my crispest memory is from 5th grade. We all had to do these “Presidential Physical Fitness” tests. Basically we were timed at the mile, had to measure how far our fingers would go past our toes, time an eraser run, and count pull-ups and crunches. I was no physical dynamo at age 10, but being young and springy I could hold my own in most of the categories. I had no particular need to hold a certificate from the President, but I got into the friendly competition amongst the girls in my class.

We got through the eraser run- SCORE, I passed with an “excellent.” The mile was harder, but I pushed it and ran it in 8 or so…still passing. 60 crunches didn’t even phase me, and I surpassed the measuring instrument for flexibility, I was basically a golden god.

Then, enter Casey, PE teacher from hell.

With only pull-ups left to go I was looking good for the award…None of the girls had any upper body strength to speak of, including me, but I’d been working on it a little, knowing that pull-ups were the only thing standing between me and nifty little certificate. The girls needed 1 completed pull-up to pass.

I jumped up and grasped the bar, palms facing me (as had every other person before me) and gritted my teeth and pulled. Halfway up… three quarters… it started to burn but I gave a mighty heave and threw my chin over the bar- I hung there for a second, surveying the landscape from my new “chin over bar” position, relishing my glory. And then the voice of Casey cut through- “Oh, nice try panache but for a pull up your palms need to be facing out.”

That was it, no second try, nothing. Out of all the girls, I was the only one to hoist my chin over the bar in any way whatsoever, and then just like that, it was yanked away. His overall condescension to every girl in the class was irritating enough, but to have him give credit to the boys and not me for the same thing?!? Everyone there saw that I had it, that I could’ve had it, that there was certificate that was destined for me…I was livid.

15

When I started my current job I was teamed with another woman who was to be my team partner. We shared a portfolio of accounts, although within that portfolio, she had her accounts and I had mine. Within a few days, while I was still training, she was acting defensive, saying that I was trying to take over. Several times she blew up at me, for stupid reasons like explaining to her that while she was out on one of her numerous sick days, I didn’t release a particular order because I didn’t know what was the best course of action to take, based on her notes. How DARE I tell her how to manage her accounts??? In the first 5 months that we worked together, we made our bonus goal 4 times, when previously it was never met. Finally after another trivial incident she tells our manager that she “just can’t work with me. I’m trying to tell her what to do.” I talk to the manager and we decided to end the partnership. I’m given the largest account from the portfolio and she takes the smaller accounts. But still I’m required to back her up. And by the end of February, she’d used all her accrued sicktime and all her 2003 vacation time calling in “sick”. So for a good part of this year I’ve been doing a good bit of her work, too. And I’m still seated next to her, so I have to put up with her hot & cold attitude. Sometimes she’s polite, sometimes she’s as cold as ice. And all this has impacted in a small way in my 6-month performance evaluation. In every catagory I got “Exceeds Requirements” except Interpersonal Skills, in which I got a high “Meets Requirements”.

StG

16

Rilch, I was treated exactly like you during my years in the regular public school system. I came from a poor family, I didn’t know how to dress, I was passive and not very ambitious and “fitting in” wasn’t important to me, I just wanted to do my own thing*.
Boy did I ever pay for that. My classmates made me pay.

In grade six, after an uncomfortable year of becoming self-aware, and being tired of not having any close friends other than the emotionally abusive girl who lived next door, I made several vain and ill-conceived attempts at being accepted. Of course, since I wasn’t good at picking up on social cues and I had absolutely zero interest in conformity, all it ever resulted in was humiliation. I was constantly hurt, confused and angry.
My vice-principal told me to my face that I was “too smart for my own good”. Luckily I wasn’t quite mature enough to get what that meant at the time.
My teachers told my mother that I would not be allowed to go on a field trip to Quebec because they “didn’t like my attitude” (read: blamed me for not instinctively knowing how to play by their rules).

I was skipped ahead to grade seven, and the students who remembered me from the year before threw rocks at my head during recess. The Principal told me that it was my own fault because I didn’t try hard enough to fit in.

Why couldn’t people just let me be me? I wasn’t violent, I wasn’t disrespectful, I wasn’t abusive. But their behaviour made me so angry that I wanted to be. Why did everyone feel as though they had to beat me down until I was exactly like them?

And don’t even get me STARTED on my former job.

17
  • I am not implying that YOU were like this, Rilch, it’s just that the way we were TREATED is identical.
18

Fifth grade.

For some reason that has been completely lost in the sands of time, I was involved in a shouting match with an unpleasant girl. The inevitable happened: the teacher approached. He asked who started it, and she suddenly blurted out “He called me a N****!” (she was African American).

This was quite unfortunate because I never said it; the teacher simply went ballistic and started ripping me a new a-hole.

What has always disturbed me about this is the fact that the time I did not know the meaning of the word. I had just started attending that school the year before, and in all of my ten years, I had apparently been quite sheltered from racism. At the time of the fight, I just was upset that she lied and said I called her a name. As the years passed, I realized the depth of her allegation, and the true injustice she did to me.

Other things have happened since (similar to the OP; cliques of “friends” are particularly nasty at times), but nothing stands out in my mind as such a clear-cut example of injustice as this event.

19

Back in the very early 90’s, I was a Programmer and part-time LAN administrator for a major Insurance company. I worked with a woman who called herself (and tried to get others to call her) “Judy the Beauty”, who was the full-time administrator. Together, we administered the LANs for our regional offices. I had managed the previous machines, S/36’s.

Judy was one of those types who would touch everyone. I had her hands on my shoulders, neck, knees and thighs. But WOE BETIDE THOSE who transgress upon her. She once screamed Rape and threatened to sue me for sexual assault when I touched her dress on the outside of her right shoulder (about where you would have a badge on a uniform). Fortunately, my (radical feminist) Director just walked in the room, saw what happened and told her to shut the fuck up.

One day, five of the eight corporate LAN guys quit. That area is in deep shit, so they hire over Judy from our area. Another one of our people, one of Judy’s friends, gets pulled over to the Help Desk.

A month or so later, I am out at a User Conference, giving a demo of some new software to about 30 Reps from the regional offices. Judy comes storming into the demo and screams at me about having destroyed the Phoenix server, something I hadn’t even heard about. I turn to my Supervisor, standing nearby, who shrugs helplessly and allows Judy to continue to verbally assault me. She and I were the only people who had the password to that machine and it wasn’t her, so it had to be me.

The next day, I check into the situation and find out that since she was coming out to the User Conference, she gave the supervisor password (a violation of security rules) to her friend the Help Desk Fool, who promptly trashed the machine.

At the same time, I get a serious memo from her boss about reporting any security violations directly to him. So I do. I write up the event and send it to both him, and my director as a CYA. I also send a protest of Judy’s behavior to my Director and her boss, since it was highly unprofessional.

Well, it turns out that her new boss forwarded it directly to her, without comment, without even speaking to her about it. The next thing I know, I’m getting that “confidential” memo sent back to me, with 3-4 pages of screaming threats attached. Sent to every person in the company I work with. Damn, but that was even more unbelievable.

At this point, I walked into my Director’s office and demanded her immediate dismissal. My (radical feminist) Director then has the balls to tell me to “just be a man and take it”, since they “can’t afford” to fire her.

I walk out the door.

20

Years ago I was living with a guy and I became pregnant. Very soon afterward, I had a miscarriage. It really sucked - he rushed me to the emergency room, tons of pain, etc. I had no insurance at the time and a very low paying job, so I was also facing a huge hospital bill.
About a month after that, he started cheating on me and, when I found out, we broke up and he moved out. It wasn’t the most pleasant of break-ups, but he did manage to give me half of what was still owing on the hospital bill (a couple hundred dollars).

Soon after he moved out, and back to his parents’ house, I had to call him to find out when he’d be moving his furniture out. His mom answered and proceeded to yell at me for making him pay me in order to move out after I’d broken up with him. She said that he didn’t owe me any money and that he’d had to borrow the cash from them. He hadn’t happened to mention to her anything about the pregnancy, the miscarriage, or that he had cheated on me. He let her believe that he was in the right and that I’d somehow weaseled him out of a relationship, and apartment, and a couple hundred dollars.

I didn’t even try to defend myself. To this day, I’m sure she thinks I’m the worst thing that ever happened to him and that I’m a using bitch. But, I didn’t think that anything I said would be believed by her, so I just let it go. I’m still a little annoyed by the whole thing, a decade after the fact.

21

when i was 16 i got myself into a situation in which i beat a man with a pipe. He was black and i’m white so he automatically screamed racism(it was in 92 around the rodney king time). even though i didn’t call him a nigger and he called me a cracker and said i didn’t belong in a public park in the city, i was accused all over network tv and the papers of being a racist. also he gave a false ss number and it changed his age to around 60. so i looked like a racist elderly beater. they actually told that crap all over tv and i couldnt say a word. he turned out to be in his 40’s and i never could clear my name. i’m a felon and served time in prison for that mess. i got kicked out of school and harrased by blacks and the cops would not help me and all the people i thought were friends turned their backs on me. i felt so lost.
people actually believed his story. he got homeless people to lie for him and say they herad me say “we gone kill us a nigger tonight”. ha, i dont even have a country accent, why would i say that, is what i asked anyone that would listen. it was a nightmare. the papers poked fun at me and called me a thug. sure i shouldnt have beat him with a pipe, i almost killed him, but they should not have lied and tried to ruin me.

that is total proof that a white man can be so discriminated against that it isnt even funny…anyway, it sucked…