College Professors Recall The Most Genius Things Students Have Ever Done In Their Class
College is a formative time in many people's lives. It's usually the first taste of real freedom, and real accountability, many people get as young adults.
Some choose to coast through the experience with as little effort as possible, while others struggle with the extra responsibility and expectations. Still others find their calling in education and really apply themselves to the whole experience.
College professors deal with a wide variety if students from different backgrounds, with different interests and abilities, and this can lead to some pretty interesting outcomes in the classroom.
Reddit user ziggiddy asked everyone on r/AskReddit:
19.
I'm a student, and On our exams we are able to have an index card we can write notes on to use as a reference during the test. Most kids just write super small, but this genius wrote some notes in red ink, and others that overlapped in blue ink. They then used 3d glasses to be able to read the jumbled mess. I sat there in astonishment. m1234321p
18.
I was a TA, we had a statistics course at our university that was unnecessarily hard to get through our undergrad business program. Anyways we had a student who recorded himself using doing the homework and uploading it on YouTube for the other students to understand (it was genuinely helpful). He even used different numbers and examples and what not to not give ya the answer.
The professor caught wind of it and claimed he was cheating gave him 0's on every assignment/test up to that point, threatened to sue him for using her materials to make public, and made him public apologize to the class for "academic dishonesty". That guy literally helped so many people that would struggle in the class or be in tutoring for HOURS. Forget that professor. Batterypacked123
17.
While teaching an algorithm class, I prefer giving assignments that require no code. Instead, I ask them to write pseudocodes.
Nevertheless, most of them try to convert a piece of code into pseudocode. However, one of the students handed me in almost a full technical paper using LaTeX. I admired that student. Talked to him after grading, and told him that I wish I was that smart when I was in college.
Nobody topped him yet. PisEqualToNP
16.
I was taking an easy elective class in college and my professor would give out 30-40 question test-like homework assignments. While googling to understand some of the concepts, I came across a site that had every question, word for word, and in order. I could tell that the questions were the same through the google search preview, but opening the page blurred everything except a subscription box in the middle. I think my teacher was trying to make extra money off of selling her own answers. Either that, or she was stealing the content.
Regardless, I'm no good with code so I didn't even think to try anything fancy. I just used a ctrl+A on the page and pasted it into a word document. It worked. I had plain searchable text I could reliably pull from the internet every week. I didn't tell a soul and got everything I needed to "pass" the class just through the homework assignments. BurberryPert
15.
Not a college professor, but I was in a 400+ student auditorium when a bizarre incident occurred during a final exam.
Barely five minutes after we started the test, a student gets up, hands in his paper to the proctor, yells "WE OUT!", and JUMPED OUT THE WINDOW.
It was the first floor, but still. dysenterychampion
14.
My Dad is a chemistry professor. This means that he gets to filter all the students trying to get into medical school. A surprising amount of them are cheating morons, which doesn't bode well for medical school. You can't cheat your way through a surgery. Nevertheless, I've got stories.
One time one of my dad's colleague's students managed to secretly install on his professors keyboard software that would track what was typed in. He figured out the professor's password, got into the grading system, and changed his and his friend's grades. They almost wanted to give him some credit for ingenuity, but the school makes its students sign an honor code and part of it is that they understand not to cheat, so he was booted. Poor kid. I hope he's using his clever tricks to better society.
Lately my dad's been stressing out about the whole online class thing and how you prevent students from cheating. His solution was to make tests way harder but allow use of the internet. He didn't feel he had to specify that you shouldn't get somebody else to do problems for you (edit:) after he had already stated so clearly.
But he found one of his students using this one website (edit:) called chegg where you could post the question and have people solve it for you. The students apparently making this really compelling case that he didn't know it was cheating. Maybe if he gets booted he can go to law school. CrimsonDawnSyndicate
The Best "Give The Hardest Job To the Laziest Person" Success Stories | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
13.
There's always that story of the guy that showed up to class late, saw a problem on the board, and assumed it must be the homework for that week. He completed it and turned it in the week after.
Turns out it wasn't homework, but rather a famous unsolved mathematical principle that he just discovered a proof for.
12.
I am a professor, so... My students are very bright for undergrads, but there are no real Good Will Huntings. One clever thing I notice a student do now and then is instead of (or in addition to) copying a long-detailed timeline or diagram I spend writing an hour writing out on the board, they will pull out their phone and take a picture of the board. narwhal_
11.
I once had a student who turned in an essay not in full sentences, but in bullet points. I was about to fail the student, except that all bullet points entailed one clear, concise point, every point clearly indicated its purpose for the overall argument, and the structure was more logical than most essays I had read before.
It was a bit like going from a late-Wittgenstein to an even more condensed version of an early-Wittgenstein. I decided to use my grading scheme on it, and basically the student met all the requirements I had communicated before, so it was an A.
In another instance, a student decided that my assignment was boring, so they started the essay by arguing that the question was boring for the following reasons, coming up with a better question (which was admittedly more interesting, but would have been too hard for the assignment), and then answering this question by using arguments established in the previous part about how the original question was boring. That one was an A+. fidadst
10.
I watched one of my students write a crib sheet on a small piece of plastic and place it perfectly inside the label of her water bottle so that it was barely visible, but readable inside. Over the course of a two-hour lecture. It was magnificent. No I did not call her out on it or demand she throw her water bottle away. It's not my business what she chooses to do in another class.
Students cheat for a lot of reasons, but often times we find it's because the professor's expectations are ridiculously f*cked (it's usually this one), or because the student is dealing with far too much on their plate and cheating can alleviate at least some of that burden of stress for an underprivileged student. I'm not saying it's right, but I understand it.
9.
A friend of my brother's was doing a Bachelor in Pharmacology and the only elective that fit his schedule was Philosophy. He had no interest in it but had to pass with at least a C in his final year. When he got to the exam there was one question on the paper:
"Is this a question?"
After the 3 hour exam he was talking to fellow classmates and asking what they had come up with. They had discussed word etymology, structures of thought, ideas on different cultural elements of language, the impact of spiritualism on philosophical questioning and reasoning and so on. He said "Oh no" and got real worried. Then a fellow student said "What did you write?"
He said "I wrote "If that's a question then this is an answer" and then left the exam room after 5 minutes. To his astonishment he got an A+
8.
I taught a lab that had a microscopy section back in the late 00s. Despite having a microscope camera for taking pictures of the field of view in my own high school labs and the technology being readily available, it was not something the university was willing to spring for the students of a 100 level class. One of my students just stuck his IPhone camera right up to the ocular lense of the scope and took a picture. I was floored. Now looking back I'm thinking "of course that would work why wouldn't it?" but at the time myself and my Blackberry were very impressed.
7.
We had assignments based on the daily lectures in class. Assignments were due at the end of the week, but this one student always turned his assignments in minutes after each class. I notice on his laptop, while everyone else was taking notes on theirs, he would be filling out the assignment as the professor went through his powerpoint. He would also ask the professor questions about the lecture that gave him the answers to the assignment. Not only was he learning from essentially taking notes, but he never had to do homework outside of class.
6.
Not me, but I took and Intro To Accounting class that was required for all Business Majors where we had a teacher that was teaching his first college class ever. He said T Accounts were for nerdy accounting people and wanted to show everyone how to look at the P&L and Balance Sheet like a business does.
He would assign us things to do and if you couldn't figure out the answer he would tell you to re-read the chapter the answer was in there. As you could guess a ton of kids struggled or had to cheat to get by after the first test.
But then there was some kid who had taken accounting before at a different university and the credits didnt transfer so he was forced into this class and he knew all the answers. He hosted a Homework Review in the library on a whiteboard and answered any questions and helped everyone study. I think we all just learned from that dude more than the teacher.
5.
I'm a TA for a chemistry class. Twice a week the students have to turn in a worksheet to me, and I require them to have them stapled because of the mess it turns into otherwise.
Anyway, one student made it through the class without buying a stapler because they figured out some wierd oragami like way of folding the corners together in such a way that you physically could not get them unstuck without carefully undoing the folds. Now I teach it to my students and tell them if they don't own a stapler they can just do that.
4.
On an exam, a student answered a question about DNA topology with an answer that neither the prof nor I had ever seen...and it was correct. And neither of us had come up with it.
And that made us have to go back and re-grade the entire class's answers to that question.
3.
This wasn't so much genius as it was ballsy, but in the last class I taught, students were required to give a 10 minute persuasive speech about a topic. I listed some common topics from previous classes like whether college athletes should be paid, legalizing marijuana, stuff like that. They were supposed to do a little bit of research and incorporate empirical evidence into their presentations.
This guy did a whole 10 minute speech, complete with a powerpoint presentation, on why one food item was better than another, similar food item. It was completely and totally irrelevant, subjective, and not related to anything the course discussed.
However, the presentation was very well done. Where students often struggle with the use of filler words, improper preparation and a flat, boring speaking voice, this student was engaging and seemingly excited about the topic.
Because I use a rubric, I told him I had to take off points for the fact that his "research" relied mostly on personal opinion rather than evidence, but I still gave him an A- because the actual presentation itself was well done. Honestly, it was one of the better speeches I heard that semester, if you don't factor in the content.
2.
My math professor told the class a story about an incredible student he had. He liked having both calculation questions (solve the diffeq, etc) and proofs testing conceptual things in the class. Well one time, this incredible student managed to proof things that were well beyond the scope of the course. She would also ask questions that suggested incredible insight about the class.
He was impressed and had to see what her math background was. Well, it turned out she was a C and D student. In fact she failed Calc 3 and got a C (I think) the second time. Her first exam also suggested that she had a very difficult time solving and applying the kinds of things learned in the course. Yet she could prove the bonus question extremely well.
He realized that she just had a hard time with applied math but was incredibly gifted at pure math. So he went to the head of the math department and after some fighting, managed to convince the department chair to give her harder exams on the account that the exam must be approved. Well that's what he did. And the department was astonished at the difficulty of the 2nd exam. She could never complete this! But she did. And she got an A in the course.
To this day he and her are good friends and she visited the class near the end of the semester (she was doing a pure math phd).
This stuck out to me. Honestly, I don't think she would have pursued mathematics. And that would have been a shame. The professor stood out to me. Not only was he an incredible teacher but he really cared about his students.
1.
I was taking a Romantic era lit class in University, due to some quirk of scheduling it was twice a week, 6-9 pm. We all had to do presentations for a tiny part of our grade on whatever the topic of the day was throughout the term. We were encouraged to take a very wide ranging view of what could constitute a presentation. This prof was pretty great and actually managed to get a bunch of 20 year olds to dress up in period costumes to read poetry to the class, or to tell pulpy stories about all the banging the Byrons and/or Shellys got up to.
Buddy was a super friendly guy who had time for everybody. Imagine the personality of Jack Black in the body of a 24 year old Harry Potter.
His day to present comes up and the poem is Rime of the Ancient Mariner. At first he doesn't show. The Prof goes through the preliminary matters and then before she can ask where he is, Buddy KICKS down the door to the class and struts in with somebody dressed as a fisherman and a woman in a showy prom dress. These people are not in our class.
He proceeds to take a literal boom box (this is like, 10 years after those stopped being a thing?) to the front of the room, plug it in, and start playing the Rime of the Ancient Mariner metal song by Iron Maiden. We think "Ok, cool, this is his presentation..." NO!
Dear reader that is not what happened.
What happened next was a 60 plus minute reenactment of the overall story of Rime of the Ancient Mariner through a Hunter S. Thompson Lens. The woman is initially the guest going to a wedding whom he stops, but then terrorizes her and holds her captive with a reenactment (a presentation within a presentation) with his captain friend about how he killed an Albatross in an aviary while pressuring this captain figure into driving him around to score more drugs as things kept spiralling out of control.
As this is going on the girl at first seeming terrified of them, circles around throws on some dark makeup and suddenly, with everyone's attention on this weird gonzo reenactment, makes her entrance as death and his rival from the play, lecturing them for their mortal hubris and both demanding her attention and ignoring her.
The metal song stopped playing 15 minutes ago and the whole class is caught off guard by this reversal when they thought the whole thing was wrapping up after he got to the part in his weird story about the dead bird.
But she keeps going in a fury! She throws out the sea captain / driver. And then she and he finish out the rest of the poem, with the mariner receiving his curse. They must have been rehearsing for weeks, there's no reference to anything written down, and they are just LIVING the emotional depths of this reckoning.
As they draw to the end she resumes being the woman waiting for a bus / wedding guest. They finish. Take a bow. The class is part amazed, part confused, and just besides themselves. There is some scattered applause, then he abruptly takes his boombox and they storm the fu*ck out.
Never came back to the class that night.
The proff takes a break, pokes her head out to look around. Tries to talk about the poem but she just can't. We've all just witnessed something together. Something weird, and wonderful, and spell binding. None of us put a stop to it, least of all her. There was nothing left to say about Coleridge.
No presentation I have ever experienced in my educational or professional career will ever approach the time I saw a gonzo re-imagining or Rime of the Ancient Mariner in a lit class.
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "🤐" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.
Anyone with any amount of dating experience knows at least a few things that they love in a relationship and a few things they find unsavory.
Just like discovering our boundaries and what qualifies as a relationship deal breaker, most of us generally have a few rules that we tend to live by in every relationship, whether it's romantic, platonic, or professional.
Curious to learn some rules to live by, Redditor aytmamatov_musa asked:
"What relationship rule have you memorized forever?"
Actions Speak Louder than Words
"I can't remember the exact wording, but something to the effect of: Pay more attention to how invested your partner is in the relationship, not how much they say they are."
- why_im_single
Know Who Holds the Power
"I remember when I first realized that the person who has the most control in a relationship (especially ending it) is the person that cares about the relationship the least."
"When I thought of all the relationships that I had been in (not just sexual) and how one person decided sometimes months ahead of time that the relationship was over, I remember how oblivious the other person was when it ended."
"By the way, this can also be applied to employment relationships as well."
- Mo_Jack
Don't Fight for Someone's Attention
"If someone does not want to hear you, there is no way you can phrase anything to make them listen."
"This applies to all types of relationships, but I learned it from trying so hard to have a healthy relationship with my mother. Then when I left at 25, she responded by filing a missing person's report, hiring a PI (Personal Investigator), harassing my friends, and hacking my email and bank accounts to monitor my activity."
"This also ties into: abusers see you taking away their ability to abuse you, as an egregious theft of their rightful property."
- CurrentSingleStatus
Be a United Front
"Problems aren’t You vs Me. They’re Us vs The Problem."
- FilecakeAbroad
No Codependent Relationships Here
"You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped."
- Diesel07012012
Be Honest About Your Feelings
"Listen to how you describe your partner to friends, or how you think at the moment how you're describing your partner to them. That will tell you a lot about how you feel about them."
"If you're nervous about introducing them, listen to why. If you're apologizing for their actions, pausing to reframe positive ways to speak about them, or ignoring the red flags, then listen to that instinct. If you're constantly talking about the problems or hiding them, pay attention to why."
"I remember being in one relationship and having those feelings of, 'Should I introduce her to the family, when I talk to others about her, I'm exhausted from some argument, etc.'"
"I remember another relationship, thinking, 'Oh, I would love her to meet the family, she'd get along with everyone's kids, my friends would love her, I just had this great moment with her, and I wanted to tell people about it, I enjoy talking about her.'"
"When you experience that difference (and you have the wisdom and experience to know you're not being deluded by things like abuse or newness or getting caught up in a big fire that's going to burn out fast), it tells you so much."
- ConvenienceStoreDiet
Be Mindful of Reciprocation
"Something a friend of mine once told me was, 'Always ask yourself if this relationship isn't taking more from you than it is giving you.'"
"It saved me a lot of heartbreak."
- Interferonno2fan
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
"If they don’t respect your boundaries while dating, they won’t respect them in marriage."
- Rachel1578
Cheaters Gonna Cheat
"My best mate got with a woman who cheated on her then-boyfriend to be with him. Then my mate and she stayed together for four years, but she ended up cheating on him with another guy that she is now dating."
"I warned him in the beginning and advised him not to get into a relationship with her to start with. If she can do it with one guy, she can do it with another."
"His argument was that her then-boyfriend was not good enough for her which was why she is cheating on him. But what he failed to realize was that no one is the best in the world, and if she decides that he isn’t good enough for her in the future, then she will cheat on him too. And that is exactly what happened."
- dp9116
Acknowledge Red Flags
"Red flags look like normal flags when wearing rose-colored glasses."
- Mezame_Drgn
Common Interests Aren't Everything
"Having a lot in common doesn’t equal a good relationship. It’s just a decent starting foundation."
- ironicallyunstable
Don't Go to Bedroom Angry - Or Do?
"I wouldn't say forever, yet, but since becoming a wife, I have learned that it's okay to sleep off a fight. Don't have to 'resolve' everything right then and there. Give each other space to let steam off and talk in the morning."
- beanedjibe
Be Loved for Who You Are
"Do not change your personality if you don't want to... I didn't realize until the breakup, that my ex did not like me, just the idea of what I could be..."
- Bethedr
Know the Difference
"When an argument comes out of nowhere, ask 'Are you yelling at me, or to me?'"
"It's helped with a lot of arguments. Sometimes we just need a backboard to scream at, and nine out of ten times, that backboard is your significant other."
"A lot of arguments get bad just because they don't know you are releasing anger, which is healthy in the right way."
- spenser1994
Some of these seem pretty simple, but they can make a huge impact in a relationship, if not also to the trajectory and health of a person's life. By understanding our own worth and how it's valued by others, we gave give ourselves a much happier ever after than we might have otherwise settled for.
A breakup can really reveal a person's true colors.
Whoever in the relationship initiated the heartbreaking news that "this isn't working out anymore" or for any other reason the significant other didn't see coming can elicit irrational behavior.
Can they be blamed for going into a blind rage? Well, it depends.
Curious to hear just how someone whose had their heart broken reacted, Redditor No-Feeling865 asked:
"Whats the most f'ked up thing your ex did after a breakup?"
Some people just can't accept the fact that love has died and they resort to revenge.
Fake Pregnancy Alert
"Said she was pregnant and sent me a positive test. I searched positive pregnancy test results on Google Images… it was the first one to pop up."
– SpaceShipET
Public Announcement
"Had an ex make a MySpace page about how I’m a f'king loser. I already knew that, but I just thought it was rude."
– EssEyeOhFour
The Expensive Guilt Trip
"Take out a credit card in my name, go to Greece, and rack up $6K in charges in my name the stick me with it."
– soon_zoo55
Based on these cases, divorce seemed a logical next step.
Expensive Waste Of Time
"Cheated on me, refused to sign the divorce papers, so I had to pay an attorney thousands more to show up to court."
"Showed up to court, judge asked: kids? No. Shared property? No. Bank accounts? No significant money in them."
"Judge literally asked, 'why are you here?' I pointed at her, he sighed, signed the divorce and said 'next case'. Thousands of dollars for literally two minutes of court time."
– Shoddy_Emu_5211
No To Makeup Sex
"I left my wife when she threatened me with a 6' kitchen knife because she was stressed by our 11 year old son's homework. 4 weeks later when I collected the last of my things from our house she looked upstairs and seductively said 'do you want to come upstairs for a f'k?'"
"In the 18 years we had been together she has never said anything like this before."
"That was a definite 'No!'"
– Elegant-Ninja-8166
Actions spoke louder than words verifying these were not the kind of people you'd bring home to meet mom.
Truth Comes Out
"Immediately started dating the girl he swore he wasn’t cheating on me with."
– emshlaf
Animal Cruelty
"Hung my dog off a balcony. He is okay now."
– easygoinggirlie
Sometimes, there's a happy ending.
Blessing In Disguise
"I had an ex who cheated on me multiple times, and just generally manipulated me emotionally. Always lied to me and never actually came clean about the cheating, even when I had evidence, or when her best friend came to me because she thought I should know."
"We finally break up after 8 years, and I get back out there and start hooking up with someone else, ended up getting her pregnant, and it was her choice to keep it."
"My ex heard and called my Mom to tell her before I had decided to tell anyone in my family, totally blindsided me when I started getting calls and texts from my parents."
"Anyway, the other woman ended up being the most amazing mother, friend, and partner you could ask for. We've been married for 4 years this summer, and our son will be 5 in the spring!"
– Cristal_Lizard
The horrific behavior mentioned above just further cements the fact that some people were never meant to be in your life.
That's the thing about a person's true colors–you don't see them until in hindsight when the relationship becomes comfortable.
Love makes jilted people do crazy things, indeed. Like slashing an exe's car tire in a parking lot with surveillance cameras catching all the angry action.
Yeah, that may or may not have happened.
Sharing a home with a roommate is always a balancing act.
Particularly if it's a roommate you settled for, rather than chose to live with.
While some roommates proved to be a match made in rent-controlled heaven, others find themselves to be less than compatible.
From constantly having to clean the dirty dishes they left in the sink, to dealing with them blasting music on full blast at all hours of the night when you're trying to sleep, some people never manage to jump from being roommates to being friends.
Making the day they can finally afford a place of their own to be truly the happiest day of their lives.
"What made your worst roommate ever such a bad roommate?"
With Friends Like These...
"Was a slob who got into drugs and hanging around the wrong sorts of people."
"Completely trashed his room and took off one day leaving his dog he had just gotten behind for me to deal with, along with a bunch of unscrupulous-looking characters knocking at my door telling me that he owed them money and asking where he was."- Electro-Onix
Well That's Disgusting...
"She stole, wore, stained, and destroyed my fancy frilly underwear and then returned them stained and tattered to my drawer and played stupid about it."
"I discovered this by finding my underwear in her laundry basket when I was tearing apart the room going 'what is that SMELL?!''
"I was allowed to change rooms by the school."- CaffeinatedHBIC
Animal Endangerment
"Had a weekend getaway planned, confirmed a couple of weeks in advance that she could take care of my cat while I was gone (side note: she had a cat too.)"
"Before I left, re-confirmed that she would be around and could take care of them."
"Wasn't uncommon for me to do all the kitty duties, which I didn't mind at all, but because I was used to being on top of it I wanted to make sure she had it under control."
"Got back after 3 days and clearly no one had been in the apartment for at least a couple of days."
"Cats had no water or food and had been clawing at the door enough to chip a bunch of the paint off of it."
"I texted her and asked if she had watched the cats, she replied that she decided to stay with her boyfriend for the weekend, completely oblivious to the fact that she had abandoned two helpless animals."
"I asked if she realized the cats hadn't had food or water in a few days, she replied 'oh, they're just cats, they are fine'."
"I asked her to move out and also if I could keep her cat because I was worried about her ability to take care of another creature, both of which she agreed to."
"Some next level loser a**hole sh*t to do that to creatures that are dependent upon you to survive."- basicallyasleep
The Zoo
"Rented a room from a neighbor who let me live there cheaply when I had nowhere else to go."
"Her house was pretty dirty due to her physical limitations from being very obese, but I tried to keep common areas clean."
"Her adult son lived there."
"The worse part was her 25-year-old daughter."
"Immature, entitled, thought she was god’s gift."
"She’d leave blood and pubes all over the bathroom. She’d have sex with her bedroom door open. She was always arguing/disrespecting her mom."
"But the worst part was how she treated her pets."
"She loved to rave about her 'zoo', but her mom had to take care of her dog, cat, and several birds."
"The dog was untrained and it peed on my bed and barked when I was trying to sleep."
"The mom would go out of town sometimes to a family beach house."
"One time she was gone awhile I noticed the dog’s water bowl was always empty."
"So I kept filling it back up."
"Then I realized that the house was pretty quiet."
"She had cockatiels and conures, so the house was never quiet."
"So I went to check them."
'The bowls were bone dry and empty seeds."
"And 2 of the birds were dead."
"I was so happy to finally get out of there."- lalapine
Well, That's A Decision...
"In the middle of a 100F heatwave in August, not only turned off the AC, but turned the heat on."
"To 90F."
"Even at the coldest days of winter, has no one turned the heat to freaking 90."
"Came home to a sauna, and she didn't even stay after she did that."- LeatherHog
Questionable Practice...
"They were drug dealers and they liked to work from home."- Ok_Whatever_Buddy
Did They Think They Would Clean Themselves?
"We had a shared kitchen, the 3 of us, we had cleaning schedules but they never followed it, they just piled it up until it was my turn."
"After numerous complaints that I was the only one cleaning I stopped cleaning."
"3weeks later there was rotten food and fungi all over the kitchen and even a cockroach infestation."
"A cleaning company had to be hired, the costs of which spread over the people living there."
"I objected the bill on grounds of my earlier complaints, they didn’t argue and I did not have to pay."
"I even got compensation for eating out every night, they got kicked out a week later."
"Was a win for me eventually but a horrible time before that."- Mezame_Drgn
Anything But Trustworthy...
"Tried to set the rest of us up for a pot bust after he got caught."- roadfood
Health And Safty? Meh...
"My favorite: She would come in drunk at 2am, turn on all the lights, leaving either her keys in the front door lock, or just leave the door wide open and then pass out in the living room."
"Good times!"- cerart939
Three's A Crowd...
"His girlfriend basically moved in immediately after he did."
"She was nice enough but adding another person to a tiny 2-bed apartment sucks."- beachfun2525
Grand Exit...
"Sh*t in the oven before moving out."- Longearedlooby
Contributed Literally Nothing
"He got into drugs, quit working, and quit paying rent three months into a year-long lease."
"Then he started letting his drug buddies sleep over and they ate all the food I bought."
"So I couldn't keep groceries in the house."
'Then they went through my room looking for things to steal."
"I ended up having to forcibly take away the apartment key and get a second job to make the rent."
"After months of stress, I worked 80 hours a week for eight months because of that b@stard."- luthurian
Consent Was Necessary
"Found out the dude was keeping his webcam running when he was out."
"Being secretly filmed was kinda f’d up."- O_vJust
Sometimes, putting up with a roommate who will never be a friend is worth it for the home you are sharing.
Other times, a tiny studio apartment is probably the way to go.
Even in a strong economy, or after making billions of dollars in profits, all businesses try to look for ways to save money.
Sadly, one very common solution is to lower the numbers in their workforce, resulting in layoffs for those whose departments they deem unnecessary.
Others look for slightly more unusual solutions.
However, sometimes these solutions are made without a great deal of thought, and these presidents and CEOs soon discover what they thought would be a cost-cutting measure ended up costing them even more money.
Sending them racing back to the drawing board.
"What did your company do to “save money” but ended up costing the company lots of money instead?"
You May Get A Little Hot...
"Shut off the HVAC system to save on electricity costs during the summer."
"Had to pay over half a million in mold remediation costs."
"F*cking morons."- dinosore
Never View People As An Expense
"Lay off a bunch of veteran people so they can bring in newer workers for cheaper."
"They find they couldn't bring in newer people for cheaper so they hire newer people at close to the same price as the veteran workers."
"Veteran workers are mad they have to train somebody making almost the same as they are with no experience and start leaving."
"Company has to pay fewer remaining veteran workers even more to get them to stay while paying inexperienced workers close to what the workers they just laid off were making."
"To my knowledge, prior to the lay offs, the veteran workers weren't even complaining about pay."
"Now the department is at a worse state and more expensive than what it was prior to their plan to save money."- Frankie__Spankie
Simply Illogical
"The roof of our building was leaking bad."
"Got quotes for doing just a third of the roof and for doing a whole new roof."
"They choose to do third of the roof."
"All it did was move the leak."
"A month later they did the whole roof."
"They would have paid a lot less had they done it right the first time."- sonsonmcnugget
Cat Olympics GIFGiphyLocation, Location, Location! Or Not...
"Business travelers must fly to the closest airport to the destination."
"Is Airport A one mile closer to the destination than Airport B?"
"Yes."
"Are the airline tickets 2x as expensive?"
"Also yes." - Reddit
A Hospital Is Nothing Without Its Nurses!
"Underpaying the nurses so they quit and had to pay agency 3x the going rate."- junotinychonk
The Dangers Of Outsourcing
"Moved 'corporate' phone support from UK to India for a very large fizzy drinks company, despite the contract saying guaranteed UK support."
"Over 50k phones canceled and moved to their rival."- WimbleWimble
"Someone I know worked for the 'oldest American' hoist company."
"They decided to outsource production to china."
"The cost of transport, losses, customs, etc made the Chinese hoists just as expensive as their American-made ones and then the Chinese company stole the plan to make and sell themselves for less."- Diabetesh
You Never Know When You're Going To Need Them...
"Company ran a campaign for 'outside the box' ideas in cost cutting, with stock awards for proven savings."
"Our facility maintenance manager claimed a $300k savings by eliminating unnecessary capital spare parts in the warehouse and received a $30k award."
"Six months later a critical compressor failed resulting in the plant reducing to half capacity at a $500k per day profit loss."
"It would only take two days to repair, however, the parts were no longer in the warehouse."
"They were among those eliminated and sold for scrap."
"It took 90 days to receive replacements."
"Total loss to our company was just over $50 MILLION."- eron6000ad
God Forbid People Are Rewarded For Good Work
"I used to work at a place with a sizable distribution center and thousands of SKUs."
"The warehouse's team of pickers was a great group of folks."
"They were fast, extremely accurate, and very good at their jobs."
'I brought them cookies on a regular basis and made sure to take good care of them."
"One day, some f*cking walnut decided that they were 'making too much money' in incentive pay (they got a bonus for accuracy and for picking above and beyond their normal quota of items) so they canceled the picker incentive plan and bumped up their quota, saying 'it's their job, we're getting robbed paying them extra to do what they should be doing anyway!'"
"Pick rates began falling sharply within the first week or two, because the incentive pay for being an outstandingly fast and accurate picker made the otherwise crappy base pay for that job turn into a living wage."
"Warehouse staff was enraged by having their pay jacked with and now being unable to pay their bills while still being expected to perform as well as they did before, so they started performing to the old quota."
"Management did much finger wagging and tried to write up a couple of the top pickers for 'deliberately underperforming and hurting the company'."
"Those top tier workers refused to sign the writeups, walked out of our warehouse, walked into the warehouse of our direct competitor, and had new jobs that same day."
"The rest of the high performers followed over the next couple of weeks."
"Delivery routes got delayed because of the short staffing and loss of the best workers, customers got upset because they were receiving the wrong items or not getting them at all, and the sales team, which wasn't paid enough to get screamed at by angry customers, was furious."
"Cue a meeting with the sales team and the f*cking walnut, who proceeded to lecture everybody about how 'picking is an entry level job' and 'anybody could do it' and how they're going to bring in a bunch of temp labor 'because they will actually appreciate the opportunity'."
"Fast forward a few months and it turns out the temps are idiots and caused the number of pick and 'not on pallet' errors to increase, customers are now leaving in droves, and sales people are bailing out too."
"The company lost millions of dollars in business and had to lay off half the staff because they were going to go bankrupt otherwise."
"All this because some f*cking walnut thought they could squeeze the people at the bottom of the pile who actually did the work that made the company money."- nancybell_crewman
From $75 Max, To A $75 Steak...
"We used to get a travel per diem for our meals."
"Most people would eat cheap like get a free breakfast at the hotel and get a $5 footlong and split it for lunch and dinner and bank the rest."
"I traveled a lot so it was like a nice perk."
'The company got wind of this and changed their policy to we had to buy and expense all our meals."
"The problem was they had to have the same policy for all employees so they couldn’t put a cap on meals due to the sales guys having to take out clients and stuff."
"We took full advantage of it and ate like kings."
"My meals expenses were twice what they were paying in per diem."- velvet_satan
Woman Like Me Fine Dining GIF by Little MixGiphySafety First
"I used to be the head of security for a club that had the most tight-fisted owners I’ve ever heard of."
"I kept telling them that we were dangerously understaffed."
"The police told them the same."
"So did the fire brigade, they said there wasn’t enough of us to evacuate the venue if we had to, they were right too."
"The owners wouldn’t listen."
"The club was taking around 45k per week but they wouldn’t pay for radios for us to least be able to communicate."
"We had so many incidents there that it was just insane."
"There just wasn’t enough of us to actually watch the whole club and even when we did see something we couldn’t call for back up."
"I found a set of second hand radios for under £200 but they refused to buy them I ended up buying whistles for the team to at least give us something to use to get each others attention."
"They also wouldn’t pay to get CCTV installed which upset the local police."
"One night a bartender came out to the door and told me there was a fight inside, there was no security inside just 2 of us on the door."
"When we went in there was around 60 people brawling on the dance floor."
"We did what we could but it was beyond our control."
"Eventually the police arrived but wouldn’t come inside they stood outside and essentially instructed us to kick everyone out and they would keep them out."
"We spent 45 minutes dragging people out of there."
"Many people were injured and after the fight one of the guys who had been fighting came back and stabbed a guy he had fought with."
"The police decided enough was enough and approached the council who as expected revoked the premises license."
"They lost the club altogether."- operative87
Gig Economy...
"Not giving the guy doing 2.5 full-time jobs a slight raise, instead letting them walk and paying 3 new people (combined) at least twice what they were paying him to do all the same work at like 65 percent the quality level."- BigPZ
Experience Matters...
"Consolidated the sales departments and made salespeople stop selling the stuff they knew how to sell and forced them to try to sell products they weren't familiar with to customers they had no history with."
"Company almost went out of business in a matter of months, and this was not a small company."- MostBotsAreBad
Sell Salesman GIF by Ryan SerhantGiphyNeedless to say, a business needs money to operate.
But money should never be the driving force behind the decision.
At least not over quality, practicality, and the well being of your employees.