We all want that amazing teacher who inspires us, pushes us to do better. Every day, when the morning bell rings, gives us assignments and work that challenges us, makes us understand the world better, and proves that education is more than just grades and standardized testing.
And then, there's the kind of teachers who give assignments like these ones.
Reddit user, u/myphoneislaggy, wanted to hear:
Students of Reddit, what is the most insane assignment you have been given?
That's Not Quite Grading On A Curve
GiphyI had an... interesting... 6th grade teacher when I was in a Catholic middle school. The assignment wasn't what was truly insane.
After taking a test (I believe the subject was U.S. history), she asked us to turn the paper over and write as many stores as we could name from our local mall on the back of our tests. After we finished, she instructed us to pass our paper to our neighbor for grading. After grading the tests proper, she instructed us to subtract 1 point for each store named.
Joke's on her, even at that age I never left the house. A friend of mine's mom worked at the mall though, and he was able to name 80+ stores. The actual test probably only had 30-50 questions. His score was well into the negatives. Her rationale was that we should be spending less of our free time out having fun and more time studying. I sh-t you not.
Every parent called the school the next day screaming. She eventually was let go, but years later and for an entirely different reason. She had thrown one of those heavy, vintage, metal Swingline staplers right at a kid's face.
That's a story for a different time though.
How Could Any Student Succeed?
My 12th grade English teacher gave us a project of a senior "memory book". Basically 12 chapters, 2 pages per chapter of specific subjects that you could take off of a rubric, three required subjects. Three weeks to complete. Ok, sounds boring and something I don't want to do but fairly easy.
So I finish it 2 days before its due, about the time everyone else does. But then, the teacher decided to just increase the amount of required chapters from 3 to 9 the day before it was due, and she changed the required chapters, which means I had to write 9 chapters in this stupid assignment in the span of 1 day. Everyone failed the assignment and nobody liked her at all.
Face To Face Makes Me Break Out In Hives
Actually got this assignment last monday for an entrepreneur course, i have to carry out 30 FACE TO FACE interviews (25 minutes minimum EACH) with musicians within a week. So that's 15 hours of conversation, which i have to transcribe and code and summarize all within one week.
Delete All The Search Histories!
In connection with reading Madame Butterfly, we were assigned to go to the library computers, log onto the internet, and to search "Asian Women" and "Japanese Wives" among other similar terms for research on stereotypes. Luckily, I had already done extensive research on my own into.... um.... similar topics so I knew better, and was not one of the 15 or so students who got their computer access removed for searching porn on the library computers. It was an honest but hilarious mistake from a teacher that had no idea how the internet worked. This was many years ago.
I'm a student of Life Sciences (Biotechnology) My "Ecology, Diversity and Evolution" Proff gave me the topic which only said, "Carrot"
Like, dude, how can I make a presentation of 15 to 20 minutes on "Carrot"? What can I say about"Carrots"?
In the end, I made a pretty respectful presentation (in my opinion), like, in which year it was first used as a vegetable, how many types are there, it's colors, etc. So the time came of the presentation, the Professor calls me to the podium, asked me my name and registration. I started my presentation, introduced myself to the class, started all the slides, read and explained everything. So, when I was just about to say goodbye, the Professor looked up from his writing pad and told me the start the presentation WHICH I JUST FINISH. It was THE WORST presentation of my life.
Hey! An Actual Good One!
I was in a book making class. I expected to learn about binding and covering and all that. The teacher was your classic kooky artist type and she got all excited and announced dramatically "I want each of you to make a book....out of THIS" and presented us each with a cardboard coffee can. I guess she just had dozens of them saved in her home and figured it could be a stimulating challenge to have us use them.
It did end up being fairly interesting. We had to first agree on the true definition of a "book." We decided that it was any object that presents information in a specific sequence.
I filled my coffee can with cement and then glued foam letters on the outside, so that when you rolled it in ink, and then rolled it across a large piece of butcher paper, it would stamp out the words "Hello! I am a can" over and over. She loved it.
userdeleted
These Actors Were Perfectly Cast In Their Roles | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Sometimes an actor comes along that is able to reach the audience on a deeper level. The actor that immediately comes to mind is Robin Williams. Although it ...Did The Professor Ever Say "Carpe Diem!" Unironically?
I took an experimental poetry track when I was in college. Some of our assignments included:
- Buy a flower and watch it die
- Egg a parking lot and write a description of the eggs without using metaphors or similes
- Leave food out in a public space and see how long it takes for it to get eaten
- Read your poetry out loud on the train without explaining what you are doing
- Infiltrate a group you are not normally a part of and sew dissent
- Bring something from home that represents how you want to die. Trade "deaths" with a peer
It was a pretty crazy class. I loved it.
*pulls collar out to the side to simulate discomfort*
When I was in college, I had to write a 75 page paper and print out ten copies, one for each person in the class. The topic of the paper?
Deforestation.
Woof...That Is...Not Good.
I haven't been a student for almost a decade now, but a recent assignment went somewhat viral here in the UK.
The students were given the task of writing a letter from the perspective of a parent that had a child murdered in the Manchester Arena bombings. In this "letter" they were tasked to write, they had to express sympathy and forgiveness for those that did the bombings.
To make this even more f-cked up, this task was given to children of the Manchester area. So those poor kids had to write a letter, from the perspective of a parent, forgiving and sympathising with the people that murdered their friends and family.
Well, Hey, At Least You Learned? Right?
GiphyMy high school science class had a project where we removed the meat from an animal's skull. It was a home project though and we weren't provided with animals - I didn't have any problem with this, but I should imagine not every kid in the class could get their hands on a severed animal head so easily.
I used a coyote, most kids had rabbits or deer but my uncle had just recently shot a coyote so that was pretty cool.
But looking back on it, that was kinda creepy and I think others in the class probably weren't okay with that one.
Either that, or a class in college that gave you three options for a final paper:
- 48 pages in 24 hours
- 96 pages in 48 hours
- 144 pages in 72 hours
On a subject that will be given to you at the end of the lecture, the idea being that you finish at least two pages an hour if you don't eat or sleep or have other classes. I took the first option because it was the shortest, most people did, and it was a freakin disaster. Only thing I learned from that project was that good work takes time.
Were You Supposed To...Cook The Baby?
To make a video on how to breastfeed and buy literally everything you need for a kid plus one of those robot baby's. The thing was atleast $100 dollars and was only a homework grade and no one did it cause it was literally not even a class related to anything on that. It was a cooking class not home ec.
They made us do something similar for eighth grade heath (thanks to the amazing George W. Bush-era sex "ed" "curriculum"). We had to haul around 10 pounds of flour, a doll, or in my case, a Build-a-Bear with a 10 pound dumbbell shoved inside of it. They made us carry it to and from school, through all of our classes, change it every night, and write a report on it at the end of the week.
The point was to scare us out of having kids young (which didn't work), but all it did was throw my bowling game off for a couple months.
"What companies shamelessly make sh*t products, year after year?"
False Advertising
"Holiday gift basket companies."
"I once felt obliged to buy one from a lady I worked with and it cost around fifty dollars."
"She had a brochure with various baskets and I chose one that was assorted candies and had a decorative wooden rocking horse."
"When it arrived it was just a bag of candy that I could have paid 35 cents for at a gas station."- Artai55a
30 rock gift basket GIFGiphySave A Few Cents For Inferior Quality
"It’s a throwback, but rose art for sure."
"They just decided their destiny was to sit on the shelf next to Crayola and get purchased by folks who are balling on a budget or cheap."
"No goals for product improvement at all."
"Just 'hey, wanna save three bucks?'"- Lucetti
Improvements Unlikely In This Digital Age
"Any printer manufacturer."- gbeegz
"HP printers."
"I have a $600 fancy laser HP printer we got six or seven years ago, and they have succeeded in updating the software to the point that nothing works anymore."
"I used to be able to print over Wi-Fi easily, scan over Wi-Fi, etc and now none of it works."
"I haven't changed any of my network hardware, things are hardwired."
"Also, I used to be able to use aftermarket ink cartridges and the printer has started giving me sh*t about it."
"I really like HP's computers, but their printers are a bunch of bullsh*t."
"Oh and their auto-update software won't go away even though I keep disabling/ removing it, and it installs software updates that breaks the current functions."- Bazirker
It's The Customer Service You Pay For...
"Oracle."
"Products intentionally sh*tty so they can make most of their money selling consulting just to make it, sort of, work."- s-starr
One Reason Sports Should Always Be Played Outside
"EA sports titles."- Stitches_Ito
Even Carrie Bradshaw Doesn't Like Shoe Shopping THAT Much...
"Doc Martens."
"My old pair from 20 years ago are still going strong, any new pair I get craps out after a year."- korar67
Doc Martens Shoes GIF by SORANGiphyScreaming For Ice Cream... And Not In A Good Way...
"Breyers and their 'Frozen Dairy Dessert' nonsense."
"Before 2006, Breyers ice cream was really good!"
"I loved their coffee ice cream!"
"And then they changed their formula and made the mess they have now to the point that they can't even legally call it ice cream anymore."
"Does anyone remember those old Breyers commercials where the kid tries to read the ingredients on an inferior product and struggles to pronounce things like 'mono & diglycerides' and then easily reads Breyers ingredients as 'milk, sugar, and cream?'"
"What a joke."
"Unilever loves to buy brands people trust for quality products and use that trusted brand name to get people to buy lower quality for higher prices."
"It seriously has the same consistency as Cool Whip now."
"And Unilever has the audacity to say that this is what customers asked for!"- akittyafterus
World Cup Wow GIF by FIFAWho Exactly Is His Audience?
"If lockpickinglawyer is anything to go on its lock-companies."- knatten555
Literally Selling Sh*t...
"Home Depot has been selling manure since its founding in 1978."
"In fact, a quick search of the website found they proudly sell over 178 manure products."- atomicscateboard
The Original "Catfishers"...
"Mad Catz got away with murder for years."- Einar_47
Apple Is Listening...
"Samsung appliances."
"F*CK YOUR FIRMWARE UPDATE ON THE FRIDGE!"
"Also those plastic trays keep breaking and are sh*t quality."
"My 1987 Maytag is still cranking the coldest brews on earth and hasn't been serviced ever in its life and sits in a dark room in my basement since he was demoted from the kitchen for being out of fashion by my wife."- zendor666
Customers Weren't Looking For An Authentic "Frontier" Experience...
"Frontier Airlines."
"Sh*t experience, customer service, quality, reliability, comfort, convenience and fees."- Micklikesmonkeys
There are those who always like to give second chances whenever possible.
When it comes to spending a little more money for a more reliable product, however, customers should rightfully be one and done.
Redditor AdonisBlackwood wanted everyone to share about the spooky things they've seen or experienced, so they asked:
"What paranormal activities have you witnessed?"
I hear things in my house.
At all hours.
Whispers. Clangs. Clacks.
And at night... there is a shadow.
Flying Foods
Chef Cooking GIFGiphy"A package of corn tortillas literally jumped off the shelf and onto the floor once at a large grocery store right in front of me. They did not slide nor did they fall. There was no one else around. I thought it was a sign to make enchiladas or something but it was also quite frightening."
_perl_
At Home
"Lights turning off/on. Items flying off of shelves/counters. One time when I was home at night by myself, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and the bottom of one half of my scarf that I had draped over the top of my bathroom door was suspended at a 20-degree angle, including the tassels in midair. At this point, so many things were happening in my apartment (including physical welts down my back) that I was terrified to be in it."
"I ended up getting dressed and going outside the building before I broke down crying and called my grandma to come to pick me up. At a different time, my friend and I were outside the building smoking when we heard what sounded like someone thrashing my apartment. I'm talking chairs being smashed into walls, shelves being tipped over. I was the only person living in the building at the time."
"We raced upstairs to catch whoever it was but not a single thing was moved in my apartment and all the other units were locked (I checked). I never saw a ghost, apparition, shadow, etc. When we first moved in, everyone hated coming into our building. They said it felt off. My ex and I never felt that way at first and thought everyone was exaggerating."
"By the time I moved, I wouldn't speak about ghosts or watch anything remotely paranormal in my apartment. Eventually, I watched the Paranormal Activities at a friend's and cannot describe the chill I felt. Similar things were happening in my own home. Haven't experienced anything like it since I moved."
ElectronicDiscoBeans
Louder & Louder
"Not sure if this is considered paranormal, but when I get fevers as a child, I would always, in my fugue and pain-infused state, hear a man counting in a very deep voice. He would count from 1 and up; as the numbers get larger, the voice gets louder and more intense."
"It started to get less frequent as I grew older and now I do not experience it anymore. I've brushed it aside as a recurring nightmare until only recently, I've learned that my sister would experience the exact same thing when she was younger as well. It's not the scariest thing, but it does send shivers down my spine trying to comprehend this."
Issualave
I Froze
"I work in a cemetery. One evening I stayed late to do some catch-up work. I was taking pictures of some granite samples to have on my phone and had already locked up. I was alone. As I was holding my phone, I heard the doorway to the basement swing open, slam shut, and heard footsteps go down the stairs. I froze."
"I thought for sure someone had come in. I called out to see if it was someone from maintenance. No reply. I got scared because if it wasn’t them someone had broken in. I stayed still for a bit and listened then called out again. Nothing. Finally, I got brave enough to look. No one was there. I peeked down in the basement, empty. All the doors were still locked."
DannyPantsgasm
Face to Face
The Shining Halloween GIF by This GIF Is HauntedGiphy"At least once every couple of years, I'll be walking around the apartment at night, when it's dark, but I can still see enough to get around, and I'll have some shadow/figure type thing suddenly come out of nowhere and get right up in my face, so close that I can feel like I'm breathing on it. It disappears immediately after."
coldshadow31
I am convinced that every home is haunted.
We mortals just have to adjust.
In the Stars
"One night me, my dad, and a friend of his were standing outside watching the stars."
Carl Sagan Space GIF by Feliks Tomasz KonczakowskiGiphy"After a bit of watching, what appeared to be a shooting star made a sudden and sharp 90-degree turn and then kept going for about 15 seconds and then did an equally sharp and sudden 90-degree turn to disappear a few seconds later. We all saw the same thing, but none of us had a good explanation of what we saw."
JonaJonaL
Grandma
"My brother was on the phone once with his gf when she started saying that she could hear some old lady asking my brother for a glass of water. There was nobody around him so he ignored it but she kept on insisting. He hung up the phone and went to check on our grandma who was in her bedroom and found her dead. Fast forward a couple of years, around 11 pm, I was on the phone with a girl when I saw a guy on a bicycle go past (phone was by the windowsill. Same spot as my brother)."
"That's when I noticed she stopped talking and asked her if she was still there. She apologized as she thought I got into trouble. I said no and asked why she said that and she replied with someone was telling me to 'stop talking on the phone, it's late. Go to bed.' I was on my own, everybody in the house was already asleep."
"I asked her if it was an old lady and she said yes. Told her it was my grandma and that the same thing happened to my brother. She started talking about ghosts and stuff so I told her I'm hanging up and bolted into my room."
ghentres
The humanoid shadow figure
"One time I woke up in the middle of the night and I checked my phone to see the time, and then as I was about to lay down and close my eyes I checked in front of me and a huge tall humanoid shadow figure was standing there blocking the view of a broken wall clock and I just started panicking and it still was there after many seconds and eventually it just disappeared after I looked away from it for a second."
AppleIsTheBest124
In the Ravine
"My family's old house backed onto a pretty substantial, forested ravine. I slept on the ground-level floor, and my room was at the back of the house. On 4 separate occasions, over the span of 5 years, I saw a middle-aged man dressed in a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a red hat walk through my room with a dog leash in his hand."
"He would briefly stop at the same spot every time, and look around, then keep walking towards the ravine. I should note that this was fairly new construction in a suburb of a small city, and all that had been there previously was a forest."
"I think he lost his dog in the ravine at some point, and he was there trying to find it."
mikeytruelove
Gettysburg
Whoopi Goldberg Comedy GIFGiphy"I saw a ghost sleeping in the same bed as my brother at a bed-n-breakfast in Gettysburg."
ccottonball
"Gettysburg has such an oppressive heavy feeling in the air. It's absolutely beautiful but it reminds me of the home I grew up in VA in the Bull Run Battlefield."
Chichi_lovesme
The ghosts of war are always in unrest.
Well, most ghosts in general are in unrest.
And they clearly visit often.
Customer service jobs are not for the faint of heart.
Dealing with people at their angriest and rudest does not breed a positive work environment.
Customer service can be a downright toxic job.
And if it's not the customers setting your spirit on fire, it's the companies themselves.
Some companies seem to revel in creating discontent.
That's why these types of jobs have such high turnover.
Redditor Psychological-Name15 wanted the customer service reps out there to give us some truths, so they asked:
"Customer service workers of Reddit, what secret can you reveal from your former company?"
I want to know about the inner workings of Comcast!!
I loathe them!
Oh Dear
Jennifer Lopez Smh GIF by American IdolGiphyI used to work in tech support for Citi Bank. The people working there are not intelligent. My favorite interaction went like this..."
"Banker - How do I type the upside down I?"
"Me - Ma'am, that's an exclamation point."
slappy_mcslapenstein
The Crappy People
"In every CS job I’ve ever had: we will bend over backward to help a nice person. We will expedite any complaint, give maximum compensation, and harass other areas of the business for you."
"We will do the absolute bare minimum to help a shi**y person and if you’re really bad, we will do everything in our power to make sure you get nothing but what you’re legally entitled to and it will be a process to get that."
11catsinahumansuit
"I don’t work in CS but 100% the same for us in IT a nice person will get new stuff while a shi**y person will get questionable secondhand crap that will take 12 months to fix! I will make sure that you wait as long as humanely possible to have anything fixed!"
Sharp-Demand-6614
Go to Holiday Inn
"If you ask for a supervisor calling Marriott you will just get another person who is not a supervisor, but say they are."
cryptnificent
"Yep. I've seen this done numerous times across multiple industries. Usually, it only involves an actual sup if it's a genuine problem or if they want to make a point."
"The last job I had was in towing junk cars. Two of the inside buyers, one male, and one female, would bounce that sup card around constantly. Idk how no one ever put it together. We'd get repeat callers and repeat sellers so I don't know."
ItsBobFromLumbridge
Heartless
"Worked at a contracted call center for Centrelink. The manager told us to deny as many emergency payments as possible and they would back us no matter what. They were actively working towards a culture that despised the callers and churned staff to get heartless right-wingers who hated the poor."
Rizza1122
"I feel ya. My best mate is a quadriplegic. Centrelink denied his disability pension because he wasn’t disabled enough."
Less-Storage
Go to Home Depot
You Are Dumb Patrick Star GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"I worked at Lowes. I didn't know anything about anything in the electrical department yet that's where they put me without any training."
Eattherich187
Not training people is not just a Lowes thing.
There are too many unqualified people doing too many things.
Switcharoo
Drag Race What GIF by TAZOGiphy"Can confirm it's an unwritten policy for deli departments in Coles Supermarkets to change the written expiry dates on their tickets so they can sell out-of-code products at full price."
A Little Sunshine
"I worked at a call center for the billing department of a major internet and cable service provider. We were authorized to give up to $90 credit per customer on their bill but only as a last resort. Always remember to be nice to all customer service workers. You never know just how much they can help with a friendly attitude."
Axel_Dunce
"Former call center employee here. Highly accurate. Use your manners, and well fix your issue. Anything else, just makes us want to take longer, and you won't get a credit. Just because we are authorized, doesn't mean you'll get the credit for being an a**hat. haha. I've been verbally abused a few times for asking them not to swear at me. Lol."
Ok-Ad-7247
LELU
"I worked for a major telco company for many years in something called a ‘LELU’ which stands for Law Enforcement Liaison Unit. This 'unit' is pretty self-explanatory, but it essentially is a team who worked directly with the police/FEDS to monitor people's information for things such as obtaining communications history of call logs, SMS loss, etc."
"However, most importantly, the software we used, we as agents could directly see all your SMS texts, including MMS and their explicit imagery of whatever you were sending. This would include sexting, naked images, family photos, and everything. There were instances where people abused this position by stalking or 'monitoring' their SO’s comings and going’s."
MidniteMischief
Cookies!!
"I worked at a cafe chain called 'The Cookie Man,' 95% of their cookies arrived in cardboard boxes layered with bubble wrap. The last 5% arrived as pre-made dough that we would bake on-site to make the place smell like fresh cookies."
"I also worked at a cupcake shop. It's literally just packet mix that you add eggs and oil to before baking/piping pre-made icing onto. Don't waste your money on these places, 90% of these chain shops are the same and most are severely underpaying their workers (this is for Australia btw). Just purchase some packet mix from the supermarket and call it a day."
Frequent-Selection91
Look in the Back
"I was a Store Manager for a very large grocery chain and I can tell you that 95% of the time when customers complain to the manager, we may be professional and show empathy, and even resolve the problem."
"But then we usually just make fun of or talk crap about the person who complained to the other employees. And when a customer is really rude when we go 'look in the back' for something, we legit just stand around and talk to other employees, and make zero effort to look for the item."
A_Womans_Thoughts
From the Box
Kaitlin Olson Brunch GIF by The MickGiphy"I once worked at 'the area's premiere day spa'; the mimosas were made with Sunny D and not real orange juice, and the wines came out of a box."
SailorVenus23
Sunny D and champagne?!?!
What in the name of Lucifer?
Who does that?!
Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.