rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance Are You Suuuuure That's What You Want?
Episode Date: March 25, 2021r/Maliciouscompliance In today's episode, we have a student to grapples with his school's strict dress code. OP is a bisexual student who is constantly bullied by his classmates, who steal his belt. H...e retaliates by wearing a gay pride belt to school, which also gets stolen. When the bully gets caught with the stolen belt, the bully is stuck with an impossible choice: Does he admit he stole it and get in trouble, or does he say the belt is his and then get bullied himself? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post-traumatic cross-reddit.
Today's subreddit is R-Slash from delicious compliance where O where OP gets his bully expelled.
Our next read it posted from emotional sector.
Some context.
From 2001 to 2010, I went to a truly vile Catholic school that was part of our local church
that we attended.
The students and staff were homophobic, racist, and xenophobic.
And me, being a Goth Latinx student, I was bullied by students and staff alike.
This school had a pretty strict dress code requiring students to wear a uniform and the boys had
to tuck in their shirts and wear a belt.
This was a problem for me because the staff and students would love to hit me with a one
two punch, where the students would steal my belt during gym class and the teachers would
conveniently do a belt check and this would result in me getting countless attentions.
It was hard to prove that this was happening because having an extra belt near locker wasn't
suspicious, and we never labeled our belt because who steals belts?
Anyway, after my parents caught wind of what was happening, they immediately scheduled a meeting
with the principal, vice principal, and the pastor of the church.
In my parents' defense, they didn't know how awful the school was, and after learning
about the racist and homophobic
views of the Catholic Church, we promptly left and joined a much more accepting church. My dad said,
so it's come to my attention that my son keeps getting detention for dress code violations caused by
other students stealing his belt. The principal said, well we actually have no evidence to prove this
and we just suspect that your son isn't wearing a belt as a way to rebel.
I said I absolutely do wear a belt every single day.
The pastor said,
God requires us to take responsibility for our shortcomings, and we shouldn't blame others
for our shortcomings.
Well, regardless of the reason, your son needs to wear a belt, and failure to do so from
this point forward will result in more drastic consequences.
Before my dad can say another word, my mom thinks the three of them for their time and asks for a
print copy of the dress code. And on her way out she says to me,
Let's buy you a belt that none of those races or homophobes would ever want to be caught with.
So onto the malicious compliance. The next day I walked into school wearing a rainbow sequin belt that had the words gay
pride in all caps.
I had recently come out as buy, so my mom wanted me to be proud of it and bought a series
of belts to help me express myself.
I was immediately called into the principal's office, and I was given a lecture on the
sanctity of marriage and whatnot, to be honest I wasn't listening.
After she finished her tirade, I handed her a letter that my mom told me to give her when I was inevitably going to be called to the office
to be reprimanded. Just like every other day, my belt was still in a lunge, and when the
teacher tried to get me in trouble, I asked her politely to check the lockers of my classmates.
Upon doing so, she found my rainbow-sequent belt in the locker of one of the bullies and
asked him where he got this belt from. And instead of lying and saying that it was his, he didn't want to be labeled as being
gay because he was homophobic, so he admitted to stealing it.
At this point, I had him did to write, and I politely asked him for all my belts back
or compensation for them.
His parents ended up having to write as a check because the dummy admitted to throwing all
of them away.
And because the school kept a log for each belt related in fraction, I could prove that he had stolen over 20 belts.
That student was expelled for breaking one of the 10 Commandments, and the pastor himself
was forced to apologize to me. I left shortly after that, and I went to a school that accepted
me for me, and I made tons of lifelong friends. Our next Reddit post is from DMGT.
When I was in college, I took a class with this gym of a professor.
On the first day of class, he asked how many people thought they would make an A.
This being a tough engineering school where a C grade actually was average, something
like 5 students out of a class of 60 raised their hands.
He then announced that that's how many A's he would give out that semester.
All of our tests for that class were multiple choice exams we took online.
We were allowed to refer to our notes during the tests, and we were allowed to study from
old tests as long as we didn't refer to the old test during the exam.
Fair enough.
I studied for the first test, but I didn't have access to any old exams, so I did find
but not great.
By the time the second exam rolled around, I'd made a friend who was in a frat that had
multiple copies of old exams from this professor.
We and a couple other students took advantage of their rule allowing us to study from old
tests.
We quickly discovered that on these 50 question tests, the professor had a repertoire of
about 75 questions he pulled from.
On the first copy of the test that we studied from, we took the time to work through the answers
to make sure that we understood them.
By the time we got to the fourth copy,
we could answer questions
before we even finished reading them,
exam time rolls around, and just as with previous years,
he pulled from the same pile of questions.
I think it took me 12 minutes to answer everything correctly.
In hindsight, I probably should have let the clock run
for a bit, we had an hour. But I went ahead and submitted the test because I had other things to do.
I checked in with the other students that I had studied with the next day and they'd all gotten
over 90%. Sweet, I'm definitely using that plan for the third test in the final. The next day,
we all received an email from the professor letting us know that we were being reported to the
Dean for an honor code violation.
He claimed that he had never had anyone make better than an 80% on one of his tests before.
So the fact that we all made over 90% was clear proof in his mind that we'd cheated.
This being an engineering school, we were all nerds who were pretty scared about receiving such an email.
But we agreed the best course of action was to talk to the professor before he went to
the dean so we could tell him our side of the story and see if we could work things out.
We reached out to him and he agreed to meet with us after class.
When we met with him and laid out our case, he was surprisingly receptive to our explanation.
I think in reality, he just didn't want to go through with a hassle of reporting us
to the dean.
So we left the meeting feeling pretty good, and we agreed within our study group that
we would keep studying from the old tests.
Well, about a week before test 3, this guy announced it to the class that because some of
us had found the previous test so easy, the next one would have twice as many questions
in the same amount of time.
Being the cheeky SOB that I am, I asked him as I was leaving class, well what happened
if someone made a hundred on the test?
He said, God help you on the final.
So we use the same approach and setting for that test, and we found the same pattern of
a limited set of questions.
Of course, in addition to the extra questions he had promised, all the questions on this
test would be new.
So while we still memorize all his questions and answers, we tried to make sure that we
understood the concepts as much as possible so we could deal with those extra questions.
Test day comes around, and low and behold, 87 of the questions are pulled directly from old tests.
10 questions were from a guest lecture where he basically pulled the questions and answers directly from the slides.
And 3 were filler questions, like, what's 1 plus 1, and two are false, the Earth revolves around the Sun.
I knew that I had everything right. I also knew that I didn't want to screw myself and everyone else for the final.
I purposely answered the filler questions incorrectly, so if he looked at the results, he would know what I'd done.
I got a 97. I never heard from that professor about the third test, but I like to think of him rage
rolling through the results.
I don't remember details about the final, but I do remember the format being the same
as what had been announced at the beginning of the semester.
My study group also worked together on a group project where we all made A's, so if
he really only gave out 5 A's that semester, we received them all.
I've never understood why there are professors out there who seem
proud of the fact that most of their students don't get an A. If most of your students
are struggling with the coursework, then doesn't that mean that you're a terrible teacher?
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Our next Reddit post is from Cat Dad Mill House
This happened over 15 years ago
When digital SLR cameras were first becoming somewhat affordable
to anyone who wasn't either wealthy or a professional photographer I was in high school and I'd been a budding photographer for years already, working
in a small retail photo supply shop. I had a customer who appeared to be in his 60s come in one Saturday
and spend over an hour dimmowing just about every camera we sold. I honestly look forward to those
customers because it made the time go faster and I generally enjoyed talking shop with people
Eventually, he settled on one that we both thought would suit his needs and I rang him up a few nights later
He comes back. I've already been given a heads up by the stores owner that the guy is called ahead and he's pissed
When the customer arrives
He immediately accuses me of telling him a camera that's either broken or simply not good enough for what he wants to use it for.
He just wants to use it to take pictures of his grandkids, who, like most tiny children,
aren't always standing perfectly still.
He says it's too slow, it takes the picture after the kids already done something, every
photo is blurry, etc.
I take him at his word and examine the camera, changing some settings and snapping a few
pictures as I go.
I genuinely can't find anything wrong with it.
As gently as I can, I try to tell him that it may be a combination of using the wrong
settings on the camera for what he's trying to photograph, and maybe a bit of slow reflexes
that will develop with practice.
Keep in mind that I'm young and terrified of losing my job.
So believe me when I say that I'm as delicate as I can be with the whole situation.
But that was the wrong answer, apparently.
His solution?
Okay, hot shot, let's see you make it work.
I'm gonna wave my arms back and forth over my head, and I want you to take pictures when
they're straight up.
He insists that this will prove the camera is too slow and that it can't take a sharp
picture.
He hands me the camera, and he starts doing his best.
Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care right in the store.
Snap, snap, snap.
I hand the camera back and let him review the photos.
Each one showing the exact moment he wanted me to photograph.
Perfectly sharp and in focus.
He didn't say another word.
He huffed, hastily shoved everything back into his camera bag and stormed off.
Sorry, sir, I was just doing what you asked me to do.
Our next reddit posted from Little Miss Bunny Woman.
This happened a few years ago, right after my really good neighbor moved out, and a really
terrible family moved in.
It was a Saturday and I saw the neighbors working on their backyard.
I hadn't really had the opportunity to introduce myself so I went over and said hello. They were digging a pit to put in a plastic rainwater collection
things so they could water their vegetable garden. Me being nice, I offered to help, and
I spent a really nice day digging a pit and laying some cement for the tank to rest on.
Well, I noticed two things and tried to bring them up. One, they didn't put in the removable
mesh through the main collection pipe, meaning that if it got clogged, it was gonna be terrible to clean.
Two, there was no overflow line from the tank. The thing is, these would have been easy
to fix, maybe 45 minutes tops. I tried to bring it up, and I told them they might want
to put in some mesh in an overflow. I was shut down right away until it was fine. They
just said, do it my way, I want to done my way if you don't like it, leave."
So I said, okay, have a nice day and I left.
About a month later we get heavy rain and guess what, it filled up.
Then the intake pipe filled up.
The water collected and then spilled through their basement window, flooding their basement,
and I mean seriously flooding it with at least a solid foot of water. So yeah, maybe listen to the girl who went to university
for, you know, engineering. They had to pump their basement, dig up the tank, and add an overflow pipe.
Since then, they've hated me. Our next reddit post is from Rand Oboomer. This is my fun story
about my obnoxious boss. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I used
to travel a lot for business between 30 and 35 weeks a year. Our boss was a frequent
traveler as well and Taurus the tricks of the trade for accumulating frequent flyer miles.
Eventually he retired and sold the company to the new boss. The new boss overheard that
I had over 500,000 frequent flyer miles with my airline and said that he would implement
a new policy that we had to use our personal frequent flyer miles for our business travel
since the company had paid for our trips.
That weekend, my wife and I sat down and booked weekend trips all over the country for the
next year.
Boston for Clam Chatter?
Check.
New York City for a Broadway show?
Check.
Garlic Fest in Gilroy, California? A real and delicious thing, by the way. Check.
By Monday morning, my airline frequent flyer mile account was down to about 15,000 miles.
Later that week, it was time to book a work trip, and my boss said that I had to use
my frequent flyer miles. I brought up my account and showed him that I didn't have enough
miles. He asked where they all went, and when I said that I'd booked some trips, he demanded
that I re-deposit the miles.
I pointed out that there was $150 charge per person, and since it wasn't policy, I wasn't
going to pay for it.
Now pissed, my boss announced that, going forward, we need to prove for personal use of our
frequent flyer miles.
Okay boss, you bet.
My next step was to spread my flights over any and every airline I could find to prevent
accumulating the 20,000 miles required to redeem a free ticket.
I was on United, Frontier, American, Delta, Northwest, Continental, USA, Southwest, etc.
My boss eventually figured out what I was up to, and he lost what little patients remained for me. Then the following conversation took place.
I suppose you think you're a smart guy. No, I know I'm a smart guy. Don't get cute.
No, I'm smart. Cute is just a bonus. Look, I see my wife about 10 days out of the month.
I live out of my suitcase. I know the aircraft evacuation speech by heart.
Most of my meals are handed to me through a window. And thanks to my willingness to do this,
you make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Can you please just let me keep the only perk that I
get from all of this? My boss thought about it for a moment, grunted, fine, keep your miles,
and walked away.
Our next reddit post is from Leviathan.
I bought a laptop from a large Fortune 500 company.
Let's call this company, Bell Computers.
After about two years, the hinges on the laptop broke
and it was almost but not quite out of warranty.
I called the service center and they refused
to replace the hinges.
I called, got the runaround and each time they refused to fix it or even send me the
part.
At one point, I was speaking with the low-level customer service manager and I told him
that I would keep trying to escalate until someone honored the warranty.
Then the manager replied,
You can escalate this all the way to the CEO and even he wouldn't help you.
Well it was at that moment that it clicked.
See I used to work for Bell Computer Company.
I didn't know the CEO, Mr. Bell, but while I was employed there he would occasionally send
mass emails out to the staff.
His email address was just his name so it was easy to remember.
Alright then, let's play.
I hung up the phone and drafted an email to Mr. Bell, CEO of Bell Computers.
Just like the helpful customer service rep said I should do.
I wrote in the email about being a former employee, how the runaround with customer service
was awful, and how I just wanted the part to fix my laptop.
The next day, I got a phone call from Mr. Bell's executive assistant.
I spoke with her for about 15 minutes about everything that happened, and she took my
info on my computer service number and said that she would forward it to the VP of customer
service.
I got an email the following day saying the part had shipped.
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