Special Snowflake Stories

[Shea]

Today the circulations supervisor (we'll call him Pascal) at my library told me a fabulous story that belongs on this thread. I present: The Story of the Special Snowflake Student and How He Got His Comeuppance.

So my library (one of the libraries of a large university) has textbooks for many of the classes offered by the university, but has only a few copies of each, usually between 2 and 4. Students are allowed to check them out for a maximum of 48 hours (in some of the libraries it's only 3 hours). So they're in great demand and students often come in looking for copies when they're all checked out. Naturally, this leads to some Very Special students hiding the textbooks or checking them out and simply refusing to return them, $30/day fines be damned.

The student in question had checked out a textbook and had not returned it, days past the due date. Other students in the class were constantly coming in for the book, and were mightily frustrated to be told that it was still unavailable. Finally, Pascal looked the kid's information up in the library records and called him to tell him that the book was way overdue, and he needed to return it so other students could use it. His response (according to Pascal, this is a direct quote) was, "I don't give a [expletive redacted] about the other students, I need the book!" So Pascal, knowing that showing up at the kid's place of residence and retrieving the book at gunpoint was against library policy, did the next best thing he could think of: he called up the kid's professor and told him what was up.

At the next class, the professor apparently began the class by asking the lecture hall, "Is [Very Special Student] here? Would you stand up, please?" VSS did so, and the professor proceeded to inform the class that VSS was the reason none of them could access the library's copy of the textbook, since he "did not give a [expletive redacted]" about the other students.

While a spontaneous, Life of Brian-style stoning with notebooks, binders and calculators did not, I regret to say, ensue, the Very Special Student apparently left the lecture hall, and returned the book several days later. And he had a fine of upwards of $350. Ah, karma.

The student was indeed a Snowflake, but that's a pretty serious privacy violation on Pascal's part. In my state, it's actually illegal to disclose information about who's checked out what book. At a minimum, it's extremely unethical. As a librarian, I take that sort of thing very seriously. This would be a fire-able offense anywhere I've worked.

I was curious about that myself, so I called a friend who's a college librarian.  She told me she's allowed to inform a professor that a textbook is checked out and past due, or that the book is not in the library for whatever reason, but she is not allowed to give them personal information such as the name of the person who checked it out or anything beyond the fact that the book is not there.

Pascal was in compliance with university policy. If an item is far past due, library staff are allowed to retrieve the name of the student who has the item and contact them to request that they return it. If they refuse to do so, library staff are permitted to pass on the name of the student to a professor or a disciplinary body (i.e, students can be called in for a disciplinary hearing for refusal to return library materials). Apparently Pascal figured the professor would call the Very Special Student into his office and threaten him with a lowered grade or some such if he didn't give the book back, as professors have done in the past. Professor apparently decided on a different strategy.

[littlebird]

I think what all this talk of coloured cars goes to prove is that at least half the driving population don't actually pay proper attention to where they're going and it doesn't matter WHAT colour of car you drive.

Driving or walking! People who blindly step out into crosswalks as though they offer some sort of magical protection, even against cars already halfway through the intersection.

I had that happen recently - on my way to work there is a T intersection with a crosswalk from the flat part of the t (sort of where the fourth leg would be in a normal intersection) coming out of a wooded city park, and the woods end only at the sidewalk so it's very hard to see pedestrians coming. A guy wearing headphones and pushing a jogging stroller came out of the woods and headed right through the crosswalk without stopping. I'd finished my full stop and was starting to head across the intersection towards the crosswalk so I ended up stopped in the middle of the intersection while he crossed. Got my adrenaline pumping, that's for sure, but I don't think he even noticed.

[War_Doc]

It has already been mentioned once.  Take the car color talk and accidents to its own thread please.

[littlebird]

Sorry - I thought of the pedestrian as a special snowflake, with the crosswalk as his winter wonderland of magical protection powers.

[greencat]

I ride the bus to and from work, and this particular bus runs a looooong way down one of the major traffic arteries.  After it passes the cross street (another major traffic artery) that separates the "east" side of town from the central area, it runs express from there to the main bus terminal downtown, only making one stop in between (at a substation).  This is clearly indicated on the brochure that gives the bus route and schedule.  TWO other buses cover the area in between the central terminal and the cross street, and they run every fifteen minutes vs the every-half-hour schedule for my bus.

Nearly every afternoon on my way back, someone pulls the stop request cord in the "express" portion of the bus's run, and they almost always have a hissy fit while the bus driver and all the other passengers explain to the ignorant rider that this bus only makes one stop between downtown and the cross street.

I just can't figure out how someone could figure out that the bus goes down that way while missing all the things that indicate that it doesn't actually make stops in that area...they are very special snowflakes.

[snowdragon]

It snowed here today, so of course all the SS's were around. My sister and I went to a local market that had plenty of spaces available - including some directly across from the doors.  So what did the SS's do? Parked in the fire lane where it had signs and lettering painted on the ground saying NO PARKING. They parked right over the lettering - which because the car had been in that spot for so long - had no snow on  the letters.  It did not end there.
   I went in and these folks were walking three abreast and refused to move to allow others to pass by...at one point one of the two ladies in the party swung her cart across the aisle so quickly and aggressively she almost hit me, and told me to "watch out, you don't own the store!" We finally got passed them and went to a second aisle to look for what we wanted, only to find them at the exit to that aisle when we were done, again refusing to move to let us pass and telling US how rude WE were.  At this point we thought better of being in this store and left... shaking our heads and wondering what they were thinking.

[cabbageweevil]

Pascal was in compliance with university policy. If an item is far past due, library staff are allowed to retrieve the name of the student who has the item and contact them to request that they return it. If they refuse to do so, library staff are permitted to pass on the name of the student to a professor or a disciplinary body (i.e, students can be called in for a disciplinary hearing for refusal to return library materials). Apparently Pascal figured the professor would call the Very Special Student into his office and threaten him with a lowered grade or some such if he didn't give the book back, as professors have done in the past. Professor apparently decided on a different strategy.

This might be called an instance of Pascal's wager...

[Shea]

Pascal was in compliance with university policy. If an item is far past due, library staff are allowed to retrieve the name of the student who has the item and contact them to request that they return it. If they refuse to do so, library staff are permitted to pass on the name of the student to a professor or a disciplinary body (i.e, students can be called in for a disciplinary hearing for refusal to return library materials). Apparently Pascal figured the professor would call the Very Special Student into his office and threaten him with a lowered grade or some such if he didn't give the book back, as professors have done in the past. Professor apparently decided on a different strategy.

This might be called an instance of Pascal's wager...

::rimshot::

[CakeEater]

I was doing a revision lesson with some students recently and had some Christmas stickers as prizes in the game of revision pictionary we were playing. The game was still in progress, so still chances to win stickers, when SS student (9 years old) approached my teaching helper with "Where's my sticker?" Helper was a bit confused, thinking student had won a sticker and hadn't got one, but no. Student just thought she deserved one because "if someone gets one, everyone should get one."

She tried it on me later in the lesson, and then refused to do any other work and sulked because I didn't give her one. I had actually planned to give another sticker to everyone as I left, but not in that class!

[Sirius]

I know this type of thing has come up in this thread already, but I just encountered it at the grocery store:

If you're going to get into a loud argument on your cellphone while in the grocery store, stop your shopping and go elsewhere and finish it.  The rest of us don't want to hear all your angst.  At least this woman wasn't cursing, like some I've heard, but really.

[mbbored]

This could go here or in the "Drive you crazy" thread, but I'm still irritated so I'm going with SS.

I sing in a community chorus of 80 people with 8 voice sections: 1st and 2nd sopranos, 1st and 2nd altos, etc. Tonight was our first concert and somehow every single 1st soprano but me called in sick. During warm ups our director announced that I would be miked since I would be singing my parts alone. One of the 2nd sopranos offered to step in and help but the director reassured her that I knew my parts and would be fine.

Except when it came to my first descant line that I was really looking forward to singing, she started singing it along with me, off key and off rhythm. The second time several people hushed her and afterwards I saw the director talking to her. I don't know if she really wanted to help or just wanted part of the spotlight, but she made things worse, not better.

[NyaChan]

This could go here or in the "Drive you crazy" thread, but I'm still irritated so I'm going with SS.

I sing in a community chorus of 80 people with 8 voice sections: 1st and 2nd sopranos, 1st and 2nd altos, etc. Tonight was our first concert and somehow every single 1st soprano but me called in sick. During warm ups our director announced that I would be miked since I would be singing my parts alone. One of the 2nd sopranos offered to step in and help but the director reassured her that I knew my parts and would be fine.

Except when it came to my first descant line that I was really looking forward to singing, she started singing it along with me, off key and off rhythm. The second time several people hushed her and afterwards I saw the director talking to her. I don't know if she really wanted to help or just wanted part of the spotlight, but she made things worse, not better.

Ah yes, the second soprano with aspirations for loftier places.  I was in the second soprano group when I sang and there was always a lot of girls convinced that they should have have been or could have been firsts. Some were still good in the second in terms of holding their notes in opposition to the firsts and just complained verbally, but others "had trouble" and would stray onto the firsts' part leaving the rest of us to pick up their slack.  Just got them scolded, not moved (the ones that actually could hit those notes were actually good enough to understand that there is skill and value in singing second) so I'm not sure why they'd persist in trying.

[Hmmmmm]

I can't decide if this person was a SS or within her rights as a customer  The day before Thanksgiving I ran into a small specialty supermarket.  They had all their checkout lines open and all but one were being used for ringing up big orders.  I had 2 items so got in line in the single express checkout line behind a women with 3 or 4 items.  Once she was rung up, she then got her wallet out, and took out a gift card, (prepaid Mastercard type thing) asked the cashier if she should use it like a credit card.  They tried it that way, it wouldn't go through, so she then tried it as a debit twice using 2 different pins.  There's now  3 people behind me. 

Customer says I have cash, but let me try this other card, so gets her wallet back out, pulls out a different gift card, and goes through the same process again.  During this time the customer does acknowledge she is holding me up and says to me she gets a lot of these cards from her clients but always has a hard time using them but since she has some time on her lunch hour she thought she would give them a go.  And reaches for a third card in her wallet.  At this point the floor manager comes over and says she'll take customer over to customer service to see if they can complete her order there since the express line now has 7 or 8 people in line.  After holding up the express line for 10 minutes, Customer says, oh I don't have time for that, here is cash to pay for my transaction. 

Though I thought the floor manager and cashier were going to brain her for a minute, they said ok and them gave each of us in line piece of chocolate to thank us for our patience. 

[gramma dishes]

Waiting in line would be far less irritating if you knew you'd be rewarded afterward with chocolate!!  It would almost be worth the momentary frustration!  Maybe I'd even get behind someone like that on purpose.  But sadly here we never get chocolate as a reward for our patience.   

[Hmmmmm]

Waiting in line would be far less irritating if you knew you'd be rewarded afterward with chocolate!!  It would almost be worth the momentary frustration!  Maybe I'd even get behind someone like that on purpose.  But sadly here we never get chocolate as a reward for our patience.   

Right? It's like the Big Bang episode where Penny gets retrained with chocolate.  The world would be a lot more polite if chocolate was a possibility.