Spooky Season is Here - Share your Horror Stories 👻!

Miša Hennin

It's time we had some festive fun in our young Community, so let's celebrate by sharing some of our greatest productivity nightmares 🧟‍♂️, spooky mistakes 🎃 and time mismanagements 🦇.

Add your own terrifying tales of organizational mishaps in the comments below, I can't wait to read them! I'll go first!

Miša Hennin

It was a cold and dark morning - I had left the house before the sun woke up so the streets were eerily quiet. I didn't notice anything strange because I was anxiously focused on the 5000 word essay I had to write. I got to the train station and found it empty except for an old ticket inspector 🧟‍♂️ who moved creepily from platform to platform. As I went through my argument paragraph by paragraph, the clock ticked towards 7am and the train screeched into the station slowly with the grey light of dawn.

I got onto the train and found an empty carriage. I was pleased to find a quiet space to work but also ever so slightly unsettled. It was an early morning train and I had expected it to be full of commuters. But I brushed aside any more sinister feelings, got my laptop out and began to write my long essay on medieval punishment 👹.

After an hour or so, the sky darkened and the rain worsened. Outside was a blur of wet, grey fields blended with the wet, grey sky. I continued to sit alone and write about the cruelty of the past, the sound of the rain lulling me into a very concentrated state.

Suddenly, my trance was broken - the train had stopped. A voice through the broken intercom told me there was an issue with the signals and we'd be here a while. I tried to frame this positively. Being stuck on a train? More time to write my essay. After another hour, I had 2500 words done. I always found it easy to write essays because I knew how to prepare. My notes were extensive and thorough, so when it came to writing, all I had to do was reorganize my reading into a strong argument 🤓.

In the afternoon, I arrived to an empty home with 4000 words done. Cold, tired and proud, I decided to take a nap 💤 but I woke with a start from a bad dream. I had dreamed I was at university speaking to my professor. He asked me to hand him my essay but I couldn't - I hadn't synced my document with my device to edit offline 😱.

I woke and leapt out of bed confused and terrified. I grabbed my laptop and felt my heart beating faster as I connected to the wifi and opened Google Docs. My nightmare became reality - none of my work had saved. Fury rushed through my veins 🤬. How could I have been so ****? Embarrassed by the naive pride I'd had in my organization I threw myself back into bed and lay there until I was ready to face another 4000 words 😫. 

Emily

Hahaha, this is brilliant @Miša! (And of course, terrifying!) I can imagine some of my students have experienced similar nightmares.

I'll try and think of one of my own stories when I have some time this afternoon.

Andrew Lapidus

Nice, @Miša! 😁 I definitely found myself trembling with terror at the thought of revisiting the horror of college essays🧟‍♂️

My terrifying tale of mismanagement comes from my first ever job in Austria, working as an office assistant for an international organization in Salzburg. My first week was filled with 40 hours of very menial (but very important) clerical work: organizing and preparing administrative documents which were to be submitted to the Austrian government.

My boss was thrilled at the speed of my work - turns out that my output within that 40 hour week was much higher than she had anticipated. Then she took a closer look: everything I had done was useless: I had prepared, printed, filed and submitted literally thousands of pages which were dated in the American style, with the month first and day second.

Every single submission was rejected by the Austrian government, but things got even worse: Their office would not accept any resubmissions until they had fully processed our current outstanding requests. In other words, it took the office over a month to "confirm" that my work was useless.

Anyways, that's how I single-handedly caused a 7 week delay at a high-powered NGO in my first week on the job. Happy Halloween!!!!🎃🎃🎃🎃

Emily

Wow @Andrew Lapidus your story is quite impressive 🤣!

I remember a pretty bad situation from years ago. I got home after teaching all day and sat down to do my marking. I spent a good two hours marking some short essays from one of my English classes. As I finished them, my partner came home with a takeaway and a bottle of wine. I stacked up all the papers and moved them to the side of the table so we could eat. After dinner, I was clearing the table and I knocked over the bottle of wine. And yes, of course, I knocked it all over my stack of marking.

Cursing my stupidity, I tried to wipe it up as quickly as possible. Almost every student's essay was left smelling like wine. I was lucky the wine was white so I could still read the blotted handwriting but I was humiliated by the alcoholic smell.

Rest assured, I never ever left my marking on the kitchen table again!

Richard

@Miša, @Andrew Lapidus and @Emily these were great to read! Brightened my afternoon for sure! thank you😃 (hopefully we've all learned from past mistakes such as these)