'You are a real pain on Fridays!': 20+ messy teacher moments for the back-to-school season

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Sep 7, 2024 2:00 PM EDT

Back-to-school season is among us, which means that we are officially dealing with the best and worst teachers among us. Look, as the child of a teacher, I have an immense amount of sympathy for most educators. However, in every industry, there are people who are straight-up trash at their jobs. You can find these individuals in business meetings, behind the front desk of a doctor's office, and in our classrooms. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for stopping some people from being bad at their jobs. Even the perfect resume cannot fully predict how someone will teach and how students will embrace (or repel) them.

Here, we have a collection of anecdotes from former students about the worst teachers they have encountered during their formative coming-of-age years. Keep scrolling below for these stories. For more content like this, check out this compilation of ridiculous rules that make absolutely no sense.

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  • 01
    Crevalo A B
    via Element5 Digital
  • 02
    What did your teacher do that made you call them "worst teacher ever"?
    via Ara-Rat
  • 03
    Little... A highschool writing teacher who circled the word "ebbed" and said "not a word!" in bright red ink, this was a creative writing assignment that I was very nervous to show her. Then when I showed her it was a word in a thesaurus she got upset and asked what brand the thesaurus was as if I had an incorrect book. She never liked me and I never really understood why.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 04
    Random_Guy_9201 . Made a girl cry and insulting her singing and not helping a kid get up after his wheelchair fell over. Teacher: Choir teacher
    via Ara-Rat
  • 05
    Majoraslnk . She tied me to my chair. I was hyperactive, and also 5. She would also hold my hand during formation in the mornings and squeeze so hard my tiny knuckles would crack. When I'd instinctively try to pull my hand away, she'd hold onto it and smile at me and ask me if it hurt. Makes me smile to think she's probably d by now. Witch.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 06
    Gary... In her defense (1993) she was a middle school English teacher. She tried to explain to me that the Sun wasn't a star. I argued back and she got mad because I wasn't the "teacher".
    via Ara-Rat
  • 07
    You know that feeling when you get real pd because you know you're in the right? That was me. But I just ate it. I wished I would have followed through because I would have loved if she had to explain to her boss how the sun wasn't a star. Her explanation was that it's a "sun", not a "star".
    via Ara-Rat
  • 08
    [deleted] I had an English teacher and I was convinced he gave me low grades just for the fof it. Everyone else thought I was just full of it.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 09
    One assignment I gave it to one of the 'class pets' to look at and I asked for improvements. They showed me their assignment and said "there isn't much of a difference here". When I read it the only difference was the odd word choice (synonyms) but the structure was the same. They got 80s and 90s and I got 60s.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 10
    Deep_Scope He threw one of my books in the trash when he caught me reading them in class. F that guy. I honestly want to kick his teeth in at that moment and it still me off. Don't throw books in the trash.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 11
    GonelnSixtyFrames Stole stuff out of desks and blamed the other kids in the class.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 12
    Ashley_619 3rd grade teacher got frustrated with a kids stutter and started pounding the kids desk with a closed fist while mocking his stutter.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 13
    Funny-Tangelo My biology teacher took my year book away right before summer break. I didn't put it away in time.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 14
    That year my parents divorced and I was moving away. I told her this after class and she didn't care. She kept it until the last day. I didn't get any signatures. Ended up throwing it away. What a witch.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 15
    tiny_... My 8th grade English teacher never published grades and every time I'd ask her about it she'd answer with, "I don't know, what do you think it is?" B IF I KNEW WOULD I BE ASKING?!
    via Ara-Rat
  • 16
    baseballandmusic13 I was a business major and was taking either macro or micro economics and my professor told me I was a bad person for working in the car industry and only cared about people over. I was a valet for the service department at the time. Literally just parked the cars
    via Ara-Rat
  • 17
    [dele... My university lecturer was the most incompetent bloke I've ever met. He taught I.T and for the life of me, I can't figure out how the f he got that job.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 18
    • In the first lesson he got us to sign up to twitter so we could share lesson content, tweet at each other so we'd get to know one another and also tweet him. Everybody, including the lecturer used twitter once. We just used the university intranet to share
    via Ara-Rat
  • 19
    Again, during the first lesson he announced he was going on holiday for 4 weeks during our first term.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 20
    • All of his lessons were powerpoint presentations, each slide had about a paragraph of text written on them which he would read out loud while awkwardly looking over his shoulder. Once he was done doing that he would essentially repeat what he had just said.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 21
    • One day he asked us for help in booking his airline tickets online because he couldn't figure out how to use the website.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 22
    EDIT: I should add he didn't really understand how twitter worked. Didn't know how to tag people and thought it was a good way to send documents to one another.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 23
    [deleted] She told me "you know something...insert name..., you are a real PAIN on Fridays"!
    via Ara-Rat
  • 24
    It was Friday and it was the afternoon and it was always fun and games on Fridays. So I was having fun with friends, laughing and joking. I was about 9 at the time and she yelled that at me in class and I was stunned and embarrassed because it was out of nowhere.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 25
    Everyone went quiet and started looking at me and I went quiet. I stayed quiet and became conscious of myself. I occasionally think about it.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 26
    OppositeCareless When a teacher called me at 12:30 AM to complete an excel sheet because it was his deadline to submit it tomorrow. I did it and sent it back. Didn't say thank you in text. No worries.
    via Ara-Rat
  • 27
    I go to school the next day and he's trashing me in front of another teacher for no reason. I don't expect him to start praising me like I'm the messiah, at the least don't do this.
    via Ara-Rat

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