Many years ago was working in a pharmacy and a patient came in for a prescription for an steroid inhaler. Steroid inhalers can cause a fungal infection in your mouth if you don’t rinse and spit after using them. I told this to the patient’s mother but she said that the doctor told them to not inhale the spray and instead hold it in the mouth and then rinse and swallow. I told them that didn’t sound right and could be harmful but she insisted.

I called the doctor who told me the patient had a relatively rare condition called eosinophilic esophagitis that required they swallow instead of inhale to reduce the swelling in their esophagus and the chance of a fungal infection was manageable. Turns out that physician was performing a clinical trial which is now a recognized (off label) therapy for the disease.

I use that experience when I am training others on why it is important to listen to everything the patient/client/customer is saying, and not to immediately discount it because it sounds wrong.

I just find the two clearly very different interpretations of this prompt interesting, based on the poor grammar in hlwnit was phrased.

When did you think someone was lying and was [but you were] embarrassingly proven wrong?

Is how I first interpreted it. But I can also see how others arrived at

When did you think someone was lying and was [they were] embarrassingly proven wrong to be lying?

Both interpretations lead to interesting answers though.

Pretty niche but embarrassing for me. I’m new to my career, and I had to give a medication I’ve never given before called factor XII. It turns out this medication is very expensive, so it has to be requested from pharmacy instead of being stocked on the floor. So, I looked in the computer to see where it was. The computer said 12,000 units were delivered around 1900 (which was a few hours ago), and 12,000 units were given around that time. To be sure, I checked the automated medication dispenser, and it didn’t have any. I checked the fridge (the computer said to let it come to room temp before giving) and it wasn’t in the fridge. I checked the patients medication bin, it wasn’t in their bin. I checked the patients room and it wasn’t there either. So I messaged pharmacy “medication not available, please send :)”

The pharmacy quickly called me, questioning why I was requesting it. I told them that, per my message, it wasn’t on the floor and I needed it, and I needed it quickly because it was time sensitive. They told me they already sent it and they weren’t sending more because of how expensive it was, and that I needed to look again. I told them everywhere I looked, and that I was sure it wasn’t on the floor. The begrudging said they would walk to my floor and find it for me, which frustrated me as it seemed like such a waste of time. But sure enough, they called me when they got to the medication room and told me to meet them there. There, NEXT TO all the patient specific medication bins, was a small pile of boxes of this medication. They were too big to fit in the patients bin, so they were just piled up to the side. They made a point to rub it in my face that they were right and I wasted their time, and it was very embarrassing.

Oh boy does the question match my week.

I caught 3 students cheating a few days ago. Their exams were line by line identical. The handwriting was the only difference. I called them in to my office having printed their exams out. They all lied, including when I showed them their papers side by side, but you could see it in their faces. They knew they were caught.

Outside of this, I like these kids. They are good students with positive attitudes. Wanting to keep the consequences in house and prevent them from having to retake the course, I was very lenient and decided to give them all C’s for the semester.

This wasn’t good enough for the student who I am convinced did the original work. She spoke with her academic advisor. He emailed me. Since he didn’t have all the details, he and I met to get on the same page. After speaking briefly, he agreed the penalty was fair.

Yesterday, right before I was about to leave the office, my department chair came by. This was someone I very much did not want to involve. The student went to speak to her as well. As I expected, my chair told me I had to take the issue to the honor council. For the students’ sake, this was what I was avoiding the entire time.

I stayed late to send an email to the head of the council. By the time I got home, I had several panicked emails from each of the students. I tried to reassure them that the council is often lenient with first time offenses. And if they are unreasonably punative, I will petition to apply my the original decision given I know my students better.

Having spoken with the other faculty, I don’t think the ring leader was trying to go over my head to put me in a difficult position. She was determined to find help, and it took courage to admit what she did to get that help. I told her as much in the last email I sent. It’s a shame she may have made it much worse for herself and the others.

Was talking to this gay woman at a bar and noticed that she would make contradictory claims like saying she was Palestinian and that she was African. She spoke with an SA accent and said she was from SA but subsequently contradicted herself. She was nice but a bit aloof when I asked her any questions about herself. I called her on these contradictions and said that what she was saying didn’t add up.

Turns out that she was Namibian and that her father was Palestinian. She identified as Palestinian. She said she was aloof about it because most people can’t point to Namibia on a map and that she was tired of her country being a point of prejudice in addition to her sexuality and skin colour so she just said she was from SA to avoid all that.

So a minor lie but one that thought me a lot about what it must be like for some people in everyday conversations.

Trump constantly… except the being embarrassed about it part.

He’s clownishly uninformed about so much common knowledge that people just assume everyone knows.

Happens in business quite a bit.

Working for an ISP where a company was calling us because their internet wasn’t working. I couldn’t find a record of the customer, then I realised we don’t even service that part of the region but they were quite insistent.

After a couple days their CEO rocked up to our office fuming. Why is the internet will offline? what do we pay you for? I’m not leaving till it’s fixed kinda thing.
We asked their CEO if they had a copy of their bill with them and he gave us their internet bill. No shock to us it was a bill for the national telco not for us, a regional niche ISP.

We pointed this out to him and his face drops. he turns to the person tailing him, who’s face has gone quite red.

The CEO stood up and walked out the door without saying a word.

I once told people that the Sandy Hook Shooting was a hoax and everyone involved were crisis actors. Then I got sued and the judge ruled against me, and my news network Infowars is now being auctioned and sold.