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Romantic Horror Stories


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So these are for the worst-case scenarios when romance was particularly hard on us aros. Here's probably my worst romantic horror story, when a guy REALLY wouldn't let up with a crush :/

 



Near the start of last school year I had a particularly creepy guy get a crush on me. I have no idea why, but all of a sudden he was texting me all the time and talking to me at lunchtime. This would be okay if the texts weren't so creepy (I still have them on my phone, it's insane to look through them and remember somebody sent them to me xD) and he would say literally nothing when he came to talk to me. Like, he would just sit down and interrupt what I was doing and this intense silence would start up until I thought up of something to say. Then he showed up at a school dance after I mentioned I was going, when he said he hated school dances.

 

I kind of still thought this was just an awkward friendship. It wasn't until I showed the texts to my awesome oldest sister that I realised it was a really creepy crush. My sister said to just stop talking to him, and then everything got creepy times ten. The guy started texting me at 1am in the morning asking if I hated him, and every lunchtime he'd walk really slowly past the place where I was sitting. Then I kept seeing him staring at me wherever I went in school, it was more than a little scary.

 

If anything good came out of this, I did learn how to say no really clearly. Up until this point I hadn't really directly told them to stop, but the next time he came to sit by me I straight up told him I didn't want to see him anymore. That was... really terrifying. He started getting angry and swearing at me, but eventually he left and I haven't had a problem since. I then posted about it in AVEN, because Arocalypse didn't exist yet and that's what I did for basically everything that happened in my life at that point xD

 

Anyway, that was my horror story.

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I wish I had a story where I was the object of a crush, like most of you do, I guess, but I was on the victim (feeler) side of aesthetic crushes all the time so I don't have a story to tell that I wouldn't be ashamed of :ph34r:

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Same guy from the festival I mentioned in the "been on a date without knowing" thread. 
 

Spoiler

 

He was kind of always around me. At first I didn't mind, at festivals you're friendly with everybody, even strangers (that's what I like about them), but he kept following me around. It was weird though, because to me, we shared no mutual anything that would warrant any closeness. He just followed me, sometimes quietly, sometimes asking all kinds of invasive questions. I began literally "sneaking out" of the camp to be alone with friends, even spend most of my time at another campside just to avoid him. He was really clingy...

 

Everyone from my original festival group went to the last concert though, including him. During the show, it started raining like crazy and it was already dark. Me, being a little sick, wanted out, get some rest and sleep it off in a dry place. He insisted on accompanying me, because he was worried and shit. I only had a slight cold, really nothing mayor, so I refused him multiple times. I didn't want him with me and I certainly didn't want to be alone with him back at our campside. So... after he refused to listen to me, I just snuck out again. Got the security to make a fast lane for me and just left.

 

But the guy actually followed me! At the gate, were the concerts side led to the camps, he waited. I yelled at him back then, to leave me the fuck alone already and after arguing with me for quit some time, he finally did... Apparently he later complained about me, because I got a lot of beef from people. telling me he was just "trying to be nice" and was "genuinely worried". Maybe he was, maybe I was in the wrong here, but if a refusal to listen to somebody and following them around is considered "caring" than I really don't want that. I thing even someone non-aro can find this uncomfortable.

 

 

1 hour ago, DannyFenton123 said:

The guy started texting me at 1am in the morning asking if I hated him, and every lunchtime he'd walk really slowly past the place where I was sitting

That seems scary and obsessive D: I'm sry you had to go through this. That can really mess with ones mind .__.

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Aww jeez, that's awful. And getting told off about it afterwards sucks; you were not in the wrong.

 

And the guy I talked about was pretty scary and obsessive. Luckily it didn't escalate, but yeah, it was a real horror story or a crush ¬¬

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1 hour ago, DannyFenton123 said:

I have no idea why, but all of a sudden he was texting me all the time and talking to me at lunchtime. This would be okay if the texts weren't so creepy (I still have them on my phone, it's insane to look through them and remember somebody sent them to me xD) and he would say literally nothing when he came to talk to me.

 

Actually, that guy's behavior sounds a bit like mine 4 years ago xD (when I was thinking amatonormatively that I was obliged to get myself a girl at any cost before graduation but, obviously, lack the experience and skills to do so).

 

Wasn't he neurodiverse, by any chance?

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3 minutes ago, aroMa(n)tisse said:

 

Actually, that guy's behavior sounds a bit like mine 4 years ago xD (when I was thinking amatonormatively that I was obliged to get myself a girl before graduation).

Darn amatonormatively making people act creepy! xD

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Oh man these are sucky situations - I had one with a coworker back in 2012:


 

Spoiler

 

I had just started at a fast food restaurant and one of the guys there around the same age as me (I think like, seventeen to my recent eighteen or vice versa) took a shine. I was pretty much fine with it because I didn't realise at first why he kept paying attention to me, I was part of a large group of friends in high school and had generally considered myself bottom of the pack when it came to looks and desirability wrt romantic partners. (I was also still IDing as a girl back then)

 

He started buying me little presents, like a cute tea strainer because he'd noticed I liked tea and stuff like that, which made me kinda awkward but I just chalked it up to never having been very good at accepting gifts from anyone, especially ones that didn't have an occasion attached, but he kind of stepped up the ante, he started walking me to the train station etc despite the fact we lived in opposite directions, started showing up on my shifts when he wasn't working to spend my break bugging me. THEN every year here we have a con, for a while it was pretty much the only con anyone really went to, and I was pretty pumped because it would be my first year not being dragged along with my dad while he hovered over my shoulder and griped about costs, so he, one of our other coworkers, I'll call her J, and I organised to go together.

 

I got there on the day, vaguely hungover because my best friends eighteenth had been the night before, but it was just him, no J in sight. He said that she'd called to say she couldn't make it, so I kind of pouted but went along. My debit card stopped working, so I was annoyed because my cash in hand wasn't great, but I figured I could still have a good time. Instead of that happening, he snuck in behind me at each stall and payed for everything that I debated over getting. Everything. I couldn't even catch him to stop him most of the time, and he went over my original budget for the day even. The worst bit though? We rocked up at work the next day and I was talking to J about how much fun it had been and I was sorry she hadn't been able to make, and she gave me this open mouthed look, turned on one foot and punched him on the arm. Because he'd called the morning of and said that he and I were both bailing and she shouldn't bother coming. Fucker.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Mogseltof said:

Oh man these are sucky situations - I had one with a coworker back in 2012:


 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I had just started at a fast food restaurant and one of the guys there around the same age as me (I think like, seventeen to my recent eighteen or vice versa) took a shine. I was pretty much fine with it because I didn't realise at first why he kept paying attention to me, I was part of a large group of friends in high school and had generally considered myself bottom of the pack when it came to looks and desirability wrt romantic partners. (I was also still IDing as a girl back then)

 

He started buying me little presents, like a cute tea strainer because he'd noticed I liked tea and stuff like that, which made me kinda awkward but I just chalked it up to never having been very good at accepting gifts from anyone, especially ones that didn't have an occasion attached, but he kind of stepped up the ante, he started walking me to the train station etc despite the fact we lived in opposite directions, started showing up on my shifts when he wasn't working to spend my break bugging me. THEN every year here we have a con, for a while it was pretty much the only con anyone really went to, and I was pretty pumped because it would be my first year not being dragged along with my dad while he hovered over my shoulder and griped about costs, so he, one of our other coworkers, I'll call her J, and I organised to go together.

 

I got there on the day, vaguely hungover because my best friends eighteenth had been the night before, but it was just him, no J in sight. He said that she'd called to say she couldn't make it, so I kind of pouted but went along. My debit card stopped working, so I was annoyed because my cash in hand wasn't great, but I figured I could still have a good time. Instead of that happening, he snuck in behind me at each stall and payed for everything that I debated over getting. Everything. I couldn't even catch him to stop him most of the time, and he went over my original budget for the day even. The worst bit though? We rocked up at work the next day and I was talking to J about how much fun it had been and I was sorry she hadn't been able to make, and she gave me this open mouthed look, turned on one foot and punched him on the arm. Because he'd called the morning of and said that he and I were both bailing and she shouldn't bother coming. Fucker.

 

 

 

Ok that is creepy how he played the 'create the right premis' game. Like who thinks that'll get trust and ?Love?

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1 hour ago, Mogseltof said:

Oh man these are sucky situations - I had one with a coworker back in 2012:


 

  Hide contents

 

I had just started at a fast food restaurant and one of the guys there around the same age as me (I think like, seventeen to my recent eighteen or vice versa) took a shine. I was pretty much fine with it because I didn't realise at first why he kept paying attention to me, I was part of a large group of friends in high school and had generally considered myself bottom of the pack when it came to looks and desirability wrt romantic partners. (I was also still IDing as a girl back then)

 

He started buying me little presents, like a cute tea strainer because he'd noticed I liked tea and stuff like that, which made me kinda awkward but I just chalked it up to never having been very good at accepting gifts from anyone, especially ones that didn't have an occasion attached, but he kind of stepped up the ante, he started walking me to the train station etc despite the fact we lived in opposite directions, started showing up on my shifts when he wasn't working to spend my break bugging me. THEN every year here we have a con, for a while it was pretty much the only con anyone really went to, and I was pretty pumped because it would be my first year not being dragged along with my dad while he hovered over my shoulder and griped about costs, so he, one of our other coworkers, I'll call her J, and I organised to go together.

 

I got there on the day, vaguely hungover because my best friends eighteenth had been the night before, but it was just him, no J in sight. He said that she'd called to say she couldn't make it, so I kind of pouted but went along. My debit card stopped working, so I was annoyed because my cash in hand wasn't great, but I figured I could still have a good time. Instead of that happening, he snuck in behind me at each stall and payed for everything that I debated over getting. Everything. I couldn't even catch him to stop him most of the time, and he went over my original budget for the day even. The worst bit though? We rocked up at work the next day and I was talking to J about how much fun it had been and I was sorry she hadn't been able to make, and she gave me this open mouthed look, turned on one foot and punched him on the arm. Because he'd called the morning of and said that he and I were both bailing and she shouldn't bother coming. Fucker.

 

 

 

Ahh what the hell! He sounds like an arsehole!

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OMG, the creeps. That's going to be a very long thread, I guess.

That reminds me memories... It started on Internet, but it gets much more real towards the end...

 

Spoiler

I was writing a blog about my neurological disorder, and I also administrated a forum about it. That was something like 7 years ago, if I remember well ? Anyway a 17-year-old boy sent me an email telling me his symptoms and asking me if he might have the same thing, so I told him that maybe yes, and I gave him my neurologist's address. He seemed friendly so we started chatting on MSN. He told me that he immediately felt comfortable with me, so he wanted to chat more and more, and started revealing me private things that got scarier and scarier : he's a drug dealer, he spent some time in mental hospital and should go back there but he doesn't want to and doesn't want to take his medications because he thinks that he has no mental issues and he plans escaping, he can't stand his mother when she enters his bedroom and plans to find a big sharp knife to kill her ! And then he started talking about how he wants to escape to join me, so we would travel together, he would earn money for us by playing poker and we would be happy forever that way... 

 

You can imagine how I felt at that point. The guy started bringing friends and spammed on the blog and the forum, repeating all the time that he has no mental disease and he's just neurodiverse. I started telling him that he actually has mental issues and that he absolutely needs to take his medications. He started insulting me and threatening me, saying that he knows who I am (we knew only each other's first name and email address), that he's found my address and that he's going to go to my apartment and enter there to kill himself as I didn't answer his feelings favorably. Sometimes he changed his mind and pretended that he's actually fine and his mental issues are "magically" cured, but of course it was only to find a way to escape hospitalization.

 

So, I had to close the forum and the blog. I noticed that the guy has opened accounts about everywhere where I talk about my neurological disorder, and is apparently stalking me very well. At some point, he even managed to send me a PM telling me that he knows who I am and sends to prove his saying the picture of a girl he thinks is me... Fortunately it wasn't me, but I got really scared for the poor girl who must have been stalked... Eventually, I had to quit posting on the topic, completely change this Internet identity to stop being stalked. All the work I did on the blog, forum and all the rest are lost.

 

A few years later, during an appointment with my neurologist, he told me about this schizophrenic boy who went visiting him, yes, it was the boy who stalked me... Anyway, my stalker absolutely wanted a diagnosis, my neurologist refused giving it to him so the guy went mad and started assaulting my doctor, who had to take care of him with security.

I don't know what happened next, but I really hope that the guy is in a hospital and with an appropriate treatment...

 

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I agree. These are the things I never share when I show my real identity on Internet. I stay anonymous when I want to share that kind of private content.

And when you aren't NT, people reduce you to your diagnosis and can't see you as a normal human being any longer, so... It's sad but it's hard to trust anyone enough :(

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7 hours ago, Rising Sun said:

OMG, the creeps. That's going to be a very long thread, I guess.

That reminds me memories... It started on Internet, but it gets much more real towards the end...

 

  Hide contents

I was writing a blog about my neurological disorder, and I also administrated a forum about it. That was something like 7 years ago, if I remember well ? Anyway a 17-year-old boy sent me an email telling me his symptoms and asking me if he might have the same thing, so I told him that maybe yes, and I gave him my neurologist's address. He seemed friendly so we started chatting on MSN. He told me that he immediately felt comfortable with me, so he wanted to chat more and more, and started revealing me private things that got scarier and scarier : he's a drug dealer, he spent some time in mental hospital and should go back there but he doesn't want to and doesn't want to take his medications because he thinks that he has no mental issues and he plans escaping, he can't stand his mother when she enters his bedroom and plans to find a big sharp knife to kill her ! And then he started talking about how he wants to escape to join me, so we would travel together, he would earn money for us by playing poker and we would be happy forever that way... 

 

You can imagine how I felt at that point. The guy started bringing friends and spammed on the blog and the forum, repeating all the time that he has no mental disease and he's just neurodiverse. I started telling him that he actually has mental issues and that he absolutely needs to take his medications. He started insulting me and threatening me, saying that he knows who I am (we knew only each other's first name and email address), that he's found my address and that he's going to go to my apartment and enter there to kill himself as I didn't answer his feelings favorably. Sometimes he changed his mind and pretended that he's actually fine and his mental issues are "magically" cured, but of course it was only to find a way to escape hospitalization.

 

So, I had to close the forum and the blog. I noticed that the guy has opened accounts about everywhere where I talk about my neurological disorder, and is apparently stalking me very well. At some point, he even managed to send me a PM telling me that he knows who I am and sends to prove his saying the picture of a girl he thinks is me... Fortunately it wasn't me, but I got really scared for the poor girl who must have been stalked... Eventually, I had to quit posting on the topic, completely change this Internet identity to stop being stalked. All the work I did on the blog, forum and all the rest are lost.

 

A few years later, during an appointment with my neurologist, he told me about this schizophrenic boy who went visiting him, yes, it was the boy who stalked me... Anyway, my stalker absolutely wanted a diagnosis, my neurologist refused giving it to him so the guy went mad and started assaulting my doctor, who had to take care of him with security.

I don't know what happened next, but I really hope that the guy is in a hospital and with an appropriate treatment...

 

 

Oh jeez. I'm sorry that happened to you, Sun. That sounds terrifying :(

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7 hours ago, Rising Sun said:

OMG, the creeps. That's going to be a very long thread, I guess.

That reminds me memories... It started on Internet, but it gets much more real towards the end...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I was writing a blog about my neurological disorder, and I also administrated a forum about it. That was something like 7 years ago, if I remember well ? Anyway a 17-year-old boy sent me an email telling me his symptoms and asking me if he might have the same thing, so I told him that maybe yes, and I gave him my neurologist's address. He seemed friendly so we started chatting on MSN. He told me that he immediately felt comfortable with me, so he wanted to chat more and more, and started revealing me private things that got scarier and scarier : he's a drug dealer, he spent some time in mental hospital and should go back there but he doesn't want to and doesn't want to take his medications because he thinks that he has no mental issues and he plans escaping, he can't stand his mother when she enters his bedroom and plans to find a big sharp knife to kill her ! And then he started talking about how he wants to escape to join me, so we would travel together, he would earn money for us by playing poker and we would be happy forever that way... 

 

You can imagine how I felt at that point. The guy started bringing friends and spammed on the blog and the forum, repeating all the time that he has no mental disease and he's just neurodiverse. I started telling him that he actually has mental issues and that he absolutely needs to take his medications. He started insulting me and threatening me, saying that he knows who I am (we knew only each other's first name and email address), that he's found my address and that he's going to go to my apartment and enter there to kill himself as I didn't answer his feelings favorably. Sometimes he changed his mind and pretended that he's actually fine and his mental issues are "magically" cured, but of course it was only to find a way to escape hospitalization.

 

So, I had to close the forum and the blog. I noticed that the guy has opened accounts about everywhere where I talk about my neurological disorder, and is apparently stalking me very well. At some point, he even managed to send me a PM telling me that he knows who I am and sends to prove his saying the picture of a girl he thinks is me... Fortunately it wasn't me, but I got really scared for the poor girl who must have been stalked... Eventually, I had to quit posting on the topic, completely change this Internet identity to stop being stalked. All the work I did on the blog, forum and all the rest are lost.

 

A few years later, during an appointment with my neurologist, he told me about this schizophrenic boy who went visiting him, yes, it was the boy who stalked me... Anyway, my stalker absolutely wanted a diagnosis, my neurologist refused giving it to him so the guy went mad and started assaulting my doctor, who had to take care of him with security.

I don't know what happened next, but I really hope that the guy is in a hospital and with an appropriate treatment...

 

This is terrifying. Ugh. I'm sorry you had to go through that. :(

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Spoiler

 

I used to work at a large hospital conglomerate, in Computer Services.  I was the Installer/Fixer/Trainer/General Tech Lackey, and since I had to get all new employees onto the system and train them in how to use it, I was one of the first people new employees met. 

One afternoon, I was sent to the Maintenance department offices.  A new person, a contractor from a large HVAC company that had been tasked with installing a new heating/cooling/ventilation system (a job that would take *years* given the size of the campus and the age of most of the buildings) had been given an office and a computer, and needed to be trained on how to use the Meditech system.  For the sake of privacy, I'll call him Creep here.  

 

So I get to Creep's new office.  It's in the basement of the oldest building on campus.  It's a tiny, damp, dimly lit room with a minuscule window and an oppressively low ceiling.  The only furniture in it is an old metal desk that looked like it had been new back in the 1950's, a rusty file cabinet, and two tattered office chairs.  I take one, Creep takes the other, right beside me.  Too close.  Like, way too close.  I begin trying to teach him how to log on, use Meditech's email module and task management module, and contact people using Meditech's directory functions.  

 

But he didn't seem very interested in what I was trying to teach him.  Within a few minutes, he got up and stood behind me as I tried to redirect his attention back onto what I was trying to teach him.  Then he put his hands on my shoulders and started massaging them.  I reacted angrily, telling him to get his damn hands off me. He held up his hands and said, in a placating manner that still managed to imply that I was over-reacting "Ok, ok!  It's ok!  No big deal!".  Since I was the only person available to train him (the other IT person who sometimes did training was out due to having major surgery and wouldn't be back for three weeks), I had to stay and complete his training.  

 

He then started asking me personal questions, like where I lived (I actually lived on the hospital's campus.  They gave me an apartment in order to ensure that there would always be someone available quickly in case of emergency system problems, but I wasn't going to tell him that.), whether I had a boyfriend (no, but I wasn't going to tell him that!), and other borderline inappropriate/intrusive stuff.  Finally, I got the hell out of there, training complete. 

 

I told my boss about it, but in typical Boss-dude fashion, he didn't do anything about it.  He didn't report it to HR the way he should have.  He told me not to bother reporting it myself, since, in his words, 'nothing happened'.

 

That's when the problems began for me.  Suddenly, I was seeing him *everywhere*.  If I was called to a medical floor to install a new computer, he'd be there, watching me.  If I had to go fix a problem in an office, he'd be 'nonchalantly' leaning up against the wall opposite that office's door, watching me.  I saw him driving and walking past my apartment building on the hospital grounds a few times an evening, after work.  If he passed me in the hall and he was with someone else, he'd quickly start talking about how he thought I was cute/pretty/hot/etc.  I was getting VERY uncomfortable.  He was just always there, and I had no idea how he knew where I was going to be... the campus was huge - 6000 users, 4000 devices, 5 huge multi-story buildings and 3 slightly smaller ones.  


Once again, I approached Russ, my boss.  And once again, he did nothing.  And this time, he told me I was being oversensitive and 'looking for trouble'.  The fuck?!?

 

One late afternoon, I was up on an old medical floor that was being renovated to turn the old patient rooms into offices.  I was pulling CAT5 cables for network connectivity.  The workers who had been up in that area painting, laying carpet, and assembling office furniture had quit for the day, so I was the only person up there.  It was actually time for my workday to end, but I wanted to finish up everything before I left so I'd not have to return the next day.

 

I was walking down the deserted hallway from the new hub closet toward the room I was working on when I saw Creep coming toward me in a very fast walk.  I moved towards the wall in order to give him room to pass.  But he didn't.  Instead, he grabbed my upper arms hard, shoved my back against the wall, pressed his body up against me, started rubbing himself on me, and then grabbed my breasts, squeezing them so hard he left bruises.  He leaned down and snarled "Normal women like it when a guy wants them!".  I screamed.  

 

That must have surprised him, because he backed away a little and that gave me the chance to break free and run.  The office I'd been heading toward when he accosted me was the only one on the floor that still had a lockable door, so I ran inside and locked the door behind me.  He ran after me and began pounding and kicking the door.  That went on for about 10 minutes.  There was no phone in the room yet, and cell phones weren't allowed inside the hospital at that point, so I had no way of calling for help.  When he stopped pounding and kicking, I figured he was still out there, trying to trick me into thinking he was gone, so I remained locked inside that unfinished office for more than half an hour.  Finally, I very quietly unlocked the door and eased it open just enough to check to see that he had gone.  I could not see him, but knew he could have hidden himself inside any of the other former patient rooms along the corridor.  It was now way past the time I usually left.  I bolted out of the office and down to my department, since my area (the server room) had a thick metal door that could only be opened by a push-button combination code.

 

One of my coworkers was still there, but everyone else had left.  She saw that I was in a panic and asked what was wrong.  I told her.  She was shocked and disgusted, and she remained with me while I phoned HR and left a message about what had happened, since they'd already left for the day.

The next day, I told Russ and three of the HR staff - the HR Director and two others - what had happened and what had led up to it.  When I said that I'd told Russ about the stalking, the attempted shoulder massage, and Creep talking about me to other staff, Russ said I'd never said anything to him.  I showed him and the HR staff copies of emails I'd sent him that proved otherwise, and he lapsed into angry silence.

 

HR apparently brought him in to talk to him, but he wasn't fired, punished, or even removed from our contract (he didn't work for the hospital directly.. he was a contractor, employed by the HVAC company).  He was just told to leave me alone.  That's it.  And I was told not to go to the police.  Since I was a very young (I'd started working in that job at the age of 17, and I was only 22 - a very naive 22 - when this shit went down) single person with bills, trying to save up money to put a down payment on a house, the implied threat that I might lose my job if I told the police was enough to keep me silent.

 

The fact that he faced no consequences for sexually assaulting me contributed to my feelings of burn-out, which had been creeping up on me, exacerbated by the deaths of my grandmother and father at that hospital.  I ended up getting seriously depressed, dealing with anxiety and resentment, and then ended up leaving that job (and the tech sector entirely).  The pay had been good, but the environment became toxic.  I just couldn't be there anymore.  

 

So... that's my story.

 

 

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7 hours ago, UncommonNonsense said:
  Reveal hidden contents

 

I used to work at a large hospital conglomerate, in Computer Services.  I was the Installer/Fixer/Trainer/General Tech Lackey, and since I had to get all new employees onto the system and train them in how to use it, I was one of the first people new employees met. 

One afternoon, I was sent to the Maintenance department offices.  A new person, a contractor from a large HVAC company that had been tasked with installing a new heating/cooling/ventilation system (a job that would take *years* given the size of the campus and the age of most of the buildings) had been given an office and a computer, and needed to be trained on how to use the Meditech system.  For the sake of privacy, I'll call him Creep here.  

 

So I get to Creep's new office.  It's in the basement of the oldest building on campus.  It's a tiny, damp, dimly lit room with a minuscule window and an oppressively low ceiling.  The only furniture in it is an old metal desk that looked like it had been new back in the 1950's, a rusty file cabinet, and two tattered office chairs.  I take one, Creep takes the other, right beside me.  Too close.  Like, way too close.  I begin trying to teach him how to log on, use Meditech's email module and task management module, and contact people using Meditech's directory functions.  

 

But he didn't seem very interested in what I was trying to teach him.  Within a few minutes, he got up and stood behind me as I tried to redirect his attention back onto what I was trying to teach him.  Then he put his hands on my shoulders and started massaging them.  I reacted angrily, telling him to get his damn hands off me. He held up his hands and said, in a placating manner that still managed to imply that I was over-reacting "Ok, ok!  It's ok!  No big deal!".  Since I was the only person available to train him (the other IT person who sometimes did training was out due to having major surgery and wouldn't be back for three weeks), I had to stay and complete his training.  

 

He then started asking me personal questions, like where I lived (I actually lived on the hospital's campus.  They gave me an apartment in order to ensure that there would always be someone available quickly in case of emergency system problems, but I wasn't going to tell him that.), whether I had a boyfriend (no, but I wasn't going to tell him that!), and other borderline inappropriate/intrusive stuff.  Finally, I got the hell out of there, training complete. 

 

I told my boss about it, but in typical Boss-dude fashion, he didn't do anything about it.  He didn't report it to HR the way he should have.  He told me not to bother reporting it myself, since, in his words, 'nothing happened'.

 

That's when the problems began for me.  Suddenly, I was seeing him *everywhere*.  If I was called to a medical floor to install a new computer, he'd be there, watching me.  If I had to go fix a problem in an office, he'd be 'nonchalantly' leaning up against the wall opposite that office's door, watching me.  I saw him driving and walking past my apartment building on the hospital grounds a few times an evening, after work.  If he passed me in the hall and he was with someone else, he'd quickly start talking about how he thought I was cute/pretty/hot/etc.  I was getting VERY uncomfortable.  He was just always there, and I had no idea how he knew where I was going to be... the campus was huge - 6000 users, 4000 devices, 5 huge multi-story buildings and 3 slightly smaller ones.  


Once again, I approached Russ, my boss.  And once again, he did nothing.  And this time, he told me I was being oversensitive and 'looking for trouble'.  The fuck?!?

 

One late afternoon, I was up on an old medical floor that was being renovated to turn the old patient rooms into offices.  I was pulling CAT5 cables for network connectivity.  The workers who had been up in that area painting, laying carpet, and assembling office furniture had quit for the day, so I was the only person up there.  It was actually time for my workday to end, but I wanted to finish up everything before I left so I'd not have to return the next day.

 

I was walking down the deserted hallway from the new hub closet toward the room I was working on when I saw Creep coming toward me in a very fast walk.  I moved towards the wall in order to give him room to pass.  But he didn't.  Instead, he grabbed my upper arms hard, shoved my back against the wall, pressed his body up against me, started rubbing himself on me, and then grabbed my breasts, squeezing them so hard he left bruises.  He leaned down and snarled "Normal women like it when a guy wants them!".  I screamed.  

 

That must have surprised him, because he backed away a little and that gave me the chance to break free and run.  The office I'd been heading toward when he accosted me was the only one on the floor that still had a lockable door, so I ran inside and locked the door behind me.  He ran after me and began pounding and kicking the door.  That went on for about 10 minutes.  There was no phone in the room yet, and cell phones weren't allowed inside the hospital at that point, so I had no way of calling for help.  When he stopped pounding and kicking, I figured he was still out there, trying to trick me into thinking he was gone, so I remained locked inside that unfinished office for more than half an hour.  Finally, I very quietly unlocked the door and eased it open just enough to check to see that he had gone.  I could not see him, but knew he could have hidden himself inside any of the other former patient rooms along the corridor.  It was now way past the time I usually left.  I bolted out of the office and down to my department, since my area (the server room) had a thick metal door that could only be opened by a push-button combination code.

 

One of my coworkers was still there, but everyone else had left.  She saw that I was in a panic and asked what was wrong.  I told her.  She was shocked and disgusted, and she remained with me while I phoned HR and left a message about what had happened, since they'd already left for the day.

The next day, I told Russ and three of the HR staff - the HR Director and two others - what had happened and what had led up to it.  When I said that I'd told Russ about the stalking, the attempted shoulder massage, and Creep talking about me to other staff, Russ said I'd never said anything to him.  I showed him and the HR staff copies of emails I'd sent him that proved otherwise, and he lapsed into angry silence.

 

HR apparently brought him in to talk to him, but he wasn't fired, punished, or even removed from our contract (he didn't work for the hospital directly.. he was a contractor, employed by the HVAC company).  He was just told to leave me alone.  That's it.  And I was told not to go to the police.  Since I was a very young (I'd started working in that job at the age of 17, and I was only 22 - a very naive 22 - when this shit went down) single person with bills, trying to save up money to put a down payment on a house, the implied threat that I might lose my job if I told the police was enough to keep me silent.

 

The fact that he faced no consequences for sexually assaulting me contributed to my feelings of burn-out, which had been creeping up on me, exacerbated by the deaths of my grandmother and father at that hospital.  I ended up getting seriously depressed, dealing with anxiety and resentment, and then ended up leaving that job (and the tech sector entirely).  The pay had been good, but the environment became toxic.  I just couldn't be there anymore.  

 

So... that's my story.

 

 

That's really awful, UncommonNonsense. And your boss handled that horribly :(

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Thats some pretty scary stories out there.

 

 

Spoiler

once there was a guy from one of my school. He was part of a friend group and I knew he was in love with someone and questionating his sexuality but I had no idea it was me until he told me once after school. I was really surprised but said it as it was that I did see him as a friend and that's was it. The next day the window in the school door had been broken down and after some time I found out it was him who had done it. I tried to talk to him but he would scream and shout at me and I knew he would turn violence if I insisted so I followed my friends advice to just leave him alone. Some weeks later he came off with an apology and I said it was okay, but honestly if it had been today I don't think I would had accepted his behaviour.

-

another time I had one friend over who was in love with me and I had told him we could stay friend. During the day and night he got pretty drunk and due to lack of space he would have to sleep in my room. He kept on moaning about how I never loved him and only loved someone else and then he would crawl up in my bed saying how much he loved me and kiss me and touch me. It was not in any way sexual but still really uncomfortable to the point I almost was crying. at a point he would ask if he should stop and I said "yes" and he would crawl bag to his bed and lay there a few minutes until he crawled back to my bed like "no I can't stop" and keep on with his moaning on "why don't you love me, I love you, you are the most beautiful person in the world, I'm so sad, why don't you love me" thing on and on until he finally fallen asleep. 

 

 

 

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Yeah, it was pretty horrible.  And yeah, Russ handled it about as badly as it is possible to handle it.  But Russ was an ego-maniac and narcissistic tool who was in love with the title of 'Director of Information Systems' and having control over his employees - but not at all into all the actual responsibilities of actually *directing* us and supporting us.  This was the boss who, during a lunch hour when we were all eating together in the IT meeting room, looked very pointedly at me and said "If I ever find out that one of my staff is a (nasty slur for gay person), it won't matter if they're the best, most reliable employee I have, I'll fire them immediately!".  Then, he went on to say "I hate (slur for gay people)!".  So, yeah... *that's* the quality of his character.  Blech.  This happened in 2001.  If anything like it happened now, I'd let my lawyer turn him into dead meat, but I was scared, poor, in the closet, feeling vulnerable, and dependant on that paycheque, so I made up an imaginary boyfriend to talk about at work.   There was a lady who worked in the cafeteria who had been in a long-term lesbian partnership (well, common-law marriage, really) and while he'd be surface-polite to her, once he was back in our department and safely unable to be overheard by her (or any of the other cafeteria staff, who loved her and supported her), he'd say the most *vile* things about her.  He also often spoke about wanting to shoot his neighbour's pet dogs and pulled pranks on female staff that would absolutely be considered sexual harassment now - like covering Sheila's (another IT staffer) car with thong underwear - buttfloss, in other words - on her birthday.  Russ' antics, attitudes, and comments were some of the things that caused my burn-out in that job. 

 

Another thing that led to me getting frustrated and burned out was how unevenly they applied their 'Zero-Tolerance' policies.  All over the campus, there were plaques and posters detailing the hospital's 'Zero Tolerance to Violence' policy.  Great ideal - anyone physically attacking, harassing, or threatening someone else would be handed over to police and the hospital would press charges.  Sadly, it never lived up to the ideal, because it wasn't handled evenly.  Hospitals are very political workplaces, and those people who play the right politics and support the right people are the only ones who are, in turn, properly supported when bad shit goes down.  

 

I don't play politics.  With my social skills deficits, doing so would be disastrous.  So I wasn't supported.  Creep was not fired or punished at all, in direct contravention of the 'Zero Tolerance' policy.  And that wasn't the only time that happened to me.  I was assaulted again, and get this, by the Director of Psychiatric Services!  I became convinced that she was working in Psych Services only because she was sorely in need of intensive mental health interventions herself.  She threw a 3lb glass paperweight at my head when I informed her that Senior Management had decided to block all access to web-based email clients due to hospital staff bringing in viruses and wasting a lot of work-time on non-work emails.  Just like Creep, she wasn't punished at all.  If I'd been hit by that thing, I could have been badly injured or killed.  No, that 'Zero Tolerance' policy wasn't applied equally or fairly.  It ended up being not worth the paper it was printed on. 

 

Toxic damn workplace environment.  The money was good... but everything else about it sucked.

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  • 1 year later...

There is some seriously sad stuff in this thread. It is terrible that this stuff is happening. It is sad I have two stories to add:

The bad

 

There was a socially awkward guy in the same class as my friends and I. We took pity on him and so the friend circle opened up welcomingly when he approached us. About 2 or 3 months of him hanging out with us he began his systematic 'wooing'. He would focus on one girl at a time for 2 weeks or so then move on to the next girl once he had been fully rejected with enough polite no's to drown in. He would ask for numbers repetitively, attempt to always sit next to his target, ignore most other people besides his target, walk them home or walk them to the public transport used to get home, attempt to find out where they lived, Facebook stalk and bring up the history in conversation, weird compliments along with general creepiness. He would always play the 'poor me, pity me' card in public so we would seem like the bad guys when telling him to go away. We should have been firmer or taken more action than we did, but many of us had no idea how to deal with it.

 

 

The Worse

 

I got a stalker


while alone overseas. He knew my phone number and the street I was staying in. He followed me and I had to hide near police or ask for their help several times. 


The Positives:
He never worked out what hotel I was staying in. I got a bad cold so was confined for a few days not caring about anything except my tissue supply. I left the country two weeks after meeting him.

 

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