What the hell is up with this teacher and food!

Ahh..this sounds really weird! For me I would think he put something in that cake he wanted you to eat. JUST SAYING

@Thesexier your answer made me laugh ahahah thanks for that :) I doubt that is it though lol

@TheOnlyException , hahaha thank you, but I think its really weird;)

Your tag ‘flirt” bother me a little. but that is a different story.

If someone brings something from home to share with a group, I thank them, take a small piece and then let it sit for a while. If I don’t want it, I discreetly throw it out without calling attention to myself. I might even taste a tiny corner so I can say “Was that a touch of marzipan I tasted.?” Yes it is a waste but it is also a courtesy.
It is a good skill to learn and anyone above the age of 6 can use it.

He sounds like he was in playfully antagonistic mood, which is very immature for a teacher. I would not give it a second thought and realize he has his moments.

@worriedguy I refused outright because I didnt want to take something someone else could have had. And I tagged ‘flirt’ because he is the biggest bloody flirt I have ever come across and I was wondering if it had something to do with that. I did eventually take it and throw it away later as I mentioned. But personally if someone refused food I had offered them then I would leave them alone about it, maybe make sure they didnt want any like once, but thats it. He was so persistent I wanted to punch him! Thanks for your answer.

@Just_Justine i like the ‘playfully antagonistic’ description, sounds like him. It just annoyed me beyond all belief, like asking someone a question repeatedly that they have already answered, it isnt exactly gonna get you in their good books. I would leave it alone, and I am sort of.. I just need to get an idea. I dont think I was doing anything that would provoke this irritating behaviour. I agree it is very immature behaviour for a teacher. Thanks for your answer.

Ice cream, lollypops & all free today.Sound familiar?He does sound kind of like the child catcher.

Does he have a crush on YOU? It would be inappropriate, but it could explain it. Especially if he doesn’t bring treats for any other classes.

@ucme LOL shut up ahahahahah thanks for your answer

@TheOnlyException I would never offer more than twice but some people have different thresholds. They don’t want to be accused of shortchanging anyone.
Drop it. But make sure you are never alone with him.

@Judi that is what I was worried about. He brings treats for our class because he is a new teacher at our school and a couple of girls (girls school btw) brought in cake etc at the beginning of the year, and he got antsy about getting in trouble for letting people eat in class. But then he asked if he was allowed to do that sort of thing because he had coupons for krispy kremes and he now brings in food occassionally during the term for no reason, no big deal really it is a nice gesture. But i know he only does it for our class because when he brought in like 40 krispy kremes we worked out way through 15 or so of them and he had a year 10 class afterwards we thought he might share the rest with. We asked them because my friend has a younger sister in that class and they said he didnt. He never does.

Also, he is a flirt. Naturally. A lot of male teachers are it is not unusual. We are his eldest class, I enjoy it rather than worry about it as it is never innapropriate, he just makes fun of my things in a nice way.
But i got freaked out by this food thing because it was kind of intense. You had to be there.
Thanks for your insight.

@worriedguy I will try and drop it somewhat, but looking at these answers I may keep my guard up, I will make sure to never be alone with him. I am supposed to be interviewing him next week by myself.. might just take a friend with me now. Thanks for your advice.

I say forget it. There’s no deep meaning.

Since he didn’t press the issue with the other student and made so much effort towards getting you to part take in his offering…my money is he likes you more than just as a student. Time to transfer into another class IMO.

@Cruiser that is easier said than done. I will take @worriedguy‘s advice about not being alone with him. I wouldnt have him down as a pervert/creeper, but you never can really know a person. Thank you for your response :)

@thriftymaid thanks for your answer. I am putting this together with other things that have happened since I have known him but I am not prepared to put out in detail here. I just need to know how much of a guard I should keep up. I hope there is nothing to it and he was just in a weird mood that day. Thanks again.

@TheOnlyException Absolutely go with a friend. You can even bring a Krispy Kreme or similar treat as a small joke.
And dress respectably. Please. For everyone’s sake.

@worriedguy hahaha i might just do that. then insist that he takes it. thanks again :) (and i will dress respectably, as usual, i am not interested in provocating any unwanted behaviour~)

There are two possible answers here: 1. your teacher is attempting to buy your friendship. its pretty obvious that he is up to something. some teachers do this, in order to be popular with their students. he may also be attempting to eliminate any problems in your class by “being one of the guys” and not a teacher. 2. is it possible he is in love with you? lets not overlook this scenerio. it happens every day.

Have you discussed this situation with your friends or your parents?

Are you the only student that your teacher treats this way? if so, this should give you a clue that something is not correct. this borderlines harrassment. four food offers has a meaning behind it. find out what it is.

Maybe he just expected you to be one of the people who would appreciate the gift and was surprised that you refused it. Some people get pushy with their expectations. It like those who insist on another person having “one last drink” – one for the road.

@john65pennington I discussed this with my friends. They ALL noticed him doing this to me throughout the lesson and agreed it was annoying, so it wasn’t me imagining things! This teacher is really cool everyone loves him, he doesn’t need to ‘buy our friendship’, also he is so antisocial he isn’t one of those desperate teachers either. He is kind of suave.
I was the only one he did this to. He usually teases me/makes fun of me in innocent but clearly flirtatious ways in and out of class, and it is mainly me as I have been paying attention to his behaviour for my own safety. Honestly, I enjoy the flirting, but the food thing was unexpected and creepy.
I dont know how to find out what was behind it apart from gathering opinions from unbiased individuals. I’m not going to confront him about it. I dont want to make things weird(er) between us. Thank you so much for your answer.

@DarkScribe now that IS a thought. I know the kind of people you mean, but I only usually come across them in movies! And even then they are quite jokey/relaxed about it. What happened with him it wasnt like that.. It was a little more intense.. like i should feel bad for not eating the food? God it was strange the way he was acting. I wish there was somehow i could get absolute clarification on this without confronting him (which i absolutely wont do) Thank you for your answer.

Next time tell him you don’t want his fucking cake. ;)

@lucillelucillelucille hahaha coincedentally enough he is the ONLY teacher who puts up with our swearing (he’d be a hypocrite otherwise)
LOL wish I had done that. But then I would have had to put up with the abused puppy look, and no one wants to put up with the abused puppy look.
LOL thanks for your answer :)

Maybe he thinks your need some food. If you are skinny, maybe he is worried. Otherwise, I can’t understand his insistence. However, the fact that you finally took it taught him that if he just keeps asking you, you will eventually give in. So, next time, he will do the same. Better to either take it the first time or never take it. It’s basic behavior modification.

Many people take rejection of their food as rejection of them, which is wrong. He’s not stopping to think that someone may be diabetic, may be on a restricted diet, or may not like chocolate, may vegetarian or may just not be hungry.

This is a problem people face when they just answer “no” to a question. “No, I ate a big breakfast. Thank you, though. It was nice of you to bring it in for everyone” probably would have gotten him off your back.

@TheOnlyException If you wish you would have done as @lucillelucillelucille suggests but you are unwilling to do so then you are enabling even encouraging his behavior. What is it you really want from this teacher??? IMO you seem very contradictory here. The solution is obvious and quite easy yet you seem to be protecting this guy by your inaction here!?!

I had a similar traumatic experiece in grade school as a young child. One day, all the teachers brought in different ethnic dishes from their cultures. I was (and still am) a picky eater, and there was a few dishes I declined to partake (even today, going to family dinners or social events at work creates a dilemma for me). Like you, I wasn’t rude or anything, I just said, “No thanks.” I got detention because refused to eat certain of the foods and hurt the feelings of those teachers…

…all in all, it was just another brick in the wall…

Maybe shes a foodaholic?

@PandoraBoxx – That’s a good suggestion, but one isn’t always so articulate in moments of stress like that. Or, in my case, a little kid isn’t so articulate at any time.

SO maybe he has a little thing for you.

That isn’t that weird or “perverse” seeing as you are 18 (well, unless he’s like 50 or something).

Anyone who thinks you should move into another class or never be alone with him is an anti-social paranoid freak. Just because a guy acts silly around 18 year old girls, he must be a pervert/rapist? Or maybe he is “normal”.

Consider the fact that, for the rest of your life you are going to have to deal with older men doing silly things because they like you, and realise that freaking out over this is very childish and that you can’t deal with people in that way.

Imagine if you said something to senior management, that this guy was creeping you out? He is almost certainly just a normal guy, slightly immature. Can you imagine how it will make him feel, when he goes to a meeting and gets “the talk” from senior staff? Can you imagine how it will affect his relationships with other staff? Don’t do that to a guy.

He was being immature, but I don’t think he was expecting you to be so immature as to overthink this enough to post a 500 word question on the internet about it. He was just messing around, probably expecting you to play along, make a joke, have some banter?

Just play along and take the piss a little, OR be miserable & boring and ignore it.
Either way, don’t freak out about it. This is not particularly concerning behaviour, have you ever even been out into the real world? Or do you always write 500 word questions, agonizing over the hidden, mysterious meaning within the waiter’s winking and holding the door open just for you?

Even if you don’t like it, at least he’s friendly. I had this middle-aged teacher at my school, and she would always be very flirtatious with the guys and walk around trying to be sexy and give you the “eye” all the time, but she was 100% bitch. Like she would give us detention for not having our top buttons done up, which meant one hour of putting up with her creepy shit.

So one day his jokes were a bit annoying. At least he’s not a dickhead.

@Cruiser i simply dont want to create an unecesarily awkward situation, although i do understand where you are coming from. if this happens again i may just follow @lucillelucillelucille ‘s advice without a doubt. :) Thank you

@The_Idler thank you for your thorough answer. I am quite happy to play along with him and take the piss, i like to keep it light as does he. I never mentioned going to an authority over it. Yes it was intense and creepy, and yes I have had worse walking down a street, but i expect that from strangers, this is someone who i trust as an authority figure to guide me through my final years of school, acting oddly. It has made me feel awkward to approach him again as i dont know what to think. I need his help on the subject he teaches, i dont want anything weird between us. If waiter in a restaurant winks at me or whatever it is you wrote, i’ll wink back depending on how i feel, i wont think anymore of it as i most likely wont have to see that person again and he was probably up to no good anyway.
I suppose i will be glad he is at least friendly, but it really bothered me the way he behaved, i guess we each have different reactions to a situation when it presents itself. You are right in that this is nothing compared to what i may have to deal with in years to come, but i am allowed to feel upset by it if it is how i choose to deal with it.
Thank you very much for your answer, i will try and take him less seriously and understand that he has ‘his days’. I’m sorry you had such a shitty teacher when you were growing up.

@PandoraBoxx i never really saw it like that. But that is interesting and most certainly a possibility. But taking that into account would be accepting that he thinks I have rejected him in some way. Thank you for your answer :)

I was raised in a household where to reject the food prepared or presented to you was akin to someone offering you a gift, and you turning it down. Perhaps this teacher is the same way. He didn’t bring it in for you, but he brought it in as a gesture of friendship to the class, and by not taking it, you rejected that gesture and became a “challenge,” which, by your repeated rejections and then taking it, ended with the realization that you only took it to make him go away, hence he “won” but only because you gave in to make it stop.

I have to watch on that. There are days when I will spend hours in the kitchen, cooking, only to have my husband tell me that he’s not hungry, and then an hour later, call for a pizza. I just let it go, and take dinner to the neighbors or into the office the next day.

My comment was more in response to the ridiculous suggestions of some others…

Maybe I’m just surprised at your reaction, because it seems like this is the weirdest or most awkward teacher you’ve had. I wouldn’t think much of it because I’ve seen much worse (not just creepiness, but general insanity and awkwardness).

I mean, my example wasn’t even of a particularly bad teacher, my point was that we all kinda just dealt with it and laughed about it later. I think you just gotta feel sorry for teachers like this. He probs just hates the people he works with and wants to piss about and enjoy his lesson time.

“I have been paying attention to his behaviour for my own safety.”
Now, I know it’s different for girls, but this is seriously offensive to him. It is also bad practice, to think of any slightly awkward guy as a “danger” to you.

It’s not something women experience often, but how would it feel to you, if you were just slightly awkward around a guy that you liked, and that made him fear for his personal safety?
Wouldn’t that make you feel all the more awkward?

You’re an adult, and I mean come on, he’s not a psycho, is he?

@PandoraBoxx I can see how that would suck between a husband and a wife but I am just one of his students who happened to not want to eat the equivalent of several bags of sugar at 9 in the morning. Personally I wouldn’t have pushed it is all. It just annoys me because i feel singled out, there was one other girl who wasn’t eating it either, he left her alone. I suppose everyone is different. Thanks again :)

I think you just should have explained yourself the 2nd or 3rd go around.

“No thanks, I like treats but not this early in the morning,” probably would’ve been the trick.

Oh, I’m sure he understood that the cake wasn’t wanted. He was just being silly on purpose.

@The_Idler Without going into TOO MUCH detail, i have very good reason to be wary of myself around older men (i know i didnt make this clear in the question), no matter how sweet and lovely they seem on the outside you can never ever know. I would rather come across to you and whoever as a paranoid psychobitch than end up in a really bad situation. So yeah, this is probably nothing, and I can understand that some of the suggestions people have left for me are a little extreme. No i am NOT going to transfer out of his class or report him, but i will watch out, it wont have any major impact on my life to just watch my back. I wont exactly be going around in full body armour waving a can of mace and a rape whistle at every guy who looks at me. It is just the last time an older man acted like this around me it ended badly because I waved it off as nothing. You are actually very helpful and honest. Thank you for that. I am not judging all older men as perverts, really. I’m not like that.

@mrrich724 I did explain myself. He was really serious about me having something to eat. If he had clearly been joking as he usually does (i.e. im not here complaining about the fact he poked fun of my purse in a nice way, because i KNEW he was joking) then this question wouldnt exist.
He seemed so serious. Thank you for your answer.

@TheOnlyException Ok, I gotcha.
Now you have seen it from all perspectives, you will doubtless make an informed decision in the future. =}

@The_Idler I am definitely going to take all this into account. I know this seems like a pointless, shallow question but it has put it into perspective and I will follow any decision I make about this with caution, even if it means doing nothing at all.
Thanks again to EVERYONE :)

Oh no, not pointless at all.

Whatever your unpleasant previous experiences were, they have left you with a (perfectly understandable) bias in your interpretation of this kind of behaviour. Now we have discussed this, and you have considered it from some other perspectives, you have a more reasonable and fair perception of it.

Productive discussion, all round.

TheOnlyException. do not let your guard down. do you really know anything about this person, other than he is a school teacher? i would love to run a record check on this subject. you really never know who is hiding behind a degree. and, this includes teachers. keep us posted. john

@john65pennington That was my line of thought exactly! I was easily going to slip into the veil of ‘He’s a teacher, therefore he won’t do anything’ but then I remembered that that is just his job, he is human first and thus capable of human ahem ‘misdeeds’...
Thanks for your answer, I will certainly update with new questions if I feel anything unusual happens again as this site has proved extremely helpful. :)

I find it extraordinary that there have been so many answers and suggestions and kinds of advice for @TheOnlyException but no one has suggested she speak with the teacher himself.

She could take someone with her to the conversation, to check both of them on their impressions of the cake incident. But please, let’s not diagnose him or call him a probable criminal. Maybe he’s a fool, but he’s her teacher for now, and she has a continuing relationship with him.
Jeez. Let’s throw all the confusing people in prison….

@susanc You are right in that he is my teacher thus I have a continuing relationship with him that needs to result in something constructive in regards to my future. If his behaviour continues to be like this I will call him out on it, not by myself of course! I will have to watch and wait. Thanks for your answer. :)

I’ve learned over time that it’s more polite to accept a gift and then discreetly toss it out rather than to refuse the person to their face. I would speak to him about why he conducted himself in such a strange manner.

@PacificToast Yeah, I usually do that too. But since it was for the whole class I didn’t want it to go to waste when someone else could have eaten it. I can’t really confront him about it, unless he does something like it again then I am going to have to call him out on it. It was just plain weird! Bordering on rude/aggressive. He is not usually like this hence I am surprised.
Thanks for your answer.

honestly, you probably deserved it.
Some people just need a good joke or two thrown their way.

besides.. if you really didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have taken it. :P

Well, so long as he doesn’t offer you a Rufi-Colada to wash it down with I wouldn’t be overly worried.

@JeffVader HAHAHA I suppose so, LOL,
but I have good reason to be worried as I mentioned in an earlier comment. I’d probably find something suspicious about the food itself if everyone else hadn’t already had some. Tying to drug an entire class.. now thats ambitious!
@ninjacolin I am all up for a joke, thats all we ever do with this guy, but he was really insistent and serious, it kind of scared me. Thanks for your answers :)

@TheOnlyException Well, quite :) & in all honesty I think you are right to keep an eye open. Some teachers do like to be pally with their students but some do cross the line, & he seems to have here. Just remember, if you do feel uncomfortable there is nothing wrong with telling someone at ur school. Bottom line is he’s making you feel uncomfortable & that’s unacceptable from a teacher.

@JeffVader I am glad you see it like I do! It isn’t just about the food or anything, it is the way he behaved. He is usually really lovely and everyone in class gets on with him more as friends do, rather than seeing him as just a teacher, but nothing inappropriate. This just pushed it a little far, so I thought I had better make a smart decision about what to do in case anything else happens, as it seemed to me maybe something had changed in him with his feelings towards me, hence the quasi-aggressive behaviour. I hope that it turns out he was having a rough day or just being odd. He has in the past been really flirty with me, in innocent ways, teasing me etc, and I actually enjoy it, but a lot of bad stuff can come out of what was initially innocent, people change in the process.
Thank you so much for your answer :)

@TheOnlyException No worries, I’d probably tell someone about this incident, if for no other reason than so it’s on file if anything else happens. Patterns of behaviour are far easier to prove if there’s a paper trail…. now keep safe, altho you seem like you’ve a good head on your shoulders :)

take care how you deal with these things though: just because you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean that he actually did anything wrong. keep an eye out and all that, but don’t spread stories about the guy or anything. tell a trusted few but don’t make this guy’s career go to hell for nothing.

@ninjacolin first of all your screen name amuses me :)
secondly i would never do anything like that! he is the best teacher i have i would never do anything to jeopardise his career! i havent really talked to anyone about this apart from one or two close friends who were in the class at the time and noticed this of their own accord anyway.
I thought it would be better to get anonymous answers on a site like this than start chatting rubbish throughout my school.
You are absolutely right in that just because i feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean anything is really up, but i feel better being on my guard. thanks :)

well.. on the other extreme if he does do something wrong, don’t be afraid to jeopardize his career either. ;) i guess i’m just saying.. be careful.. don’t be wrong yourself either way.

@ninjacolin haha no i wont hesitate to throw the shit at the fan if he does turn out to be a creep. but so far it looks like he is a gentleman with some really weird quirks.. thanks again :)