Z came to my office hours to ask for help with her homework. As usual, I used the Socratic Method. I asked her questions designed to help her figure out the answers herself, so that she'd have the skills she would need to solve problems on her own.
But rather than answering my questions, she was silent. I looked up from the textbook. Z was batting her eyelashes at me. I don't know if anyone ever batted their eyelashes at me before, but this was unmistakable.
I ignored the batting, and continued as before. Z got more and more flustered and confused. She expected me to give her the answers to the homework problems, and didn't understand why I wasn't doing so.
I looked more closely. I saw an ordinary-looking female Ohio State undergraduate student. Dyed blond hair, lots of makeup, low-cut blouse. Quite a lot of mascara on the batting eyelashes.
I continued to treat her the same way I would have treated any student (of any gender). But I realized what was going on. She was doing exactly what she had always done at office hours to get the instructor to tell her the answers. I must have had colleagues who melted like butter, and she expected me to do the same.
If Z had thought of it as flirting, she might have realized why it had worked on some of my (male) colleagues. My colleagues had trained her to act in a way that gave her the homework solutions, and she had learned that lesson well. Her confusion told me that she knew that it (usually) worked, but didn't understand why.
I don't think she came back to office hours. I worried about Z---that someone would take advantage of her naivety. But it would have been hard to give her helpful life advice, while staying within the boundaries of our professional relationship.