Saturday, February 4, 2012

the woman reading the book.

here's a good story from the perfect brainstorm, the week-and-a-half-old tumblr blog i'm relocating here.

originally posted on thursday, january 26, 2012, it's a true eyewitness account of something that happened in my presence, and i'm very thankful i noticed it because it means i can now share the story with you. enjoy:

i work at an after school elementary enrichment program. every once in a while, the company has these mandatory meetings where we go over company policies, classroom management; things to help us do our job.

sometime last year, i was at one of these meetings and i was sitting next to a woman in one of the back rows. i'd say she was in her 40's or 50's. while the head of the entire company was addressing the room, this woman was reading a book. someone from the company came over to her and asked her to put the book away and pay attention. she closed the book, waited a little while, then opened the book and started reading again. again, the person had to come over to her and tell her to stop. she insisted that she could hear what was being said, and the person responded. i think they might've told her she was being rude, or possibly pointed out that there's no fucking way she could be paying attention while reading a book.

after this second instance, the woman put the book down, but out of the corner of my eye, i could tell she was fidgeting, clearly pissed off that the people in charge of this meeting weren't letting her read her book. she wanted to read that book right now! after a few moments, she angrily started reading the book again. i was shocked. i surreptitiously peeked at the cover, because i had to know what was so important to this woman that she couldn't be bothered to put it aside during a mandatory work assembly.

the title was something to the effect of "what will happen in 2012?" i later heard this woman was fired.

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