There was drama on the bus this morning. The driver stopped between stops on Hillsborough Street and just idled the bus there for a minute or two. She kept looking in the rear view mirror, so I took out my earbuds to hear what was going on.
A guy in the back of the bus was telling a story kind of loud, and there were a few choice words, but it was nothing that out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing the bus has ever stopped for in the past.
After a minute and a half, the bus driver opened the door, and a tall girl with sunglasses got on, saying to the driver in quite the loud, nasty tone, “YOU FORGET YOU WAS DRIVIN’ THE CAT BUS THIS MORNIN’?”
Continuing with her tirade as she walked slowly toward the back of the bus, “MAYBE YOU SHOULD START PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR JOB. NOBODY NEED RUN TO A BUS WHEN YOU WAS STANDIN’ RIGHT THERE AT THE STOP WHERE YOU WAS SUPPOSED TO BE STANDIN’.”
“V” (Veronica) is the regular security guard sitting at the desk in our building lobby. “When you gettin’ your knee surgery done, hun?” she asked when I walked in.
“The eleventh,” I said.
“Okay, good. The elevator will be fixed by then,” she said.
Just then a co-worker of mine, Alan, walked by, and she said to him, “Hey, can you help me fix this?” She was pointing to a coat rack laying on a bench on top of a bunch of coats also laying there. “I put a coat on it, and it came right out the wall. It needs some of those, what-a-ya call ’em, those screws that open up after they go in the wall?”
Alan said, “I can’t fix it, but I’ll see if I can call someone.”
“Who ya gonna call?” she asked.
You know I had to answer, “Coat busters.” [Badumpbump.]
At work today, I attended a two-hour workshop called, “Conversation about Accessibility of Emerging Web Technology.” A colleague of mine, Saroj, who is “all things accessibility” for NCSU is retiring in a couple of days. This was a nice group that she pulled together—which included several people in different areas around campus who are accessibility “champions,” to give presentations on the work that they’re doing.
It was a good meeting in spite of the woman behind me who typed on a clicking keyboard for about 60% of the meeting. It really didn’t irritate me when I thought she was taking notes, but after turning around once to find a big old instant message screen up and full of conversation, well—I turned a little sour on her after that.
I had a yummy turkey and cheddar sandwich for lunch, which I’d actually brought in yesterday for lunch, forgetting that I had lunch plans with Susan on my calendar.
Rhonda (my officemate) and I had an interesting discussion today about “culture.”
Culture had actually been on my mind today, as I had tweeted this morning—after noticing this during that accessibility meeting—that a lot of people that I interact with here in my new job have the very disconcerting habit of talking over each other.
It’s almost like they’re ignoring the standard conversational turn cues that are the foundation of discourse. This is the typyical scenario I’ve witnessed over and over now:
A begins talking to B, and talks long enough for B to realize that he is not going to get a turn unless he gives a cue that he wants a turn. After several of B’s visual cues to A that he wants a turn are ignored, he actually interrupts A verbally.
B waits a second thinking A is going to stop at the end of his sentence or thought, but A doesn’t stop. The cycle repeats, but when B does the verbal interruption the next time, B just keeps on talking trying to get his turn while A continues to talk. Q.E.D.: People talking over each other.
It’s interesting, and to be honest, I’ve already caught myself starting to do it. I’m going to work on really resisting that, because other than being just plain rude, it’s not at all productive conversationally.
Checking in with my sister again on the way home, I got the very good news that my dad is out of ICU and very much back to his old self. My mom had a retired hairdresser friend of hers come to the hospital to give him a haircut, shave, and fingernail-trimming, so I’m sure that felt good to him, too.
There’s an ever-so-slight chance he’ll come home on Thursday, but realistically, it’s probably not going to happen. He ought to definitely be able to eat some turkey, stuffing, and chouriço in his hospital room, though. Woohoo!
I dropped by karaoke for about an hour-and-a-half tonight. It was a little busy, but not as busy as I thought it might be being Thanksgiving Day week. Chas was the hostess, was late, and was just as… Nevermind, I’m not going there.