Reading the Room BFG’s

People always tell me that if you want to be a good writer, you should read a lot. Reading helps a lot because you can model your writing after someone, or you can learn new techniques when you read a lot. I wish I could read more, because I love a good book. But for some reason, I’ve never been a big reader.

The reasons I don’t read are a lot, but the biggest reasons are my short attention span, and the fact that people are always bothering me. For instance, I was at work the other day, trying to read a book, and my boss just came up to me and said, “We don’t pay you to sit there and read for 8 hours”. I thought that was incredibly rude, and also kind of dumb, because I was learning a lot about how to write. Just because my job is to maintain websites, get reviews for products, and work on paid ads, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t occasionally spend 40 hours a week, 5 days a week and 240 days a year reading. Let’s get real, there is only so much fun that can come from working on websites. I guy should be doing a variety of things on the job.

My bosses are now starting to get mad when I play video games and nap for a few hours a week. What kind of job asks you to work a few hours of your week? I know a bunch of jobs where they actually let you work at home, and I’m not 100% sure, but my guess is that a lot of them are really efficient at not working that much. I’m pretty sure they don’t have their boss sitting over their shoulder watching them read books all day.

There’s this one guy named Lebron James, that has a job where all he has to do is play basketball for two hours a night, 4 times a week. He gets his summers off, and he travels a lot, (though the referees at his job don’t like when he travels). Not only that, but he gets paid a livable wage. He didn’t even go to college.

If he can do all those things for his job, it seems like my job could be a little more lenient with my short four-hour naps, or the occasional week where I played video games or read for a few hours. Besides, studies have proved that playing video games regularly keeps your mind sharp, prevents dementia, and gives you superpowers when you play enough.

As far as reading, TV tells us that reading is FUNdamental. Yes, I know having fun at work is forbidden, but if work looked more closely at the word, they would realize that when you take the FUN out of fundamental, that leaves, DA MENTAL. Which means I am working DA MENTAL part of my brain when I’m reading. Which in turn means I’m specifically getting smarter, and wouldn’t you want a really smart person in your organization? Even if all I did was learn about things, but never applied them, you could finally claim that you had a smart person working for your organization. Don’t ever say I never did anything for you.

Besides, even if I’m not allowed to read at work, I’m always reading something more important. I’m really good at reading the room. Did you know that there are people out there that don’t know how to read…the room? We really need to educate people on how to read rooms, but more on that later. One person I know that doesn’t know how to read rooms…is my dad.

Just last year, he decided to attend my son’s football game. Before I tell this tragic story about how my dad isn’t good at reading rooms, I have a simple three-point touchpoint that helps me determine what mood my son will be in after his football games. It’s three questions. If we can determine that he would answer yes to 2 or 3 out of the three questions, he will be in a good mood. If it’s only one, or heaven forbid zero, well, we are in for a really awkward, angry rant, or really quiet ride home. The three questions: 1) Did they win? 2) Did he play well? and 3) Did he avoid injury?

The game in question from last year, was a ZERO out of 3 game. He played horribly, he got injured early in the game, and they didn’t win the game. They actually might have, if he wasn’t injured and he played.

After the final buzzer of the game, I braced for the worst. We gingerly grabbed all his gear, loaded it up without a word, and all of us deflated, got into the car a trudged home, hoping to get him not break things when he got home.

Unfortunately, my dad, not being good at reading rooms, decided to ask the worst question of all time, and I cringed so hard that I couldn’t drive my dad to his house fast enough. “C, how is your shoulder?”

ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!!! The last thing you ever ask someone who just reinjured their shoulder is about their shoulder. He might as well have taken a spear and plunged it into his shoulder, because that would have hurt my son less. He might as well have asked him, “So, why’d you lose that game?” I’m actually surprised that he didn’t ask that too.

I did my best not to turn into a rage monster myself and said, “Dad, not now.” We rode in silence in possibly the most awkward ride I’ve ever been in.

Surprisingly, my dad isn’t the only person afflicted with RTRS (Read the Room Deficit). I run into people all day long that can’t seem to realize that people are really upset, angry or frustrated and say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. It might have something to do with spatial awareness, or too much social media, or they didn’t take Cringe 101 in college.

Either way, I suggest we have a class similar to Traffic School, where offenders of not Reading the Room have to go to a Cringe Class where they are taught how to read rooms, if they want their social offences removed from their record.

They would teach them things like Social Cues, understanding how to remain silent when situations are bad, and helping them to avoid trigger words, like “injure your shoulder”. For example, when at a funeral and everyone is crying, don’t say things like, “Wow, it’s kind of dead around here” or if in an AA meeting don’t say things like, “Anyone want to get a drink after the meeting?”

I could give you a bunch of examples, but I think you get the point. This is why we need to not only read more books, but we also need to read more rooms. Most people are pretty good at reading rooms from the moment they are born, but some people need education on how to read rooms.

As for reading rooms, I can tell I’ve gone on a little too long about reading them, so I will drop the Bitter Friday Giftures here so we can avoid any awkward rides home from the football game…

They say if you want to be a good writer…