The day the workshop imploded

[resonant]

Today, in the middle of my state-mandated resume workshop, the instructor had some sort of seizure. That's when I realized how useless I am in an emergency.



There were about a dozen of us in the class, which we had to take as a condition of receiving unemployment. So none of us wanted to be there, and from the suspicious glances passing back and forth, each of us suspected that the rest were all good-for-nothing layabouts or hardcore unemployables, unlike herself, who had simply been the victim of malice or bad luck.

I know I was in nonstop judgment mode as we all gathered in the waiting room: Really, if he wants a job, wouldn't you think he'd shave, for heaven's sake? And her -- her pants are cut so low that when she sits down, I see the entire back of her thong, which has a ruffle of pink fabric with black polka-dots, and thus clashes wildly with her green-and-brown striped hip-huggers. And that one obviously looked through the social pages of "Town & Country" before she chose her clothes, but the yachting look is a little out of place in the unemployment office. And, yes, my girl, if you buy a tight T-shirt with a long word across the chest in semi-legible script, people are going to be staring at your boobs, so there's no need to glare ...

About ten minutes late, the instructor came, apologized, and led us into the classroom. We chose our seats carefully so that no two people had to sit together. Everyone gave Thong Girl a wide berth. She didn't seem to care, just sat down, took a large bag of chips and a large bottle of pop out of a bag with much noisy rattling, and settled in for a snack.

Once we were seated, the instructor began trying, rather clumsily, to draw us into active participation. It was an uphill battle. Thong Girl packed so much resentment into stating her name (which was, oddly, Myra) that it would have taken courage to ask her anything else. Stubble Guy had been on unemployment long enough to be on a first-name basis with everyone in the office and wasted a lot of time with ingratiating comments. Plus, English was obviously the instructor's second language, and everyone had to say everything twice before she could understand them.

I'm telling all this to explain why we were all disposed to be irritated and unresponsive.

After a while, the instructor's answers became vague and repetitive. Her eyes began to drift to the left and upward; I caught several people looking in the same direction, and it occurred to me that she might have cue cards or something up there.

Then her sentences started to slow down and trail off. We all began exchanging embarrassed giggles and glances: Was she drunk, maybe? Her eyes were now fixed on the ceiling.

There was a long silence.

One of the other students got her attention. "Ma'am?" she said. "Ma'am?" Then she asked a longwinded question about job training. The instructor wasn't able to look at her, but she started a sentence that was somewhat relevant to the question. But then she began to repeat herself, and then she trailed off.

There was another long silence.

By now, in my head I was standing up and saying, "Are you all right?" But in reality I just sat there, staring dully at a pink sheet of paper with "Tips for Networking" across the top of it. Thong Girl got up and walked out. The instructor began to lean to the left. Thong Girl came back in and sat down again.

Then there was a great flurry of activity. A bunch of employees came in and hurried us all out, and I heard someone calling 911, and someone herded us back into the waiting room and gave one of those official non-explanations ("She has a medical condition") and asked us to wait until they'd taken care of the instructor and then we could go back into the room and get our stuff.

Eventually the paramedics arrived and went into the classroom and shut the door behind them, and eventually they came out again with the instructor strapped, sitting up, to a wheeled stretcher, still staring fixedly up and to the left.

In the waiting room, after a short silence, we all started talking. Where before we'd been silentlly sizing each other up, we were now very friendly and all inclined to hope for the best for the others. We speculated on what was wrong with the instructor and on whether we'd be required to take the workshop again. (Someone said, "Well, the unemployment service probably has an opening for a workshop instructor.") We congratulated Thong Girl on having the presence of mind to actually go and tell someone there was a problem.

And then we all started trying to explain why none of the rest of us had done it, but we couldn't.

I still don't understand it. It isn't as though the proper thing didn't occur to me. In my head I could hear myself saying, "Do you need some help?"

Here's the only theory I was able to come up with. You learn, when you're a kid, that the appropriate response to most kinds of abnormal behavior is to ignore them. Your uncle drinking too much and telling off-color jokes in a loud voice at Christmas? Ignore him. That one girl from the Special Ed class drooling on the playground? Ignore her.

So when presented with someone who was acting "not right," we all sat there uncomfortably and ignored her.

In the waiting room I'd been looking at Thong Girl's clothes and quite literally thinking, "She has no idea what's appropriate." Turns out it was a good thing.

Comments

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

She didn't seem to care, just sat down, took a large bag of chips and a large bottle of pop

Asking about "pop" - do you mind telling me where you learned that word? I live in the midst of ongoing soda vs. pop wars, so I am curious. :)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I grew up in North Carolina, where all soft drinks are called Coke. (Conversation overheard at a restaurant: "And what to drink?" "Coke." "What kind?" "Mountain Dew.")

Here in Illinois, though, what I hear people say is pop. (Very flat, nasal vowel: Paaaaaaaaaahp.) I don't hear anybody say "soda" from anyplace east of Minnesota.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

the "pop" thing goes as far east as northeastern ohio -- and apparently as far as pittsburgh, where it overlaps with the "soda" thing, eh, laura? my parents are both from new york, so we were a "soda" island in a sea of "pop"; and when i got to college, my freshman roommate was from way eastern north carolina, and all soft drinks were called "drinks". the vending machine was a drinks machine, and if she asked you if you wanted a drink, she wasn't offering water or juice.

but she may just have been a freak.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Right, Fox - "pop" is what native* Pittsburghers call it; I call it "soda". Since I went to school and now work in a mostly non-native community, I see things like signs on soda machines with signs on them on which "pop" and "soda" have been alternately scribbled and crossed out.

As in Res's experience, "pop" is not pronounced "pop" but rather "paaahhhp". :D

* for some versions of native, not including my siblings who were born here but who were raised by my NJ-born mother.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

In South Texas where I was born and reared, it's called "soda."

"Pop," to my mind, is a totally midwestern locution. It's what my cousins from Minnesota call the stuff. *shrug*

[mjstone.livejournal.com]

*waves hands* East Tennessee, born, raised and presently enrolled as a Vol - I say soda.

I am made fun of because everything here is also "coke"

Then again, my mum's a yank and I drink unsweet tea *shrugs*.

Sorry about posting to something written in March, but I had to comment.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

You probably know all about the Dialect Survey (http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/) then, eh? I love it. It pushes my statistic-loving buttons.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

"Pop" (as in Mom and Pop) is what people in some parts of the UK call it, as in: "Do you want a bottle of pop?" to a thirsty child. Where my Dad came from (Yorkshire) water was ironically referred to as 'corporation pop'. If we want coke, we say Coke (or Pepsi).

As for the poor instructor lady...I think it's human nature to wonder what to do and not do anything. I expect the same would have happened here, unless one of the people in the room was a first-aider, and perhaps even then.

Sorry to hear you're unemployed, that's a bummer.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear you're unemployed, that's a bummer.

Eh. It was a very nasty shock and a blow to my ego, but on the other hand, between the state and the spouse, I'm quite well provided for, and I'm using the time to write a romance novel. darthfox says I should think of it as "a state-funded arts grant."