I’ve been called oblivious by a lot of people (here I’m thinking specifically of my ex), but I think today won the world title for obliviousness. I’m just lucky that my boss is really, really understanding.
I had to go pick something up. My boss was on the phone with the accountant, getting the account number at the place I was going to.
My boss had her TV tuned to Oprah, but with the sound off and the closed captioning on. So I started reading the closed captioning and tuned her conversation out.
Except I tuned her out so badly that I failed to notice when:
1. The conversation ended.
2. She began talking to me.
3. She continued talking to me for an extended period of time.
4. She started waving a piece of paper at me.
5. She started typing really, really loud to try and get my attention.
It took me five minutes to realize she was off the phone, and I only realized when there was about 30 seconds of silence.
She then told me what happened, and I was like oh…SHIT!
I think what happened was that because I didn’t need to pay attention to the sound, I totally tuned out anything I heard.
If she had just had the sound on and not the closed captioning, I probably would have heard her talking to me. Instead, I went into some sort of mental cone of silence.
Luckily, she was far more amused than annoyed by this, because if she weren’t so understanding, I’d be significantly more fired.
Edited To Add: I apologized again to my boss, who noted, “I could have done a pole dance and I don’t think you would have noticed.”