an unpleasant experience

So Emily and I had an Unpleasant Experience at Title Wave on Saturday.

We went over to–well, I was going to do my NNWM kick-off, but then it turned out my laptop battery doesn’t work at *all* anymore–so it turned out we went to Title Wave because it was a nice way to spend some time. Anyway. We stopped at the grocery store and got doughnuts and orange juice and walked over to Title Wave and went to the general lounging area by the stage to eat and talk. Emily was telling me about a tv show.

There was a writer’s group meeting several feet away from us. I happen to be on this writer’s group email list, and when I came in and saw there were 10 or 12 of them, I thought, “Wow, I relly ought to start coming to this! There’s a lot of people there!” So, aware of the writer’s group over there, Emily and I were talking quietly to one another. As Emily reached the climax of the story, her voice rose to a not-yet-full-speaking-voice level.

Somebody at the writer’s table said, “SHH!”

Emily and I startled, and looked around, and we were the only other people in the /area/, so the “shh” had to be for us, although it honestly seemed very unlikely, because we weren’t being very loud. After a moment or two we were kind of like, “Okay, whatever,” and went back to our conversation.

About two minutes later a red-headed woman from the writer’s group came over and said to Emily, “You have a wonderful voice, my dear, but it really carries. I don’t know if you know this, but we’re a writing group and we’ve *reserved* this area.”

Emily and I stared at her incredulously. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, we couldn’t hear *you*, dear,” to me. I said, rather frostily, “That would be because I wasn’t doing most of the talking.”

The unpleasant woman went away after another few moments of admonishing us for having the nerve to talk in a public area.

Tha’ *fuck*?!

Hello! Public area. Goody for them, they’d *reserved* the space, but they weren’t *paying* for it, and it wasn’t as if we’d been having a high old time of partying it up and laughing and yelling. What absolute *bastards*. So yesterday I went over to Title Wave and talked to one of the managers and registered a complaint against these people, because, as the manager said, “They haven’t reserved the whole *store*.” It’s a public goddamned area! What complete *snots*.

Obviously, I’m a little pissed off about the whole thing. And now I’m going to go write email to the woman who runs the list (I’m quite sure it was she who Spoke To Us) and tell her to remove me from it because I have no interest in being associated with shitheads. I may not use those exact words. Then again, I may.