I'm not a joiner by nature, but when my place of employment started a book club, I thought, what the heck, I should get to know my co-workers better, and resolved to attend. And so I appeared at the appointed hour in the appropriate
conference room.
Looking around the room that first meeting, I saw to my horror that more than half of the attendees were members of the senior staff who wouldn't know me from Eve. I wondered if I was in the right place.
"Excuse me, is this the book club?"
"It's not a book club. The word 'club' connotes exclusivity. We're a book group."
Uh oh...
I should have realized off the bat that this wouldn't be the fun, gossipy kind of book group so many people enjoy. Something's gotta be fishy when Management sponsors a book club. Somehow I missed the announcement that its focus would be "diversity." (I found out later that someone had set a goal that the company would hold a certain number of events each year to sponsor diversity in the workplace, with some percentage of employees attending at least one event
annually. It was all very political.)
