DAY AT THE OFFICE: Sometimes it's tough not to be distracted

My current proofreading project is a 300-page book about fool's gold (pyrite). It's clear that the author, a geologist, loves his subject--so much so, in fact, that he has made it his life's work and is writing this book just to share with a wider audience his boundless enthusiasm for this common mineral. Frankly I think he may be the world's biggest fan of the stuff, which he claims is responsible for the discovery of America and pretty much our entire way of life. Technology? Mining techniques? Environmental science? Medicine? Bacteriology? Yep, he links pyrite to all of them.
Anyhow, my deadline is fast approaching, so the past few mornings I've headed out right after breakfast to one of our local coffee shops, where I spread out my papers, plug in my headphones (yoga music) and get to work.
Just as I was about to start today, however, I overheard a conversation at the next table.
"Well, it could have something to do with the fact you locked me in the closet," I heard one woman telling another. From what I could gather, she was recounting how she and a sibling had had an contentious Airing of Childhood Grievances over the holiday.
And then a guy sat down next to me and, on his tablet, started Skyping with a man in China. In Chinese!
It's a good thing I have an overdeveloped work ethic, because my fellow coffee-drinkers were lots more interesting even than the chemical composition and idiosyncratic properties of pyrite.
What I was just as glad NOT to hear, though, was the string of job interviews being conducted at a table near the door. As I was coming in, I heard one applicant saying something about "impacting our facilities"; as I was leaving I overheard another saying, "In short, that's what I know about your company."