OC Placement Test: Reading

The clock above Millbrook’s post office had run five minutes fast for as long as anyone could remember. Visitors hurried for buses that were not yet due, then stood at the stop looking puzzled. Locals simply smiled and took their time.

When the council finally paid an engineer to repair it, the town was delighted for about a week. Then people began missing buses. Shopkeepers opened late. The baker, who had set his ovens by that clock for thirty years, burned two trays of bread.

At the next council meeting, nobody mentioned the cost of the repair. They voted, without a single objection, to have the clock put back the way it had been.