The following contains spoilers if you have not yet finished the book.
There's a Jessie J song entitled, "Nobody's Perfect" that begins:
"When I'm nervous I have this thing that I talk too much
Sometimes I just can’t shut the hell up
It’s like I need to tell someone anyone who'll listen"

So, I shouldn't "share" this, but I'm compelled to.
Last night I finished listening to the AS audiobook (abridged), while crawling around on the floor at Wal-mart cleaning merchandise from under the shelves.
I have an HTC-One phone, & partly because earbud headphones cause my ears to fill with fluid, but mostly out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I used its oversized speakers so you could hear it anywhere within 20 feet of me.
Increasingly as I come to work each night & watch the human refuse who come to shop there & work there (some of them, not all), I develop a sense of contempt for them. As I listened to AS, I looked into the insipid, effete faces of people who could not think for themselves. It's a difficult distinction to make; I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed; it took me a lifetime to figure that out... but at least I *try*. These people don't even want to try.

But, what I wanted to write about is the point where the audiobook very nearly brought me to tears.
It was the scene in which Dagny was gathering workers to hold lanterns to get the trains running during the power outage.

I listened to the denigrating description of the workers before her; "slack muscular bodies... limply hanging arms of men drained by the unrewarding exhaustion of labor that required no thought. These were the dregs of the railroad; the younger men who could now seek no chance to rise, and the older men, who had never wanted to seek it."

It was at this point when, becoming angry, I muttered, (pardon my language) "f* you, b*ch!" (referring to Rand). "I'm out here; I might be one of those men standing in the crowd. Some of us wanted rise; some of us rose and fell and are trying to get back up again." I imagined for the first time how people of the mind must view me in my menial job at Wal-mart, as Dagny viewed that congregation of men.

That wasn't the point where I teared up. Later, she went on to say, "..that's all they're fit for, these men. There's not a single mind left anywhere on Taggart Transcontinental."

And then she spots John Galt in the crowd, and I teared up. I won't pretend I'm any John Galt, but there *was* a mind in the crowd. And if there was one, why couldn't there be two, or three or a dozen? Laziness and stupidity weren't the only reasons men might have to find themselves working as common laborers. There were the dilettantes like Galt. And men who'd made one or several bad decisions, or who were hit with too much bad luck at once. And men who were not lazy or stupid, but lacked self-discipline... like myself.

The tears didn't come because of self-pity; perhaps it was a final release from self-pity that was the cause. Since I'd started this job (my actual job is supposedly on the wax crew, all 3 of us), I'd broken my heart trying to get "my" floors gleaming. I'd learned what I could from an instructor whom others detested; I experimented, took chances, racked up overtime my bosses resented, to learn and develop techniques for improving the floors as much as possible as fast as possible (and, fool that I am, I eagerly shared everything I'd figured out). I pestered my bosses for materials, for permissions to do what it took to fix the floors sometimes I would get them; usually I was put off.
And always, just before I could feel caught up... I'd be sent to another store, or spend a week stocking dairy or frozen. We'd spend one night getting half an "action alley" waxed beautifully, then some mindless unloader or stocker would drag a scar down recently waxed floors and we'd be pulled off to fix it, and never get back to finish what we started.

I'm saying all that to express the growing frustration I'd felt for nearly 2 years. I'd periodically, angrily proclaimed my intention to "go Galt" in place, but my work ethic always drove me back to breaking my heart and my back to do the best job I could, regardless of my pay. My father once told my mother, in incredulity, "I don't get it. It takes dynamite to get him out of bed in the morning, but once he's at work he works all... day... long." For months I would try to emulate many of my co-workers, just plodding along, doing the bare minimum not to get fired, but always I found myself trying to work harder or smarter, to get the job I was asked to do, done.

But, at that point last night, I realized that at the start of this work-week I had finally actually gone Galt-in-place. I haven't been allowed to do the job for which I was trained, for which I developed a passion, in a couple weeks or more. And so I've been slouching along, stretching my breaks as long as I can, not caring how well or fast I get my assigned work done. I used to think/say "if I don't do the job they want me to, they have no need to pay me." But I've seen the cripples hobbling along who've managed to go unfired for years. I've seen the incompetents who screw up or fail to complete their tasks who are long-time employees. Even though I'm the lowest paid member of the maintenance crew, the managers come to me when something needs done or wasn't done right. Because I will take the responsibility, and they detected that. The irony is, day before yesterday I took the supervisory assessment test... and failed. It seems I'm not fit to be a leader, just the guy who gets the job done.

Last night, I chose to be a human being. They have the power to fire me, and even the one branch is such a behemoth that the loss will go unnoticed. However, I have observed the value the hold for they pay they give, in the industry and creativity of my co-workers. So now I will give them that value in exchange for my pay, and no more.

I have, through my own incompetence and lack of discipline, brought myself to a point where the rest of my life will be mere existence; making barely enough money to pay for my own existence, with no hope of achieving anything more.
And that's not good enough. I know I have more to offer, not to justify my existence, but to purchase a better life.
I may not be able, with my resume, to acquire a better position. Fine. If that turns out to be the case, I'll make one for myself. If it takes the rest of my life to do it.

My mind's a junkyard; when speaking of the pivotal scene, I thought of a scene from "Fallen Angels" where the protagonists discovered allies among enemies. when speaking of going Galt-in-place, I thought of "the hump" Rico experiences in the book "Starship Troopers". And now I think of "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" where a teenage boy declares to an intergalactic court, "Go ahead! Take away our star! We'll MAKE a star!"

I guess what I'm trying to express is an example of just how profoundly this book can and does affect individuals, in this case, me. How it can open eyes that are already open, but not seeing.