part of the tablet you picked up

[Vladv1]

"Afterwards, Malcolm read Johnson the riot act. Jeffery: ‘He was told, “When you get out there you say hello, you say goodnight and shut your trap. Nothing in between.” So he was given his sort of orders right there and then. It was very rough to go outside of that, you know? What a tough situation, though. Boy, did I feel for him then.’ Bon was his own man. Did Jeffery think the new guy, whoever it had been, the brothers would have laid down the law to, because they simply didn’t have the same respect for someone just walking in as things were getting good? That they used Bon’s absence, in fact, to get things more like they’d wanted them all along? He nods his head. ‘They would have been certain about that whoever it was. That was just part of the tablet you picked up. Here it is, f*****g read it once, there’ll be a test, you know?’".
Mick Wall, "Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be".

What does the metaphor "part of the tablet (a pill?)you picked up" mean? Is "read" in "f*****g read it once" an imperative? As in, "Do read it!"

 

[emsr2d2]

@Vladv1 You currently have nine open threads on the first page of the Ask A Teacher forum. Please slow down. Give other people a chance.

 

[jutfrank]

The word tablet is being used here to mean something like 'commandment'—that commandment being "When you're on stage, don't talk to the crowd".

Think about how God issued the ten commandments on stone tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai.