WHO FOLLOWS RULES?

I know I made a vow not to be overly crit­i­cal in this col­umn after the trou­bles the last cou­ple of years have brought upon us all, but a cou­ple of re­lated things have an­noyed me this past month and I’m try­ing to de­cide whether they have a cul­tural basis or not.

Firstly, I was in a well-known hard­ware store in cen­tral Barcelona re­cently and my com­pan­ion and I had just de­scended from the top floor only to re­alise we had to go back up for some­thing, so we de­cided to take the lift rather than climb the stairs again. Now there is a rather large sign on the lift door stat­ing very clearly that for COVID-19 rea­sons, the max­i­mum num­ber al­lowed in the lift is two peo­ple, and then only if you are from the same bub­ble. We duly en­tered the empty lift upon its ar­rival, only for a mid­dle-aged woman to come charg­ing in just as the doors were clos­ing. My com­pan­ion and I both pointed out the reg­u­la­tion clearly printed on the door, to which the woman replied “I work here”, seem­ingly in the be­lief that said con­di­tion ei­ther al­lowed her to act with im­punity or made us all im­mune from the virus. How­ever, she had not reck­oned on the re­solve of her travel com­pan­ions, and we both in­stantly coun­tered her with our own thoughts on the im­punity/im­mu­nity idea, my com­pan­ion say­ing “all the more rea­son to fol­low the rules of the store where you work… this is a se­ri­ous health issue”, to which the woman replied “I have to clock in with my time card”. We per­sisted in our crit­i­cism of her be­hav­iour and at­ti­tude until we reached the top floor, at which point she ex­ited the lift rolling her eyes, obliv­i­ous to our com­plaints.

The next anec­dote, which is not re­ally much of one, but seems to ex­hibit the same fla­grant dis­re­gard for rules as the first – I’ve lived in Ger­many re­mem­ber, so I know what it’s like to live some­where where peo­ple fol­low them – took place at Hos­pi­tal Clínic. Reg­u­lar read­ers will know that this is a place I visit fairly often due to a long-term treat­ment I am re­ceiv­ing. Some time ago, I’m not sure how long, the hos­pi­tal put up huge signs every­where say­ing “la bata no passeja”, a cute way of say­ing “do not leave the hos­pi­tal build­ing wear­ing your white doc­tor’s coat”. I as­sume this is for hy­giene rea­sons, though I could be wrong. Any­way, it will come as no sur­prise to you to learn that each time I visit the hos­pi­tal I see any num­ber of doc­tors wan­der­ing, strolling and am­bling out of the hos­pi­tal gates right past the huge sign, wear­ing their white doc­tor’s coat.

This lat­ter ex­am­ple would seem to sug­gest that the im­pulse to ig­nore rules is not re­stricted to one so­cial stra­tum, as doc­tors are also pre­pared to do it in full sight of the pop­u­la­tion with­out bat­ting an eye­lid. It does of course also allow mem­bers of the pub­lic to take what I con­sider to be quite hu­mor­ous pho­tos like one you see on this page. But hu­mour aside, I’m left with the ques­tion: why is it so anath­ema to peo­ple in this coun­try to stick to rules made for the ben­e­fit of every­one? Replies wel­come.

opin­ion