Where I work we have badges with our faces and preferred name on them, I suppose to make it easy to know what to call someone you may share a room or a meeting with when you haven’t had a formal introduction.
In the lunchroom, we’re all stacked up in the queue waiting for one of the three microwaves to go off, all strangers. This is an interesting exercise that reminds me of playing arcade games or pool, where you set down a quarter near the coin slot or else by the button you use to select the number of players to indicate that you’ve got next.
In a bar on a Friday or Saturday night, or at lunchtime across the street from the public school, there will always be more than one quarter lined up on the machine. You don’t need to mark the coin, and you don’t need to tell anyone anything. You remember where you were “in line” at the time you set the coin down, and you’ll keep loose tabs on the advancement of the current game. Everyone else will keep tabs on the game too, plus where they are.
Sometimes if a game ends unexpectedly early and you’re not paying attention, someone behind you in line will let you know your turn is up. It’s never confusing. A courtesy, plus keeping things moving – they’re waiting, after all. Everyone respects the line. Not dissimilar is driving on a two way street: it could be chaotic, but it’s not. There’s nothing forcing people to drive on one side of the road or another, or to stay in one lane or another. Just paint. We do it anyway.
The microwave lunch line is the same. When you show up, you see all of the microwaves taken, and you note who’s standing around staring off into space, or looking at their phone, and who’s got a Tupperware or a take out container in their hand, and who doesn’t. Who’s in the microwave now, and who’s waiting for it.
The people before you know who was before them, and more or less it takes care of itself. Like the arcade and the back of the bar, you don’t have to know who anyone is, you just have to assess the scene when you arrive. There’s nothing forcing you do to do this.
I’m sure you could take a quick step in front of someone and toss your leftovers in the nuker quickly and they wouldn’t do anything but think you’re an asshole. Maybe they’d say, “Hey, I was here first.” Probably it wouldn’t go further than that. What are they going to do, punch you?
But that doesn’t happen. Social convention is so powerful we don’t even need to agree on the rules. It just happens. We check our email, we IM, we scroll through social feeds. We wait in line.
So today, staring off into space, I didn’t actually see who had just put a plastic container in the microwave in front of me, just that they were there first. But after a minute I looked up to see if my turn, next, was close, and I noticed one of the machines had 15:30 remaining. As I was looking at it, I noticed the person beside me was looking as well, and we noticed each other noticing. He said to me, “15 minutes?” and I asked him if he’d seen who’d put it in.
We looked around. There was one person we knew had just arrived, a few people eating at tables, three microwaves humming away, but only one person standing around. Attempting to get his attention, I said, loud enough to be heard, “Hey, is that your stuff in the microwave there?” No response. Scroll scroll scroll. So I leaned toward him to get close enough to read his badge, and said his name.
“Danny.”
He made eye contact, clearly unnerved. Just for a second, but distinctly. I’d triggered his startle reflex, and his nostrils were flared. Then he relaxed, and I continued, “… is that your lunch in the microwave?”
He leaned back against the fridge, pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “That one’s broken. The only button that works sets it for 16 minutes.”
Someone else walks up and looks into the microwave, then at the time, them makes eye contact first with me, then the guy beside me, then with Danny, and says, “Yeah, you have to watch it. I still need a minute.” And then he stood there, looking at the microwave until he was satisfied it was done, pressed Stop, pulled the door open, and pulled out his lunch, careful to hold it by the edges to avoid burning his fingers.
4 people in a lunch room standing around a microwave, none of us know each other. None of us needed to speak to understand our queue priority order or what the rules were.
All of us were wearing badges, with them plainly visible, as required by security. But when I said somebody’s name, it was distinctly startling. It had no obvious meaning in this context, so the default reading was concern.
The opposite of looking at your watch.