Some purple explosion had happened in the fridge, leaving dried residue on everything. I had to pull hard with both hands on a mustard bottle, until it loudly cracked free. Every item I removed sounded like velcro.
Me and two friends were cleaning the break room fridges, three large ones full of expired food left by 120 people, some as old as a year. Elbow deep in grime, harsh cleaning agents, stinky gray sponge water. We only had an hour to accomplish this, everyone in the building had been notified by email to stay out of the way for this single hour. We had to run to the sink every 30 seconds to rinse something off.
And yet one woman needed to meticulously wash a dish in the one sink during this one hour. With a towel laid out, a sponge, dish soap, hand soap, paper towels, waiting for the water to heat up, building up a lather, scrubbing, drying completely, getting the water temperature comfortable, building up a lather of hand soap, washing her hands, drying completely.
I stood right behind her, fantasizing about what I could yell. What's the point? Would yelling be any more obvious than three grime-covered people doing a gross cleaning project? With several warning emails and a shared calendar event? Fluorescent signs on the three fridges? On the break room wall? This isn't hyperbole, that preparation actually happened.
Standing there with this leaking sponge, I'm wondering what else I can do to make this person understand that there are other people in the room. I thought that was already obvious because there were other people in the room. I thought of a few things that would have a lasting impact but were illegal.
We were throwing things away. Every two minutes someone would come in and say in an annoyed rhetorical tone "wait are you guys just throwing stuff away?" And I would answer "yes, we're cleaning the fridges. Several emails were sent saying that every expired or unlabeled item would be thrown out." No matter what spin I put on that idea, it always came out sounding rude. So every two minutes I felt like I was in the wrong, because at some point we decided bluntness is worse than bothering everyone around you for years.
Every time my downstairs neighbor smokes, plays guitar, has someone over, or has a phone conversation, the eight apartments that share walls with his have to participate. But if we ask him to be quiet, we're rude, like New Yorkers. It happens almost every day. Does he think that some days the smoke doesn't smell like anything, or that his loud guitar playing isn't loud? As a human being, he knows about sleep and what will wake someone up.
I was at the gym this week and three others were working out. This smiling friendly looking man came in with his gym stuff and switched on every overhead fluorescent light and the TV, which came on at a very loud volume and was set to Trump/Clinton election coverage because of course it was. He walked right out of the gym to the locker room, all these changes were so that the room would be set up the way he wanted when he came back.
When he came back, an older man in better shape asked him to turn everything back off, and was immediately accused of rudeness. The older man would have been breaking the rules by swearing at him or punching him in the face. Most workplaces would rather be at a constant simmer of low level resentment and frustration.
There's a lot of misrepresentation about people from big cities, and how rude they are. But they're used to a faster pace, busier life, more complicated transit, more money at stake. Whenever someone's rude I consider whether they're being that way because they're trying to get something done and I'm slowing them down. I'm rude sometimes, but I'm almost always monitoring the people near me and I think that trait has more karmic importance than rudeness.
It's amazing to me that the older man from the gym is still motivated to confront people about their obliviousness. I think it's futile and I don't have the energy for it anymore and I'm half his age. Which is pessimistic. But I'm optimistic in deciding that some people are oblivious to those around them. Because the other option is deciding that they are aware of other people and choose to inconvenience them on purpose.
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