I was dining yesterday at a very good vegan restaurant, when I overheard something unexpected. Someone was had just arrived to join a large party a few tables over.<\/p>\n
Just before he sat down, he said loudly to the waiter “Can I get a cheeseburger?” It was clearly an attempt at cheeky humor.<\/p>\n
The waiter didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, we have that,” he replied pleasantly, and accurately (their burger is plant based, and quite good).<\/p>\n
But the other people at that table looked uncomfortable. There was an awkward silence.<\/p>\n
In my head, I started trying to unpack what had just happened. What exactly was going on here?<\/p>\n
Clearly the guy was trying to be funny. But none of the people he knew at that table seemed to think it was funny.<\/p>\n
Maybe he felt awkward about the choice of a vegan restaurant. But in that case, what he said was clearly a dig at whoever had chosen that restaurant.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was a little more complex. Perhaps the man resented the choice of restaurant but was not consciously aware of his own resentment — until his joke misfired.<\/p>\n
I found myself thinking about the “house rules” that kick in when we enter someone else’s space. Some rules are explicit, and others are implicit.<\/p>\n
An implicit rule in a kosher restaurant would be not to jokingly order a ham and cheese sandwich. An explicit rule would be not to jokingly shout “Fire”.<\/p>\n
The same thing goes for other shared spaces. Implicitly you shouldn’t cough too much during a play. Explicitly you shouldn’t start shouting curses at the actors on stage.<\/p>\n
It’s a sliding scale. My guess is that the guy in the restaurant miscalculated, and broke an implicit rule of the house without quite intending to. At least not consciously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was dining yesterday at a very good vegan restaurant, when I overheard something unexpected. Someone was had just arrived to join a large party a few tables over. Just before he sat down, he said loudly to the waiter “Can I get a cheeseburger?” It was clearly an attempt at cheeky humor. The waiter … Continue reading “Implicit and explicit house rules”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24623,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622\/revisions\/24623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}