How Much Hurry Do You Carry?

At a door, in a meeting or beside a plate of office doughnuts, the unwritten rules are everywhere. Most of them work — until we start thinking too hard about them.

By Martin & Manfred, (floating in the Swimming Club), somewhere in Germany.

Two people reach a door at almost exactly the same moment. It should be simple. One opens it, somebody walks through, life continues.

Except that in the tiny pause before the door moves, an extraordinary number of calculations can take place.

Martin usually lets the other person go first. But if he is slightly ahead, the calculations begin. How far away is the other person? Are they already close enough that holding the door would be polite, or far enough away that it would force them into an embarrassing little jog? Is it a man or a woman? Is he feeling particularly gentlemanly today?

And there is another factor.

“How much hurry do you carry with you at that moment?”

Manfred’s calculation is different, and rather more direct. For him, respect matters. If he likes or respects somebody, he may hold the door. If he does not, perhaps the door can look after itself.

“If I don’t like my boss, I don’t keep the door open,” he said. “It sends a signal.”

Then there is the dangerous possibility that you hold the door for one person and discover that five more are coming behind them. Suddenly you are no longer entering a building. You have become unpaid door staff for all humanity.

Somebody may not even say thank you.

Manfred joked that these offences go into his little black book. Perhaps, eventually, the door gets locked.

The Swimming Club started with the question of who goes first and quickly discovered that the answer is rarely just about the door.

The invisible calculation.

There are several perfectly acceptable ways to behave. You can go through first and pass the open door to the person behind you. You can step aside and let them through. You can hold the door until everybody has passed, although at some point this begins to resemble a competition.

Somebody may even overtake another person in order to be the one who opens it.

Behind these small manoeuvres sit upbringing, social expectations, instinct, politeness and personal mood.

But perhaps the more interesting question is whether any of this deserves so much thought.

Manfred thought probably not.

People, he suggested, put themselves under a surprising amount of pressure by worrying about their image and what everybody else might think. First impressions, disappointment, expectations, appearing polite enough, behaving correctly enough.

“Half the time I don’t even know if people care.”

Martin’s answer was simpler. Common sense and instinct usually help. Basic politeness is useful too, if people are still taught it.

Sometimes people think too much.

Or not enough.

Welcome to the office. Good luck.

The same uncertainty becomes more interesting when the door opens onto somewhere unfamiliar.

Imagine arriving at a new workplace and receiving very little guidance. Where do you go? Who do you ask? What are you allowed to do?

The Swimming Club compared it to arriving at a campsite and finding what appears to be the reception — except nobody is there. You look around. You follow whatever signs seem to exist. Eventually you begin a small voyage of discovery.

At work, the process is not so different.

Manfred described entering a new situation as something you gradually learn. At first you may understand the bigger picture, but the details of how things actually work only appear with time.

His approach is curiosity.

Allow yourself to be surprised. Observe. Adapt. Ask.

He remembered starting work in a field that was completely new to him. Even the subject itself was unfamiliar. But there was no magic solution. You learn. Other people explain things. When they do not, you ask.

“When I was younger, I was shy,” he said. “Now, I simply ask somebody.”

The newcomer has a useful advantage: the newbie bonus. Nobody expects the new person to know everything yet.

The stranger situation comes later, when you have technically been around for years but spend so much time working remotely that returning to headquarters feels almost like visiting a different organisation. Manfred estimated that on one recent visit he recognised only a small proportion of the people there.

You can belong somewhere and still need orientation.

The anti-handbook.

Official handbooks contain procedures, policies and respectable sentences.

The imaginary anti-handbook contains the useful stuff.

Martin immediately supplied one rule:

Do not speak to Martin before he has had his first coffee in the office.

This apparently applies even if he has already had coffee at home. In the best-case scenario, Martin explained, he may not even notice the attempted conversation because he is not properly awake yet.

Manfred’s anti-handbook became more practical.

Avoid enormous political discussions when everybody is supposed to be working.

And, under certain circumstances, make a backup before allowing an enthusiastic colleague anywhere near your computer.

These are not exactly corporate policies. That is why they are useful.

Every group develops this kind of knowledge. Some of it is practical. Some of it is habit. Some of it is folklore. The interesting question is how a newcomer is supposed to know which is which.

Even office food can become a moral problem.

If somebody puts doughnuts on the kitchen table, are they for everybody?

Probably.

But what if you usually work remotely and only appear in the office occasionally? Are you automatically part of the doughnut community? Do you wait for somebody to say, “Help yourself”? Is there a note?

Manfred and Martin were cautious.

Before making a mistake, perhaps do nothing.

There was supporting evidence. On another occasion, a basket of Easter eggs arrived, apparently in a carefully judged quantity. Then somebody became rather enthusiastic and ate far more than their share.

Manfred and Martin noticed.

Discussion followed.

Possibly gossip.

Unwritten rules become especially visible when somebody breaks one.

Meetings and the art of saying nothing.

Now put eight people in a meeting room and ask who should speak first.

Martin could already see the result.

“It will be a very silent meeting.”

Then perhaps the boss asks why nobody is saying anything. The group enters a complicated sequence of “after you”, “why don’t you start?” and tactical hesitation.

Eventually the moment passes, the boss continues speaking and everybody relaxes.

The opportunity to contribute has safely disappeared.

Martin also recognised another meeting hazard: questions so broad that nobody knows what to do with them.

“What’s new?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell us something about yourself.”

That sounds friendly enough, but without any guardrails it can produce more nervousness than conversation.

Some familiar phrases help people survive the silence. “Yes, that happened to me too.” “Why don’t you start?” “After you.”

An agenda, Martin noted, helps.

Informal groups have their own signals too. A glance in the kitchen. A pause beside the coffee machine. Somebody’s reaction near the copier. Regular members may immediately understand what is happening, while an outsider sees absolutely nothing.

The unwritten rules are not always rules at all.

Sometimes they are simply shared interpretations.

When the official rule is wrong.

The conversation became more uncomfortable when the written rule itself might be the problem.

Could there be situations where following the official rule exactly makes things worse?

Certainly, Manfred and Martin thought, although producing a neat example on demand was harder.

Sometimes, one suggested, you simply follow the instruction and allow the consequences to demonstrate why it was a bad idea.

If the person responsible is reasonable, though, the better route is discussion. Talk about the problem. Find a solution. Cooperate.

That distinction matters.

Rules become easier to live with when there is room to talk about them.

Please do not write everything down.

So perhaps the obvious solution is to remove the ambiguity.

Write everything down.

Who makes the coffee. Who speaks first. How long you may stand beside somebody’s desk. Who gets the last doughnut. Exactly how many seconds the door must be held open.

The reaction from the Swimming Club was immediate.

Nightmare.

The objection was not really about paperwork. It was about freedom.

If every small behaviour is prescribed, people begin to feel less like human beings making judgements and more like machines following instructions. Work already contains limits. Remove the remaining space to decide, adapt and influence what happens, and something important disappears with it.

Manfred put it strongly: destroy the final bit of freedom and work stops being human.

That does not mean unwritten rules should never be challenged.

What about the person who arrives somewhere new and simply ignores the established way of doing things?

The Swimming Club initially proposed a disciplinary system beginning with cotton wool balls and escalating through increasingly solid pieces of office equipment.

Staplers were mentioned.

So were hole punches.

But then came the more serious qualification: what if the newcomer is doing it better?

“We have always done it this way” is also an unwritten rule.

And not necessarily a good one.

Sometimes the person who does not yet understand the rules is the person most able to see that they no longer make sense.

Then the useful response is neither punishment nor blind obedience.

It is conversation.

The rule beneath the rules.

Work is not the only place where this happens.

“Life is full of them,” Manfred said when the conversation moved beyond the office.

Campsites have unwritten rules too. You do not simply walk across somebody else’s pitch because it happens to be the shortest route.

There are rules about waste water as well. Manfred mentioned what they jokingly call the “Holland Bucket”: an arrangement that lets wastewater drip into the ground, leaving an unpleasant surprise for whoever comes afterwards.

Nobody needs a 74-page behavioural manual to understand why that might not be considerate.

Which brought the conversation to a much simpler rule.

If you would dislike having something done to you, don’t do it to somebody else.

It is hardly a secret anti-handbook.

But it probably covers the door, the meeting, the doughnuts, the campsite and quite a lot of the office.

And it leaves just enough room for the most important unwritten rule of all.

Use your judgement.