3-15: You Don't Make the Rules Here

On Respect and Unwritten Rules

I had a rather frustrating experience in the sauna this week. I’m in there trying to relax for 15 or 20 minutes after finishing a workout, and one of the two heaters is already out for service so it’s a lukewarm 147 degrees (not very hot by sauna standards), and there’s a neighbor in there with me who I hadn’t yet met. He had his headphones on and I unfortunately could hear he was listening to old Drake on rather high volume. This was just the start, and for the record, it would be equally annoying if he were listening to good music.

He then received and answered a phone call from, presumably, a friend; he proceeds to answer the phone call and starts to actually have a conversation with this friend while he is in the sauna, with a stranger (me). After about 10 seconds when I realized he is literally going to proceed to have a full length call in the sauna, I raised my hand to signal that he should go outside to take the call, and I said, rather genuinely, “Do you mind [taking your call outside]?” He literally ignored me, which is kind of crazy because I didn’t whisper it.

I tolerate his antics for another long minute and I ask again. He then mutes the phone (how considerate to his friend, right?) and he says to me in a seriously rude tone, “You don’t make the rules here, bro.” Then I say, confused by his otherworldly lack of respect, “This isn’t a phone booth?” joking that maybe he mistook the sauna for a phone booth (those are on a different floor). I eventually told him, mostly talking to myself at this point, “have some respect,” which was not worth my breath at this point, as he would not know respect if it hit him directly in the face.

While fire-with-fire could have been an entertaining route to take, I instead chose to leave (sour grapes tell me it wasn’t half as hot as I like it anyway). While he was, in fact, quite right to remark that I don’t make the rules, it should be well-implied that not taking a phone call in a public sauna is an unspoken, unwritten rule of universal respect.

Unwritten rules dominate so much of our day-to-day routines. When you walk into an elevator, for instance, you probably turn around and face the door, like a normal person, instead of staring at the wall expecting it will open when the elevator arrives at your floor. No one taught you to face the door. There is no placard on the wall that tells you to face the door when you walk in, yet everyone does it. The self-righteous sauna-goer who demanded I show him the rule that says that he cannot take a phone call in the sauna may not have gotten the showing-respect-to-your-neighbors memo, which was never sent.

While I am somewhat annoyed by how I even gave that moment another second of my thoughts instead of letting it go entirely, I realize that I approached it incorrectly. I approached it as if I could educate this grown man on proper and respectful human etiquette. My father would be royally offended by my behavior if he knew that I took a phone call with someone else in the sauna. Fear of disrespecting my father is not why I don’t take phone calls in the sauna. I don’t take them because I have unspoken respect for others.